The notion of ‘retreat’ is often connected to war and other confrontational situations. As a verb, it may signify the dynamic aspect of ‘moving’; as a noun, a static aspect prevails: a place to hide, isolate and defend oneself, but also a possibility for bringing something new to life. Psychic retreat implies dynamic relations, not only intra-psychically and in terms of subject-other, but also in dominance-submission relations between subject and group. Some implications of the concept of psychic retreat will be drawn when we turn our eyes to our psychoanalytic institutions and cultures and their impact on the desire of an individual to become a psychoanalyst.