In this paper, I show how the failure of Freud’s efforts to understand the phenomenon of depression in economic terms played an important role in the development of his object relational understanding of the person. That is, that the experience of depression, not well encompassed by energetic terms and the pleasure principle with which it is so strongly associated, compelled Freud to ground his thinking in a metapsychological model that is more relational, one in which maintaining relationships, rather than the attainment of personal pleasure through the lowering of excitation, is a central motivating force.