Sic transit gloria—so passes away the glory once accorded to motivation as a central focus of psychoanalytic theory and practice. How and why? That is the subject of this paper. I will track the ups and downs of motivation historically and its current replacement by the attention correctly afforded to relationships across a spectrum of contemporary theories. I will then take up my proposal of five motivational systems embedded in an intersubjective context and consider critiques of the proposal from different vantage points. Despite waning interest, motivation remains an intrinsic component of psychoanalysis.