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When inventing psychoanalysis, Freud discovered the dimension of love as it unfolded in transference with his hysterical patients, but he did not understand its meaning. Lacan went further by defining love as a means, an interface between desire and jouissance, and recognized the Absolute targeted by the hysterical patient’s jouissance. The author takes two examples from the history of psychoanalysis, Dora and Sabina Spielrein, and he examines the need for the hysterical patient to be loved and its implications in treatment.