In The Cruelty of Depression, Jacques Hassoun offers us an in-depth study not only of depression itself, its causes and effects, but of a detailed series of references to related studies of its history, reaching back even beyond the sources of Freud's writings and including numerous pertinent psychoanalytic aspects, such as the death drive, the pleasure principle, and narcissism. Michael Vincent Miller's excellent foreword provides an abundance of useful introductory material as well as an incisive discussion of the work itself, which should prove invaluable to readers at any level of background in psychology or psychoanalysis.

Hassoun basically gives credence to Freud's understanding of depression as expressed in “Mourning and Melancholia,” and later incorporated into several of Lacan's writings, which essentially deals with the effect of a loss, particularly of a loved one upon whom one has come to depend. Since the rage that is inspired by the feeling of abandonment cannot be directed toward the one