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Several interesting panels and papers were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association held in Cincinnati from May 3-6, 1951. In accordance with our usual procedure, we present abstracts of the papers and reports of the panels, the latter prepared by the reporters of the individual panels.
CHAIRMAN: Phyllis Greenacre, M.D.
REPORTER: Emanuel Windholz, M.D.
The Panel on Depression consisted of the following papers:
THE PROBLEM OF DEPRESSION by Dr. Edward Bibring
CONTRIBUTION TO THE METAPSYCHOLOGY OF CYCLOTHYMIC DEPRESSION by Dr. Edith Jacobson
THE DEPRESSIVE POSITION by Dr. Elizabeth R. Zetzel
AN EQUIVALENT OF DEPRESSION: ANOREXIA by Dr. George Gero
In his paper on “The Problem of Depression” Dr. Bibring attempts a study of phenomenology of the processes which go on within the ego. Clinical examples of what Dr. Bibring calls “rather trivial instances of simple depression” demonstrate the “emotional expression of a state of helplessness of the ego.” The question he attempts to answer could be summarized as follows: Under what condition does the ego develop the feeling of helplessness which is characteristic of depression? Due to the fact that the child is also dependent on objects, the most frequent predisposing factor to the mechanisms of depression is “this early self-experience of the ego's lack of power over the object.” This term “self-experience” seems important in these contacts since Dr. Bibring is studying here “ego states” and wants to investigate their origin.