Jean-Claude Rolland's concept of “protomelancholia” allows us to consider a wide range of conditions and tragic or hopeless situations. The primary Oedipal configuration is the other side of the coin. It makes transference risky and mobilizes the refusal to get well. The author puts forward the idea here that the analyst's identification with the living part of the patient's melancholic objects will initiate the interplay of reciprocal identifications that ensures the viability of the therapy, opening the way to another outcome.