Melancholy and maniac disorders do not take on their typical clinical form until adolescence, at the very time the psychic maturation and identification processes are structuring the "definitive" personality. These processes enable the subject to acquire his/her psychic independence of the primary objects, particularly the primary maternal object and secondarily the parent object. THE MELANCHOLIC OBJECT: In so-called melancholic personalities, the identification with a primary maternal object was not totally successful during infancy and had to follow a narcissistic mode. When during adolescence the subject is faced with symbolic or real separations (independence) his/her identification object has to split with loss of the invested object, leading to melancholy (or its negative pseudo-triumphant variant: maniac disorder). IMPORTANT PROCESSES IN ADOLESCENCE: Adolescence is an exceptional, highly sensitive period when identifications acquired during infancy undergo reorganization. It is a time when defective identification can be reelaborated, favoring structuralization of a "normal" or "pathological" (here maniac-depressive) personality depending on the quality of the "identificatory", therapeutic (psychotherapy), or daily life events.