The paper is an attempt to establish a connection between the analyst's ethics and the analytic method, a connection that emphasizes the notion of ethics in relation to the notion of method. The specific temporal dimension of psychoanalytic ethics indicates a back and forth process in relation to the method: after a movement to transgress analytic thinking, the ethical process consists in a movement to return to analytic thinking.

The moments of impasse imply an implicit and explicit reflection from the part of the analyst on the limits of his method, so they imply an ethical process like the one proposed in this work. This is illustrated by the excerpt from J. D. Salinger's book ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ in which the hero changes his mind and by a clinical vignette from a paper of Dominique Scarfone.