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In this article new forms of contradiction-conflict resulting from changes in the perception of limits that psychoanalysts encounter in their practice today are conceived from the perspective of the notions of work of the negative and of subjectivation, using clinical cases that present both neurotic and borderline functioning. Emphasis is placed on the importance of encountering the adolescent in the adult, as well as on the necessity of analyzing after the fact, within adult treatments, the establishment in adolescence of specific defensive systems preventing access to primitive infantile distress. The hypothesis of an early trouble of primary identification at the foundation of these kinds of functioning leads us to stress the importance of the analyst’s acknowledgement of his own resistances to his subjective involvement in the analytical encounter and, from there, to envision modes of interpretation and setting. The presentation of a case of « face-to-face psychoanalysis »shows that the necessary adjustments of technique, along with a quite problematic relation with theory, made possible true psychoanalytical work with patients suffering from borderline functioning.