This article examines the psychic motive forces of submission, putting forward the hypothesis that they originate in primitive splitting linked to early traumas. It also looks at their links with parental pathology of a submissive nature, as well as with certain vicissitudes of the triangular experience due to the inability of the ego, caught up in alienating identifications, to transfer the narcissistic ideal onto a massively counter-cathected third object. The transference/counter-transference modalities brought into play in the analytical work with patients who have built their lives around submission to their environment are discussed with reference to fragments of an analysis. Through his survival, the introjection of the analyst as a reliable object will support that of the paternal third party in its function of integrating primary violence, as well as the elaboration of a position of submission/dependence re-actualized in the transference.