Introduction

This chapter serves as an introduction to the subject matter of the book. First, the current social and health policy significance of depression as a “Volkskrankheit” (illness of the people) of the 21st century are pointed out. As is well known, there are some basic differences between a psychiatric compared with a psychoanalytic diagnostics of depression which have to be taken into account. In the second section, basic lines of a psychoanalytic understanding of depression are summarized: different forms of depression are distinguished. Emphasis is placed on an integrative model of the psychodynamics of depression (section 2.3). Many psychoanalytical and empirical studies revealed the close connection between chronic depression and trauma, as will be shown in section 3. Finally, some remarks on historical discourses on research in psychoanalysis follow (section 4).