In our clinical domain, we are bound to come across young sailors who seem torn between a sheer desire to take to sea and a natural attraction to the shore, close to their loved ones. The symptomatogical description, more commonly know as an emotional dependence, refers to the patient's difficulty to move away from his emotional markers and his proclivity to depression in such instance. Our research work has consisted in reflecting on the close link between that very dependence and human subjectivity. Indeed, a child's psychological development depends on the mother, retaining unconscious traces of that dependence while gradually acquiring his autonomy. So we may wonder what attracts sailors to embark on a journey in that particular context. Therefore we have explored the determinism of those beings as felt and described in classical literature. We have found that these sailors waver between exploring the world and staying ashore. We have also highlighted that navigating takes the role of a recipient to the mind/psyche and enables the subject to fight any depression resourcing from separation. We have also shown that some sailors experience a return to an oedipal condition. Finally, we have come to the conclusion that, by means of experience, sailors work through their own relationship to life and death.
