Contributions of Psychoanalysis To the Understanding and Treatment of Depression

Abstract

Psychoanalysis continues to make important contributions to basic clinical understanding of adaptive and maladaptive psychological development, and particularly to the understanding of depression and its treatment. This paper demonstrates that a basic theoretical conceptualization, central to many of Freud's fundamental contributions, has provided the basis for a wide range of contemporary psychoanalytic and nonpsychoanalytic formulations of personality development and organization; for understanding various forms of psychopathology in adults as deriving from disruptions of normal developmental processes, especially personality disorders and depression; and for conducting research on psychotherapeutic process and outcome in both brief and long-term intensive treatment.