The work proposes a distinction between après-coup processes that utilise representational unfolding, allowing for the expansion and transformation of meaning, and others that lack this possibility, “revolving” around the axis of non-transformative repetition. In such cases the scenic diphasism, the construction of a new scene to represent/symbolise the first blow, fails in its task and a treatment – in reality – of the primary trauma then unfolds. The clinical case of a severe patient and his delusional invention allows us to delve into the extreme difficulty of establishing, in the analysis, another scene, and of opening an associative space, which as such would carry with it the memory and facing of the trauma. The metaphorical-metonymic oscillation, typical of psychic processes, in such cases leans only to the side of concreteness, of the phobia of thought, of permanence in the immovable.

KEY WORDS: Après-coup, delusion, scenic diphasism, metaphor, metonymy.