Somatization and Essential Depression

Photo by flickr.com / Hanadi Traifeh

The idea of essential depression was introduced by P. Marty in his 1966 article “La depression essentielle” and became central in the theory of psychosomatics. The term suggests a kind of depression which is not caused by the loss of a loved person but a depression related to more archaic phases of development.

Marty suggested that essential depression is not characterized by sadness or pain but by a lack of desire. Patients with this kind of depression feel tired and empty. They don’t complain about anything and they don’t seem to have emotions or fantasies. They remain motionless, unmotivated and with no desire for life. This is why essential depression is also called “white depression” or “depression without an object”.

Essential depression is further characterized by a reduction of the libido invested in other people (object libido) or the self (narcissistic libido). Patients with essential depression don’t seek the company of other people and lack the desire to create bonds. They remain secluded to themselves in an isolated world and they communicate only through their body symptoms. 

According to P. Marty the absence of emotional bonds, the flattened emotion and the breaking down of mental processes, which are all symptoms of essential depression, are also characteristics of alexithymia. Alexithymia is a mental condition in which the patient cannot access their own feelings. The more the patient cannot bring into words their feelings the more the somatic symptoms deteriorate. If this situation persists, emotional disorganization becomes more severe leading to the somatization of the symptoms and the gradual disorganization of the whole body.

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