This paper is based on the psychoanalysis of a young woman whose depressive episodes were the subject of a previous study (This QUARTERLY, XII, 1943, pp. 541–561). After comparing the normal, constructive effect of the castration shock in boys and girls, it is shown that in the depressive individual superego formation sets in earlier and proceeds on a more narcissistic level. Severe disappointment in the parents results in a shrinking of the ego through the deflation of the parental image. This primary depression is characterized by a collapse of object relationships and a simultaneous introjection by the superego of both the inflated parental images. Thus the depressive superego becomes rigid and exacting. However, it is also highly perishable, deteriorates during depressive phases by loss of its mature and constructive functions, and then becomes an instrument of infantile sadistic self-punishment.