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Along with sleep disorders, sphincter-control disorders, and behavioral problems, separation anxiety is one of the major reasons people seek help from a pediatrician or a child psychiatrist. It causes significant psychic suffering. This paper provides clinicians with theoretical and clinical insights that will help them to integrate these symptoms into a psychopathological process, assess their intensity, and determine the best treatment. It is important for clinicians to be able to identify the central mechanism at work in each situation: individuation anxieties, separation anxieties, or attachment disorders. This is necessary in order to determine how to best treat children and their parents.