This paper develops a theme of Winnicott's on the use a patient allows himself to make of the analyst. Potamianou suggests that some patients enter analysis just at the time they are working on some aspects of the process of separation from parents. Such patients use the analyst as a symbol of the reunion with the mother in a mother-child dyad. These efforts toward separation involve a setting in motion of some rather violent instinctual impulses which are as yet unintegrated. While the process of achieving autonomy and the affirmation of identity are aided by the analysis, these patients use the analyst only for a while and tend to leave analysis prematurely. The author reviews some cases in her experience and suggests that the function of the analyst in such clinical situations is different from Winnicott's concept of holding. Instead, the analyst must be someone "who can let go." The complex countertransferential aspects of such a task are discussed.