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This paper proposes a psycho-dynamic approach to the characteristics and roles of the enemy in the identity construction of the subject. It is an attempt at understanding psychological phenomena that lead an individual to negatively invest a concrete object, which he uses as a reference for developing the self-determination capacity he lacks. The main hypothesis is that the investment of an enemy object is an essentially defensive process aimed at reducing a narcissistic trouble and eradicating a state of psychical sufferings which causes depressive affects. The latter is inherent to the subject’s incapacity to integrate in the part of the self that correspond to the identity certain new and traumatic elements, which result from the vagaries of drive activities and/or the encounter with the external real. A second hypothesis is drawn from the consideration of the fact that the enemy object is approached in a massively projective way that alienates the subject. It concerns the consequences, in terms of return of affects and worry, of the confrontation to subjective movements of this object, leading to the invalidation of the identity system it is related to.