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In this collection of essays, the editors have attempted to offer the serious reader a complete view of current ideas on depression. A group of authors with fine credentials representing diverse areas of expertise have contributed papers which range in value from worthwhile to excellent, and in approaches which include biological, societal, biochemical, and information systems theory. It is useful to have a compendium of some of the current terminology on depression in one book: Winokur's "Depressive Spectrum Disease," Benedek's "Depressive Constellation," Schmale and Enger's concept of "Conservation Withdrawal," Ostow's ideas on "Energy Depletion in Depression," etc. As an additional aid to integration, the editors have inserted an orienting prologue before the several subdivisions of the book, each of which surveys different major approaches to the study of depression.
Although the multiple facets of depression are presented, it is clear that the editors consider the contributions of psychoanalysis to be of greatest importance, and in this review I shall limit myself to discussing essays by psychoanalytic contributors. The editors' introductory comments stress the importance of the consistency of the psychoanalytic theory of depression. In their entirety the essays lead to an inevitable and striking conclusion: whatever the basis or