LET ME GO: Depression and suicidal fantasies in children1

The paper explores the phenomenology of major depression and suicidal ideation in children, offering a brief overview of relevant findings in psychiatry, with particular reference to statistical evidence, and outlining psychoanalytic models, including Jungian as well as the post-Kleinian and Bionian vertices. Bowlby's seminal contribution to the understanding of mourning processes in relation to Freud's theory is also considered. The case of an eight-year-old boy is examined, with particular attention to a series of drawings that the patient produced over the two years of his psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The therapy was interrupted abruptly by his parents.