[Depression in the child: internal reaction or psychological elaboration?]

The question of a child's depressive suffering is at the heart of psychopathology. The concept of a "fundamental depressive affect" and the notion of "depressive reaction", defended by many authors, are here discussed as reductionist. The notions of "depressive movement" and "depressive system" are described so as to take into account both the characteristics of the depressive experience and its unexpected appearance in different clinical contexts. The psychic work of the depressive movement is envisaged based on the notion of object loss, the existence of a denial constitutive of the depressing experience and in function of the modalities of the incorporation of the shadow of the object... This work leads to the organisation and the maintenance of a particular internal object: the depressive object.