The author suggests that there is an element of passionate cathexis in the masochistic dynamic of the need for punishment and in one of its possible vicissitudes: erasure. The letters and diary of Spielrein, an analyst who has long been erased from memory and whose theoretical work is little known, are used as clinical material. They allow us to examine the links between the “need for punishment”, “masochism” and “passion”, which were actualized in the transference relationship with Jung. Jung's excesses fuelled a passionate tendency in the transference: the actualization of a primordial passion resulting from not abandoning the narcissistic promise of embracing an exceptional destiny that he would have to pay for at the same time. The “claim” was thus accompanied by self-punishing behaviour that ran counter to his expectations. This dynamic was likely to aggravate the narcissistic wound and actualize the analyst's unconscious sadism. Is erasing oneself or being erased a melancholic way of dealing with the need for punishment?