ABSTRACT
The child uses the mother’s depression as an escape from his or her own; this provides a false restitution and reparation in relation to the mother, and this hampers the development of a personal restitution capacity because the restitution does not relate to the child’s own guilt sense. The attainment of a capacity for making reparation in respect of personal guilt is one of the most important steps in the development of the healthy human being. A doctor who knows nothing of psychiatry or knows nothing of the contra-depressive defences, and who does not know that children get depressed, is liable to tell a mother off when she worries about a child’s symptom, and to fail to see the very real psychiatric problems that exist. An individual’s reparation urge may be related less to the personal guilt-sense than to the guilt-sense or depressed mood of a parent.
