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Taking Pontalis’s article ‘Non, deux fois non’ as a starting-point, the author describes a configuration in which the transference–countertransference interplay is founded on the negative of a blank relationship with the early objects. This results in what he terms a blank possession: the subject is possessed by the negative of the object and it is this negative that he ceaselessly replays on the analytic scene. The author examines the countertransference issues of these situations, in particular the analyst’s capacity to tolerate a breakdown (Winnicott).