  We discuss the quantization of a particle near an extreme Reissner-Nordstrom
black hole in the canonical formalism. This model appears to be described by a
Hamiltonian with no well-defined ground state. This problem can be circumvented
by a redefinition of the Hamiltonian due to de Alfaro, Fubini and Furlan (DFF).
We show that the Hamiltonian with no ground state corresponds to a gauge in
which there is an obstruction at the boundary of spacetime requiring a
modification of the quantization rules. The redefinition of the Hamiltonian a
la DFF corresponds to a different choice of gauge. The latter is a good gauge
leading to standard quantization rules. Thus, the DFF trick is a consequence of
a standard gauge-fixing procedure in the case of black hole scattering.
