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This is a careful attempt to detail the theoretical hypotheses involved in the classical (Freud-Abraham) view of psychotic depression and to compare those hypotheses with a similarly explicit set postulated by the postclassical (Kleinian) analysts. To aid in this comparison, Wisdom utilizes the distinction between orbital introjects and nuclear introjects which he has set forth in previous papers. He discusses in admittedly cursory fashion primary narcissism in its relation to the classical theory of melancholia and emphasizes the difficulty of verifying this concept. These shortcomings in the theory of primary narcissism are part of his grounds for preferring the Kleinian theory which postulates no phase of primary narcissism.
The author details the Kleinian theory of the depressive position in regard to the object, the subject, projected unity, projective identification, and especially in regard to reparation. He finds many points of agreement between the two theories but two major differences: the question of primary narcissism and whether the lost object is introjected into a nuclear or orbital position within the self. That which the classical theory explains by a primary narcissistic wound is explained in the postclassical theory by the hypotheses of nuclear strain and de-erotization.