Residues or memory traces run through the whole of Freud’s work, from the “The aetiology of hysteria” to Moses and Monotheism. These often invisible traces only appear in the context of transference or a new trauma, where a re-actualisation of the past is played out. All post-Freudian analysts have tried in their own way to rediscover their importance in the unconscious and in its manifestations. This is true of Ferenczi, Laplanche and Winnicott who show the aggressive traces at the beginning of life and thus oppose Freud’s insistence on the death drive at the end of his work. The double temporality of these traces will be explored in relation to Pascal Quignard’s novel and a clinical case.