This paper explores the psychodynamic consequences of the mother's psychological death during the child's early years. The mechanism of unconscious identification, as a way of keeping the love object inside when there is a great threat to loss, is explored as a major role in the psychodynamics of an individual's depression. The discussion illustrates with examples of excerpts from the psychoanalysis of a male client who has suffered the psychological loss, i.e., the symbolic death, of the mother early in life - a mother still alive, but emotionally unavailable to the child owing to depression during the child's early life, and for whom this loss represents the first and most determining trauma in the history of his difficulties. During the course of therapy the client feels depressed, but unaware of his unconscious identification with the depressed mother - his only way of keeping her alive, buried deep within himself.