Psychotherapeutic work with patients presenting with severe dissociation and dissociative disorders such as dissociative identity disorder (DID) is challenging for both patient and therapist. It was the goal of this article to explore, through the chronological unfolding of the case of Emily, a woman who had previously been diagnosed with DID, the development of this writer's process of theoretical reconciliation between a trauma model approach to treatment and relational psychoanalytic ideas about working with dissociative patients. This article reflects this writer's process of finding balance between the containing yet sometimes confining trauma model in which I learned to be a therapist and the expansive yet sometimes nebulous psychoanalytic theories of trauma and dissociation.