This article addresses the tension in character development between the compulsion to repeat and the urge toward growth, between adhering to the old and pushing toward the new. Specifically, it is suggested that the successful interchange of giving and receiving with the previous generation enables the child to move onward with good conscience. When this interchange breaks down, it may become fixed around a traumatic theme. Identification with the parental aggressor of the traumatic theme may then become the source for a characterological immersion in the compulsion to repeat. The intergenerational transmission of one's traumatic themes to one's children is viewed as a manifestation of the identification with the aggressor and is contrasted with the process of mourning one's one and only childhood. Mourning is viewed as a process of reintegrating repressed wishes for “what could have been.” This reintegration, in turn, enables one to relinquish the necessity that those wishes be fulfilled, and makes it possible to give a better life to one's children.