A thirty-eight-year-old man entered the hospital complaining of vivid recurrent memories of a wartime event that had happened eighteen years earlier. These flashback experiences began soon after he had lost his job more than half a year earlier. A Vietnam veteran, he had experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder during the first two years following his demobilization, but he had not sought psychiatric treatment or applied for disability compensation. He functioned effectively as a worker, husband, and father until the onset of the current illness. In the course of dynamic psychotherapy, these flashbacks were found to serve as an affect-laden screen memory that protected the patient from the narcissistic mortification of his contemporary job loss and the memories of a traumatic childhood and adolescence.