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Reflecting on two patients (a woman and a man) caught up in a warring relationship, the author reflects on the pacifying rôle of analytic treatment and seeks to furnish some replies to the question “Why war?”. By allowing the subject to accept what he considers “bad” in himself and to transform it, ananlytic treatment diminishes narcissistic suffering and recourse to projective defences and thereby has a pacifying effect. The Other, no longer being the receptacle for hateful aspects of oneself that are split-off, denied and projected, is no longer the persecutor to be defeated. In addition, if hatred often conceals itself behind love, love also conceals itself behind hatred, something we must not forget.