The clinical case of a woman undergoing psychoanalytic therapy, with severe depressive symptoms during her daughter’s first year of life and with a re-experience of the same symptoms during the girl’s start of the puberty period, which required adjustments in parental functioning, is discussed and analyzed. Aspects of puerperal psychosis and depression are presented and discussed in relation to the implications and the consequences of the maternal affective state and to the psychodynamic comprehension of emotional components of motherhood. Maternal experiences with their parental figures, traumatic life events and maternal depression are highlighted. It is understood that the follow-up of children whose mothers experienced depression, coupled to the mother’s trajectories in response to the children’s development, is necessary.
Maternal depression; motherhood; psychoanalysis