In psychoanalysis, reference to the notion of punishment is made in a variety of ways. The masochistic wish for punishment, linked to childhood punishments, may serve to conceal a hallucinatory fulfilment of Oedipal wishes. Sometimes, the recurrent search for punishment is organized in a character trait. Overt transgressions serve to wipe away unconscious transgressions concerning mental functioning. Punishment then refers to guilt towards the superego and its principle of renunciation. The need for punishment appears in a completely different context, that of negativization and the extinctive tendency. It is an interpretation with anti-traumatic value, employed when the imperative of restraint is ineffective, when guilt is a consequence of the damage caused to the drives, when masochism, the guardian of life, is lacking, and when the regressive attraction follows a course beyond masochism, operating various forms of castration.