The 'primary illusion' is an experience in which the subject's aims are identical to those of the environment. In adult love and in certain transference regressions this illusion reappears to some extent, together with unresolved infantile wishes specific to a given patient. The wish to recapture the illusory past is joined with a wish to repair early trauma by provoking situations similar to those in which narcissistic injury took place in the past. In analysis parameters such as encouraging the expression of feelings of hate, dependence, and nausea may need to be introduced to allow the appearance of traumatic cores of preoedipal character fixations. The provocative, self-traumatizing elements consequent to frustration of the wish to realize the 'primary illusion' can thus be identified.