Is there any pathology that evokes such a massive need for punishment that it can lead to death more than melancholia? However, the author believes that the delusional guilt presented could sometimes, with the help of analysis, be seen as a kind of “joker”, revealing an attempt, under the aegis of splitting, to conceal by its massiveness other more neurotic forms of guilt lurking in the clandestinity of repression. Why is there this need for a mask, for a decoy, and what evolution can be expected? The author tries to understand this through the clinical example of an analysis where the lifting of a repression and the elaboration of the repressed allowed the splitting that had become unnecessary to be abandoned. The central place of hatred in the work of melancholia is emphasized. The author also discusses the difficulties of working through grief experienced by those subjects who have unwittingly resorted to the magical self-healing that is mania.