We meet our fate on the path we choose to escape it. Jean de Lafontaine As with any other problems with which a client comes to us, the strategy for psychological assistance for depression is based on the theoretical positions of the consultant/therapist. Even if we adhere to an integrative approach, this integration is always based on a certain system of views on human nature and the structure of mental life. So, by and large, only two key areas can be distinguished in psychotherapy for depression: 1) Cognitive-behavioral (CBT), based on the assumption of the dominant role of conscious processes in both the occurrence and overcoming of depression. The emphasis here is on identifying and addressing dysfunctional beliefs and patterns considered as prerequisites for the occurrence of depressive disorders. Accordingly, therapeutic interventions in this case will include procedures that promote the development of skills for rational analysis of both problematic situations arising in external interaction and various aspects of the internal world, as well as skills for coping with them. I will not dwell on this area, since I don’t belong to it, and there are many specialists who will write about the capabilities of CBT in treating depression better than I can. I will only note that CBT strategies are by far the most common choice in the treatment of depression. They undoubtedly have a lot of advantages, but they also have one drawback, which for me is fundamental: unconscious processes are practically not taken into account, I would even say ignored. 2) Depth psychological, considering any problems in the prism of the unconscious, its contents and its dynamics, and believes that it is possible to understand a person (behavior, affects, the system of relationships with other people, as well as the nuances of self-attitude) only through addressing the unconscious. I include in this direction not only psychoanalysis with all its branches, but also Gestalt therapy, and existential currents. Despite the fact that outside of psychoanalysis, terminology different from psychoanalytic ones is often used to refer to inter- and intrapsychic phenomena (especially in existentialism), it is fundamental to perceive a person as a complex, multidimensional individual, whose nature is largely determined by irrational processes. Existential the analysis focuses on the phenomenology of the individual’s spiritual experience, denying, for the most part, cause-and-effect relationships in human existence and turning to the specifics of a person’s experience of contact with the givens of existence (ultimate existential concerns). These givens - death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness - inevitably involve immersion in the feelings of the depressive spectrum, and existential therapy has developed interesting strategies for contacting them. Psychoanalytic approaches to the treatment of depression involve focusing on the causes of his illness hidden from the client’s consciousness, searching for ways to awareness, identifying connections that exist between the contents of the unconscious and current feelings, moods and lifestyle. In what follows, I will focus specifically on this direction and argue in a psychoanalytic manner. So, according to a psychoanalytic reading, a symptom (whether depressive or anxious, obsessive, paranoid, etc.) is seen as the “tip of the iceberg” in relation to a much wider area , represented by the unconscious and its contents. It (a symptom) is considered a kind of message that the psyche sends to the level of consciousness in order to convey to it the need to take into account something (usually something painful) that has so far been excluded from the field of awareness. In this regard, no work is being done in the psychoanalytic direction directly with the symptom. Psychoanalysts and analytically oriented therapistsThey believe and find confirmation of this that getting rid of one symptom will entail the appearance of another if the reasons (in their entire complex) for its occurrence are not realized and worked out. Here it would be useful to remember that the same symptoms reported by a client who seeks help due to depression (guilt, melancholy, anxiety, self-devaluation, perfectionism, etc.) can be caused by different reasons and have different configurations Therefore, it is very important to correctly determine what exactly is happening to a person, how serious his condition is and what characterological structure it is inscribed in. Otherwise, without realizing it, we can violate the principle of non-harm by offering the client too harsh and deep interventions that are not yet he is beyond his strength. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is, of course, an approach that uses means that can “probe” parts of the psyche that are initially inaccessible to either the client or the therapist: analysis of extraverbal and paraverbal messages (silence, breaking off phrases, sudden changes in topic and/or mood , slips of the tongue, posture, facial expressions, body tension, change in tone of voice, etc.), analysis of fantasies and dreams, analysis of defenses, transference and countertransference and, of course, analysis of the client’s personal history. Thanks to the gradual disclosure of unconscious motives that led to a depressive state , over time, it becomes possible to transform the client’s defense system, relationships with other people and his self-attitude, which, in turn, allows him to achieve a better emotional balance and find the road to feelings outside the depressive spectrum. I’ll try to explain this algorithm. So, depression arises from a repressed (and in the most severe cases, denied) feeling of loss, as well as anger (about the fact that such a loss has occurred), which is not realized and turns inward. This is usually due to certain childhood experiences, which become “favorable” soil for a depressive response in adulthood. For example, a person may blame himself for the lack of love for him on the part of his parents (“I was a difficult child / showed up at the wrong time, how could they love me?” "), but suppress this feeling because of the pain it causes. Then the breakup of a romantic relationship in adolescence or separation from a partner in adulthood can reactivate these emotions and lead to a state of depression. That is, here we will have in the “lining” a feeling of our own inferiority, deficiency, “unworthiness” as an object of love, which will not allow to go through the normative loss of adolescence (“unhappy love”) or adulthood (breaking up with a partner who chose someone else) without a depressive breakdown. Therefore, when working with clients who come in connection with experiences of the depressive spectrum, I first help to recognize and express feelings that they are experiencing, no matter how painful these feelings may be, and then to pave the way to those earlier experiences with which these feelings can be associated. Often, in order to experience loss/disappointment in the here-and-now, one must first discover and acknowledge the loss in the there-and-then space. Recognize and grieve. In the case of the client I spoke about at the beginning (in the first part of the article), depressive feelings threatened to plunge into something frightening and... forbidden. Certain guidelines learned in relationships with parents, guidelines regarding what one could and could not feel and do (the possibility of losing their love always loomed as retribution) seemed so unshakable that the risk of revising them was experienced as madness, insanity. Depression opened the door There. And of course, I wanted to close it immediately. Anger, acute pain, despair, the experience of unpreparedness and inability to come to terms with loss or unpleasant, difficult changes of a very different kind, be it status, appearance, age, state of health, career and creativity, changed (or manifested ) attitude on the part of another (deception, betrayal,