[Complaints of depression and therapeutic perspectives]

Having reviewed the place of depressive complaint within contemporary nosography, the authors study the psychopathological aspect of clinical pictures called "dysthymias". The rapport of patients with their internal or external objects is deeply ambivalent and characterized by a link that Michael Balint calls "ocnophilic". Those patients also appear peculiar regarding their relationship with temporality, with what can be called: a "dictatorship of the present" reflecting their inability to be located in a "narrative" development. Some principles stem from these considerations, concerning therapeutic strategies as does a reminder of the difficulties in bringing about a genuine evolution.