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From its origins to the present day, psychoanalysis has undergone many shifts and has spread into the social realm to an impressive extent—Freudian concepts have now become the common property of all. In this article we ask what has remained invariant and what has changed in psychoanalysis, as this process has taken place. The ‘psy idea’, which the author roughly equates to psychoanalysis, or to what remains of it in contemporary society—chiefly transference and interpretation—continues to hold open the possibility for a symbolic transference freed from the impasses of religion and science. Attacks on psychoanalysis reveal a ‘complex of the Second First’ (Daniel Sibony), which consists in using concepts borrowed from psychoanalysis but turning them against it and giving them different names, something that takes place in many psychotherapies. The ‘psy world’ can be understood as the mirror or microcosm of the society in which it occurs, and the immense demand for the ‘psy’ as an indicator of the relational and identity pathologies prevalent in that society. The author advocates an ethics of being for the psychoanalyst. This ethics of being implies a form of faith in the possible, and in the ability to maintain an ‘in-between’ of place and displacement.