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The “linguistic turning point”, and the relativism that followed from the refusal to grant facts any existence other than a linguistic one, affected the fields of psychoanalysis and history in much the same way. On the one hand, the reference to reality as the fruit of a construction based on converging elements was henceforth strongly suspected. And secondly, since subjectivity operates precisely in the field of the handling of language, the neutrality of the historian, like that of the psychoanalyst, was suspected of being subject to distortion. Deceptive rhetoric, referential illusion and suggestion led to the abandonment of the hope of gaining access to an order of truth. And yet, if putting representation to the test in history implied experiencing the limits of inventiveness, and if these limits seemed attributable to the role of fantasy in inventiveness itself, the problem of knowing how a historical fact could be “worked through” remained unresolved. The function of the historian's transference to his object and the role of incarnation in the analysis of details are considered here in relation to the Shoah.