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On several occasions between 1961 and 1963 Lacan returns to the mythical image of the praying mantis; the ultimate image of the assimilating, devouring and sadistic mother of dreaded embrace; an image also of a monstrous jouissance, highlighting the enigma of this jouissance. Yet Lacan retrieved this image directly from what he himself called “the accessories-in-use store”. He takes it, uses it, then abandons it, but for reasons strictly linked to the path taken in relation to the question of anguish. In short, it is an image whose uses and modulations follow a path of thought. One finds the name of Freud, of course, who used the image of Medusa, but also those of Caillois, Bataille and Blanchot for whom the image of the praying mantis finds a decisive expression. This article follows the different drafts of this image in Lacan’s teaching, in order to reassemble it as one would reassemble a mechanism; if only to study its theoretical contributions and why Lacan also had to abandon it. Not only because the image had no further use for him, but because the object it encloses has no image.