A relational perspective, defined as the consideration of two distinct but continually resonant dimensions of experience—lived “external” experience and out-of-awareness experience that is internally configured—is illustrated in the complementarity between Fairbairn's and Sullivan's contributions. Applied to this case, the clinical emphasis includes the emerging relational patterning shaping the analytic dyad, a reconsideration of interpretation, the need for a more complex appreciation of aggression and the complexities of affect regulation in the patient's psyche, and attention to the crucial element of the patient's attachment to and internalization of her abuser, which is often defensively avoided and left unaddressed by the therapist.