Starting from an exposition of diverse clinical situations involving the negative, from the suicidal adolescent to the difficulties of old age, the author elaborates a theoretical line which accounts for hopefulness. Situated beyond the ideational contents of hope, hopefulness is the fruit a hallucinatory energetic matrix which permits a vital illusion: reunions in the future with the lost object of satisfaction. Patients who survive by means of negative logics and negative ties can reconstruct such an energetic matrix through a “wild transference love”, a subversive force that makes it possible to work on these negative logics and ties; the energetic matrix can then reintegrate the negative hallucinatory dimension of death and the positive hallucinatory dimension of life. The life drive, that is, linking, cathecting, hoping and loving, gains ground over self-destructive entropy, and hopefulness can henceforth become the backcloth of existence. To build his metatheory, the author draws on Freudian and post-Freudian thought (Bion, Winnicott, Green, Donnet, Fain) and on his earlier contributions.