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Acute parental conflicts and ultra-conflictual parental separations - often described as parents tearing each other apart - have massively invaded child protection systems. Based on the author’s experience as both a clinical psychologist in an open (non-residential) educational and child protection service and a psychoanalytical psychotherapist in private practice, this article questions the effects of such traumatic contexts on the psychic life of children who are the victims of such situations. Beyond the conflict of loyalty these children have to confront, the author examines the marks left by such acute parental conflicts on the somato-psychic organisation of these children and, from a psychoanalytical standpoint, considers the body as the bearer of these conflict-related dynamics. Clinical vignettes illustrate the effects of this tearing apart on the envelopes of the ego, as understood through specific symptomatological manifestations. This psychoanalytical approach shows how the “torn part of the ego” in these children bears the traces of the parents who tear at each other at the child’s expense.