Edited by Tom Cheetham and Klaus Ottmann, this volume combines a talk delivered by Hillman in Rome in 1999 on melancholy with an edited transcript of three seminars on the subject of melancholy and depression held at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California: "In Defense of Melancholy" (1992), "Depressive Syndromes" (1994), and "The Place of Depression in a Manic Civilization" (2000).

"The true revolution begins in the individual who can be true to his or her depression. Neither jerking oneself out of it, caught in cycles of hype and despair, nor suffering it through till it turns, nor theologizing it-but discovering the consciousness and depths it wants. So begins the revolution in behalf of soul."
-James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology