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This article gives consideration to the specific features of the home as a place to organize encounters with elderly patients when they come into care. Based on the experience of the two authors, it provides clinical illustrations to focus on a number of the questions raised. When affording home-based care to elderly patients, the psychoanalyst is required to psychically work out the traumatic affects conjured up by the reality of the material and familial background against which he or she meets the patients, being confronted by the often passionately felt relational modalities that provided the very reason for the visit. The possibility for further elaboration the psychoanalyst opens up can provide access to a sublimated form of tenderness.