ABSTRACT
Depression in its various manic and depressive clinical forms has always presented a considerable challenge to any diagnostic understanding and psychotherapeutic approach, and it has likewise been a challenge to the explanatory and practical usefulness of Interpersonal psychoanalytic concepts. Like no other clinical entity, depression has been fought over by natural scientists, on one hand, and social scientists, on the other, as to whose approach can best understand and treat it. The departure from a pure Kraepelinian disease model began V\lith the work of Freud and Abraham around 1920. Since then, the dispute has been, to some extent, limited to discussing a reactive psychological origin versus a primary biological one. l A widely accepted current nosological distinction consists of seeing severe affective disorders, the manic-depressive forms, and what has previously been termed endogenous depression as definitely somatic in origin, while other forms called atypical, secondary, reactive, neurotic, or characterological depression are considered to be of uncertain etiology.
