The psychotherapy with patients that are under the effect of antidepressives reveals that these drugs are relatively efficient for the symptoms inhibition that are typical of depression. However, symptoms considered typical of melancholia are not affected by these drugs.
Neither the long and rich psychiatric tradition nor the psychoanalytic one establish a specific and clear difference between depression and melancholia, considering them as parts of the same semantic field and treating them as synonyms.
This tendency is most evident in psychiatric manuals as DSM-IV and CID-10, where bipolar disorder is called maniac-depressive. Melancholia is, therefore, dissolved in depression.
Starting from clinical observation, this article establishes a specific difference between depression and melancholia and describes the semantic field of depression.
Psychiatry; psychoanalysis; depression; melancholia; psychotherapy