Depression syndrome belongs to the scope of depression syndrome of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM).TCM treats depression syndrome mainly on the heart，liver，spleen and kidney，among which “soothing liver and relieving depression” is the mainstream treatment.And the principle of “warming yang and relieving depression” summarized from experience has a better clinical effect.By comparing the similarities and differences between the 2 treatments，the author believes that the controversy between the 2 treatments is different from that of the guiding theory.The method of warming yang to relieve depression covers the important connotations of regulating qi and activating qi in the method of soothing the liver and relieving depression，and the key idea of warming kidney yang，liver yang and spleen yang is the key clinical experience of TCM in treatment of depression syndrome，and it needs to be systematically expounded from the classical theory.