Is the first topography of the psychic apparatus unable to account for the functioning of borderline clinical data? Or, on the contrary, is the notion of the unconscious the indispensable practical tool in order to follow the transferential modalities of repetition and the hallucinatory fulfillment of desire? Is the paradigmatic model of dreams, with its latent-manifest opposition, not pivotal when it is a matter of “deepening" the listening process beyond the immediately apprehensible surface of affects, so as to spot the snares of the transference? It is around the notion of “distortion transference” and through a clinical case that the author tackles the issue of seizing, counter-transferentially. the masochistic handling of excitation in the treatment of a borderline patient: the active pursuit •: - passivity, the distortion of the transferential modality, the distortions of the address.