The Drama of the Gifted Child (The Search for the True Self)

how my mother used to say: 'You have done that beautifully,
now you could surely do this, too. . . .' I got angry
and left the books alone. Then, suddenly, I trusted myself
to know when I was ready to work again. And, of course,
I did, too. But the depression went away sooner—at the
point when I realized that I had once again exceeded my
limits."
The Inner Prison and Analytic Work
Everyone probably knows from his own experience about
depressive moods; they may be expressed as well as hidden
by psychosomatic suffering. It is easy to notice, if we pay
attention, that they hit a person almost with regularity—
whenever he suppresses an impulse or an unwanted emotion.
And then, at once, such depressive moods will stifle
all spontaneity. If an adult, for example, cannot experience
mourning when he loses somebody dear to him but tries
to distract himself from his sadness, or if he suppresses and
hides from himself his indignation over an idealized friend's
behavior out of fear of losing his friendship, he must reckon
with the probability of depression (unless his grandiose
defense is constantly at his disposal). When he begins to
pay attention to these connections in his analysis, he can
benefit from his depression and use it to learn the truth
about himself.
A child does not yet have this possibility. He cannot yet
see through his mechanism of self-deception and, on the
other hand, he is far more threatened than an adult by the
intensity of his feelings if he does not have a supportive
53