Francis Pasche and Michel Renard explore the notion of the reality of the object and its relations with the economic point of view in psychoanalysis. They discuss the coexistence of apparently divergent concepts in Freud's work, on the one hand atavistic (phylogenetic) memory, and on the other the hypothesis of instinctual (drive) energy. They consider that the Kleinian approach minimizes the importance of the real object (the object of perception) in favour of the object formed solely by the subject's projections. By emphasizing the heritage of perceptual schemas, the authors argue that the external object plays a key role in energy dynamics and psychic transformations. A “derealization” of the object in favour of the subject's projections alone, leading to its desexualization, departs from Freud's understanding of psychical life.