The understanding of depression in the light of C.G. Jung's work.

The aim of this research is to reconstruct C. G. Jung’s psychological understanding of depression,in other words, to give an account of the meaning of depressive phenomena for the development of human consciousness. Through this, we aspire to make a triple contribution: 1) Although there are some post-Jungian studies that address the subject of depression (E. Harding, 1981; V. W. Odajnyk, 1983; W. Steinberg, 1989, among others) there is still a lack of research aiming to clarify and to critically reconstruct in detail the Jungian understanding of depression through a carefully study of his work, and with special attention to its sources. 2) As we will try to show, this reconstruction contributes to the human sciences, particularly health sciences, and especially regarding the possibility of conceiving a potentially transforming and meaningful dimension of depressive phenomena along the development of human consciousness, without neglecting its pathological and adaptive dimension. This becomes particularly valuable in the context of the increasing over-medicalization and ‘diagnostic inflation’ of depression that many scholars of the health sciences have evidenced in the last years (A. Horwitz and J. Wakefield, 2007; A. Frances, 2013; P. Pignarre, 2001). 3) Within certain limits we will try to show that the Jungian understanding of depression as a potentially transforming experience recovers psychologically a leitmotiv that traverses, through a variety of symbols and forms, a big part of Western history. This thread of meaning reveals itself particularly in the symbolism regarding Saturn in the Greco-Roman tradition, in the notion of ‘the dark night of the soul’ in Christian mysticism, and in the alchemical nigredo.