Postpartum depression is a common and very important disorder with implications for the mother-child relationship and maternal adaptation. Postpartum depression is not a discrete and circumscribed entity, but a symptom of an underlying preexistent disturbance. In the case described, the patient was a depressive character with masked depression before and between the acute postpartum depressions, and with related symptoms of appetite and sleep disturbance and addictive tendencies. While constitutional and somatic factors were doubtless

involved, the case illustrates the importance of psychogenesis with depressive predisposition.