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This article proposes to use the conceptual richness of the notion of envelope to bring psychoanalysis and the social sciences into dialogue, using the envelope as a demarcation but also a continuity between the individual’s psyche and his or her sociocultural environment. By developing the concept of psychic envelopes of identity as a complement to the skin-ego, we describe the phenomenon of transparition by which these envelopes can become transparent and thus reveal the lower layers or even the psychic core, the site of the symptom. In the context of the psychiatric institution, we develop the consequences of the transparition of the envelope and the revelation of the symptom, which challenge the clinician’s gaze. From the transappeared symptom to the symptom-parure, we conclude on the risk of identity annihilation incurred by the patient in the grip of a chronic mental disorder.