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The depressive reaction serves to defend against an awareness of reality with a repetitive, stereotyped thought process, as well as a feeling process, which, when conscious and verbalized, might be expressed with the words, “I am stupid, ineffectual, sinful, unattractive, dull, clumsy, etc.” Typically, there is a simultaneous unconscious conviction of omnipotence: “I should have known. If only I had done something other than what I did.” Or, “He (or she, or even it) would have behaved better toward me if only I had….” A recovering patient reported a conflict between, “How clumsy of me to trip over the rug!” and “Damn the rug for sliding!”
The depressive patient primarily attacks his judgment: “I do everything wrong.” The self-blame overlies unconscious unwillingness to use reason to differentiate between one act and another, between one person and another. “People are all alike; naturally they will take advantage of my ignorance—but I am still to blame for being ignorant.”
When the analyst learns that the patient's unconsciously preferred reaction to stress is depression, the analyst will need to study the factors in the early infant-mother relationship that led to this preference. The depressive reaction to stress seems to develop in infancy at the stage of emotional growth that follows the undifferentiated period when schizophrenia begins, and precedes the period when the paranoid reaction develops. Since all human beings