This article aims to understand a shift in therapeutic work with a young man named Armand. Following a vivid state of suffering related to a romantic break-up, Armand rapidly enters a more hypomanic symptomatology. Mania, too often associated with a defense against depression, is explored here from a more dynamic and heuristic angle, in a psychoanalytic psychotherapy opened up by the clinic of transference. We hypothesize that certain hypomanic moments may possess a transformational character, helping to separate oneself from a much older, authoritarian and tyrannical love bond. We put into perspective the way in which these defensive and subjective restructurings are staged in the transference clinic practice.