Despite much theoretical speculation and some indirect evidence, no study has empirically assessed the relationship of orality to depression. In the present investigation, two separate samples of male college students (M = 276; N 2 = 141) completed both the Rorschach test and the Depression Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ). More DEQ items correlated significantly with a Rorschach orality measure than would be expected by chance, but the magnitude of these correlations was small. Item analysis suggests that dependency is less a factor in depression than is a personality constellation marked by egocentrism, immaturity, fear of rejection, helplessness, and lack of integration. The results of this study are limited by its use of nonclinically disturbed male subjects. Lewis (1981) has noted the "the affect of depression . . . is so universal and so relatively wordless (or, at best, so monotonously banal both to sufferer and to an observer) that it does not readily invite 'scientific' consideration in its own right" (p. 168). Although a link between depression and passivity or helplessness has often been reported (see Depue & Monroe, 1978, for a review of this work), no study has ever assessed the relationship of depression to the psychoanalytic concept of orality. Our paper seeks to correct the lack of empirical inquiry into this aspect of depression. The role of orality and oral dependency in the etiology and dynamics of depression has long been a topic of conjecture among psychoanalytic theorists. Abraham (1927), for example, contended, "We often find in people who are depressed a conscious and openly expressed tendency to reject food" (p. 274). He continues, "The libido has regressed to the most primitive stage of its development known to us, to that state which we have come to know as oral" (p. 276).
