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During an interview, Boris Cyrulnik wants to see the event as constitutive of life: without event, there is no life. It is in this way that, referring to his experience as neuropsychiatrist and ethologist, he maintains that one will always seek the event. The event also contributes to the constitution of the feeling of being alive in animals and preverbal babies, as well as in all human beings. Its representation, largely tributary to the quality of affective relationships with people close to us, is materially translated by modifications of the structure of the brain. Two moments must be distinguished: that of the necessity of a feeling of being alive, and that of the representation of what happens to us. Cyrulnik thus develops his thought in taking different examples that allow him to summarize the process of restoration of the self, notably underlining the importance of the cultural dimension.