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This paper was presented as the “Kohut Memorial Lecture” at the 45th Annual IAPSP Conference held in Rome (Italy) October 24–27, 2024. Exploring the concepts of Tragic Man and Guilty Man—as elaborated by H. Kohut—two different perspectives are outlined, one of which is an alternative to the classical Oedipal one. Instead of guilt for what one has done, this revolutionary perspective emphasizes shame for what one could not be because of self-object failures. And this approach profoundly changes the therapeutic relationship. The author summarizes some characteristic points of Greek tragedy that can inspire and help therapists in dealing with the many tragic situations in today’s world. Traditionally psychoanalysis has paid little attention to bodily communication and expressiveness; the author introduces a possible tool of “mimetic understanding” to focus on what remains in the analyst’s body of the patient’s bodily communication. In order to frame his ideas in clinical terms, a clinical case is included as an example of what it means to work in a tragic world using mimesis and care of language.