The subject of depression is researched based on the theoretical psychoanalysis. In Sigmund Freud’s, Jacques Lacan’s and some of their critics’ works, the subject is - in the beginning - introduced from psychiatry-field from which the concept of depression, as it is understood nowadays, was born. The current diagnosis, the fragility of inherited genes as the main cause-effect hypothesis, the lack of sufficient "biological labels" and the limits of therapy through chemical means, are all critically approached. Immediately, the subject is approached in psychoanalysis, in which it is concluded that depression, as a category-subject to be diagnosed and derived from a unique cause - does not exist. As a counterpart, in this field it is recognised that - if on the one hand the universality of depression phenomena apt to appear in any diagnostic category - on the other hand, melancholy as a pathology which was not born from sadness but from specific psychotic mechanisms, is also recognised.
Depression; Sadness; Diagnosis; Psychiatry; Psychoanalysis; Freud, Sigmund; Lacan, Jacques