Book excerpt: Over the past few decades, psychoanalysis and dynamic psychiatry have been steadily stepping back from a key role in the understanding and treatment of depressive disorders. This book investigates the basis for such retreat by delving into the history of medicine, philosophy, religion, and literature. It unveils the social motives for the overwhelming consensus currently gathered by the biomedical model of depression. The book then moves on to discuss at depth psychoanalytic literature on depression and reveals how it possesses an enormous explanatory power for depression symptoms. This approach allows the author to offer readers a comprehensive, dynamically-oriented model of symptom formation in depression.