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The authors propose to consider the place of the body “proper” (that is, the body from the subject’s point of view) at the heart of depressive troubles in the emerging child during his second childhood. Clinical data (Rorschach, observations during psychotherapy) give clinical support to the hypothesis that the body “proper” is the first location and the first setting of identity troubles which are the underlying basis of severe depression. A thorough clinical study of what is usually designated as “depressive equivalents” makes it possible to understand ail the vulnerability of childhood when it is exposed to different experiences of precariousness and loss of self. The authors highlight how important it is to establish the capacity to think the Self at a very early stage of development. The place of the “body as the scène of intersubjectivity” is thus reintroduced and debated in the domain of child psychoanalysis.