A case study of depressive discourse in a mother-daughter dyad, described in a communication to the 1996 'Strasbourg national congress of the Société Française de Psychiatrie de l'Enfant et de l'Adolescent' (no bibliographical information provided), is recapitulated to provide a basis for theoretical reflections on the construction of reference, metaphor, and polysemy in depressive discourse. Analysis of a videotaped interaction of Ss, who were referred at age 2:9 for language disorders, reveals a maternal thematic focus and use of words primarily for naming, without dialogical negotiation of meaning and without symbolizing propositions; the maternal referential system lacked expressions of affect. It is concluded that the mother lacks the tool of referential value, which depends on differentiation within a subjective spatiotemporal dimension; unable to construct differentiation or to use metaphors, the depressive mother's discourse blocks her daughter's access to polysemy and the symbolic system. (LLBA 2000, vol. 34, n. 1)