The author proposes to understand castration, a pivotal point of psychic processuality, as a processual operator. Castration thus escapes its binary exclusiveness, overcoming the duality of having it or not having it. Rather it is understood in terms of its polymorphy and emerges as a psychic operator involving the multiple. This psychic operator unfolds along a gradient ranging from castration anxiety proper to its defensive utilization, including its cathexis as the navel of jouissance. It then changes status and is no longer apprehended as a merely subtractive figure capable of being represented easily, but rather as an economic operator. The author illustrates his remarks by presenting the clinical case of Miguel, a young man he met in the context of a psychiatric consultation in a psychiatric emergency service. After leaving intensive care, Miguel was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit for a psychopathological evaluation after having mutilated himself in a major way.