Ecuador is known for its many constituent assemblies (CAs) since independence. These conventions (20 so far) have been convened by democratic and non-democratic ‘caudillos’. How can we best characterize and account for Ecuador’s constitutional volatility? A psychoanalytic approach to messianic leadership offers a fruitful way to supplement our understanding of this type of instability. This chapter establishes the theoretical bases for the subsequent discourse analysis of the 1869 CA, the 2007–2008 CA, and the 2014–2015 parliamentary debate that led to the abolition of presidential term limits in Ecuador. These processes were highly influenced by Presidents García Moreno, Alfaro, and Correa, the ‘lawgivers’ analysed in this book. Drawing on Freud’s myth of the ‘origin’ of the social contract and his notion of messianism, as well as on certain Lacanian categories (e.g., enjoyment, castration, fantasy), this chapter puts forth the following hypothesis that will receive qualified support in subsequent chapters. The emotional pull of messianism in the constitutional politics of this postcolonial nation, which has been swayed by an intergenerational diminished paternal imago, has created the conditions for a recurrent process of heroic identification with authoritarian leaders. And these indeed popular caudillos have led what appears to be Ecuador’s national sport: constitutional replacements.