"The Proper Sorrows of the Soul"

By focusing only on symptoms and not on causes, has psychiatry incorrectly diagnosed too many cases of ordinary sadness  - what Thomas `å  Kempis called "the proper sorrows of the soul" - as depression?

Ronald Pies, a professor of psychiatry at Tufts, outlines some of the conceptual and scientific problems in Redefining Depression as Mere Sadness.