The practice of clinical psychology in Algeria has undergone slow and awkward development. The way families work traditionally, so unused as they are to revealing themselves, together with a health administration reluctant to leave room for a new speciality with no medical tradition had for many years hampered its emergence. The present article seeks to recount the struggle of the first Algerian clinical psychologists to have their profession accepted. The inspirational mobilisation of this group and its quite maternal concern enabled the profession to gain a foothold, backed up in the process, albeit unwillingly, by the various natural and man-made disasters the country has had to face.