How is depression treated by psychoanalysis?

THE depression It is a common but serious disease that interferes with daily life, affecting, for example, the ability to work, sleep, study or eat.

It can be caused by a combination of genetic, biological, environmental and psychological factors. As indicated by World Health Organization (WHO)Depression is the leading cause of disability in the world.

For the psychiatry which has an orientation towards more biological theories, depression has to do with genetic causes and alterations of neurotransmitters and hormones.

Instead for psychoanalysis. depression is not a biologically the disease determined, but it has more to do with the difficulties a person may encounter in dealing with their desire.

Although it may be complex to define, desire is a fundamental concept in psychoanalysis.YES. since she has nothing to do with anyone concrete objectbut with a lack that acts as a cause.

In psychoanalytic therapy, the professional’s listening generally tends to be directed at the localization of this fundamental operator. And depression for psychoanalysis is a pathology of desire as a support for the feeling of life.

Depression over time

Depression could be classified as the disease par excellence of current times. Until a few decades ago, most people were content to follow a plan your life which may even have been written before he came into the world.

In those days, the idea of ​​being happy, for example, would have been considered an extravagance. And nowadays happiness has become a mandatory goalO. However, this imperative of happiness has generalized depression as its counterpoint.

In general we talk about depression when there is a excessive sadness coupled with a lack of interest in the outside world, difficulty finding pleasure in things he was previously into, and a decreased sense of vitality.

The Spanish psychoanalyst Beatriz García, in one of her texts, considered that today’s society “loves answers, but rejects questions”.

“The current human being tends to consider himself a machine that should never break down and tries to do so inhuman formthe dysfunctions inherent to his quality as a human being”, he concluded in a work that refers to the way in which psychoanalysis deals with depression.

For the professional, although psychoanalysis offers an answer through words, when talking about a case of depression it is not a question of giving up the help that medications can provide.

If you are dealing with a severe case, the medication may be used to relieve pain and allow you to continue work. “The use of medicine takes on a different meaning when we know that we are simultaneously treating discomfort with the word“Garcia said.

Faced with protocols that define depression based on the effect of antidepressantspsychoanalytic treatment is a therapy that is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, where the uniqueness of each person’s way of dealing with life is essential.