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The author considers that, in what we might characterize as this neuroscience era, we risk underestimating Freud's fundamental contribution to the understanding of depressive conditions. He proposes that the development of object relations theory, and particularly Bion's introduction of mental pain as a core element of psychoanalysis, can enable us to more fully appreciate the revolutionary quality of the interpersonal insights included in Freud's Mourning and Melancholia. Within the field of depressive disorders especially, the question of etiology may be elusive. Here we will rather try to formulate a constellation of interpersonal and intrapsychic events that we have met with notable regularity in psychoanalytic work with patients suffering from clinically significant depression. We can summarize them as follows: a) manifest symptoms of depression that can best be conceptualized as representations of an excess of mental pain within the psychic apparatus; b) depressed patients typically display enhanced susceptability to projections from a powerful core love object; c) the resulting excess of mental pain elicits intense aggression, and d) through the mechanism of object introjection, aggression is turned inward, toward the self.