"I don't want to be like my mother"

The paper discusses a process of gradual identity transformation in a 24-year old woman in psychoanalytic treatment. Using the Three-Level Model (3-LM), exploring a clinical material with analytic sessions from the beginning, middle and late periods in the analysis, the authors examine how analytic process may create change. The analysis illustrates how the patient’s attachment to unconscious identity-defining internal objects, revealed in metaphors, changed through use of the analyst as a new object. The discussion specifically emphasizes the role of the analyst as a model, adding to the concept of the internalization of the analytic function.