In this commentary, I engage with selected ideas from Mendes’ paper, examining childhood trauma and the (dis) configuration of the Self. First, I focus on what the possibilities of a more triadically-inflected analysis of the relationship between the patient, her mother, and father may offer us in understanding the recalcitrant effects of trauma inside a culturally gendered triad. Second, I reflect on the foregrounded traumatogenic events surrounding the patient’s maternal loss, and highlight the role of her father as a potential driver of iatrogenic traumatic outcomes that are further consolidated within the Self. Third, I reflect obliquely on issues of training, focusing on the centrality of language in conveying clinical material, as a critical basis for generating compelling and credible sources of evidence in psychoanalytic writing. Finally, I conclude with reflections on the possibilities and limitations of theoretical diversity and pluralism, that have characterized much of the contemporary Relational Paradigm.