The author traces the gradual development of Freud's thinking on the negative therapeutic reaction and its relationship to the development of his theory of the death instinct. The analysis of the negative therapeutic reaction leads to a series of reflections on both technical (on the problem of construction) and theoretical issues of the topographic distribution of ego and non-ego, trauma and seduction, original repression, etc. He disagrees with authors who would limit Freud's thought on this issue to the series: unconscious guilt, need for punishment, and the death instinct. Currently, the concept of the negative therapeutic reaction has been extended to