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I have read Dr. Berliner's paper with most interest. I have found some aspects thoroughly convincing. There are others, in my opinion, which could be approached differently. It is my purpose to refer to both and to add some of my own views on the subject.
I think Dr. Berliner is correct in first stating the basic assumption that an adult depressive state is a reproduction of a primal depression in childhood and in stressing that parental hostility impairs the development of self-esteem, a feature that is often neglected.
I also believe that his emphasis on the quality of the depressive character's object relationship is equally important, thus the need to take into account the infanticide aspect within the Oedipus complex.1 Although Dr. Berliner mentions the role of the constitutional factor as another crucial element, he does not pursue this line. I think it is worth pointing out that this constitutional factor is also related to the aggressive drives and fantasies directed toward the objects of the preoedipal and oedipal relationship. Those
Dr. Arnaldo Rascovsky has pointed out in “The Scope of Aggression in Mania” (read at the sixth Latin-American Psychoanalytical Congress in Montevideo, July 1966) that parricide is the result of Laius's and Jokasta's filicidal tendency against Oedipus. He adds that the split between the bad father and the good one ceases when depression is established, as shown by the fact that when Oedipus learns that the man he slew was his father, he is also told about the death of Polybos at Corinth.
drives are, in fact, the content of many conflicts underlying depression. Abraham was the first to indicate the connection between feelings of guilt and cannibalistic wishes, thus stating the significance of sadistic pregenital factors, particularly oral-sadistic, in the emergence of depression.
Dr. Berliner holds that the superego originates from libido through the introjection of love objects, adding that the infantile superego is potentially