The emergency required responses to previously unknown and un-foreseen conditions. The changes that overwhelmed the analytic cou-ple were different, they activated complex psychic dynamics, mobilized peculiar phantasms and solicited specific psychopathological as-pects of each patient. From the fear of changing the setting, to the hope of maintaining a bond, even more fundamental in such a critical mo-ment, the priority was to preserve a space of containment and work of primitive anxieties exponentially grown and shared symmetrically also with the analyst. The contribution, through an emblematic clinical situation, describes the emergence of external aspects, related to the emergency, and how they have mobilized internal aspects of the patient, af-fecting the therapeutic process already underway.
Keywords: Emergency, setting, death anxiety, separation, loss, thera-peutic relationship.