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This article aims to set out the difficulties encountered within the therapeutic relationship with an alcoholic patient going through the withdrawal process. Through alexithymic and apsychognosic speech, and the counter-attitude or counter-transference of the clinician towards the patient, we observe, denial and the death drive affect both clinician and patient, and hinder the therapeutic relationship, which may then fail. The clinical vignette will allow us to demonstrate the prominence of the death drive here, and the therapeutic difficulties met with in addressing denial—in this case pathognomic—in such a situation. The article aims to confirm the complexity of the encounter with the alcoholic and the unique therapeutic issues that it raises, which demand that we take into account, in this encounter of withdrawal, what we call a “clinic of the void” or “clinic of the negative.”