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Two bold discoveries had their effects, after 1920, on the theory and practice of contemporary psychoanalysis: Eros and Thanatos found their place at the very heart of psychic life and at the foundations of the constitution of the agencies. The ego is unconscious of its drive foundations and its resistances. It is no longer master in its own house and ceases to be the analyst’s ally. The transference/countertransference modalities can be affected by conflicts between the agencies which undermine an ego whose unconscious strategies seek to avoid the dangers arising from the id, the superego and external reality. The analytic situation is then brought into a state of tension by the return of split-off and amputated zones of the ego which have a traumatic significance within the analytic relationship. The still active traces of the violence of a loss or rupture that has impeded the representational process are externalized.