The author offers a theoretical and clinical reflection about primal violence and it’s repercussions for the psychic constitution of the subject. A clinical case will enable us to explore the terror experienced in the primary relation and the consequences of this when drive issues play out with a substitute object. For the analyst, it is a matter of encouraging the emergence of a capacity for symbolic representation, while the violence of the trauma appears as the negative of this capacity.

Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 377-385.