ELATION, HYPOMANIA,: PING-NIE PAO, hf.D. AND MANIA: LTHOUCH FREUD’S FIRST THEORY of neurosis was, as it were,

an affect theory, its further development into an instinct the- “A ory appears to have halted our effort to form equally clear concepts of the affects and of their relation to the psychic drives” (Jacobson, 1953, p. 38). Since this statement, more attention has been given to affects. Schur (1966) emphasized that it is important to distinguish between pleasure-unpleasure as regulatory princi-ples and pleasure-unpleasure as affects. He added that the regula-tory principles cannot guarantee the achievement of pleasurable affects, or the avoidance of painful affects. Sandler and Joffe (1969) consider affects major regulatory factors of the psychic apparatus. From the clinical point of view, Bibring (1953), Zetzel (1965), and others (e.g., Sandler ik Joffe, 1965; Pao, 1968a) differ-entiate the basic depressive feelings from pathological depressive illnesses, and have in turn made important contributions to the genetic and the dynamic understanding of depression. Comparably significant studies of the clinical obverse of depression, the state of an elevated mood, have been extremely scarce. Lewin (1932, 1937, 1941, 1950, 1959) and Deutsch (1937, 1951), especially the former, have written extensively on the pathological state of mania and hypomania. Only recently, Rhhler’s description of elation as a basic mood (1966) sheds new light on our knowledge of the “normal ” state of mood elevation. This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Psphoanaly-tic Association, New York, December 1970. I am grateful to Dr. Edith Jacobson for an illuminating discussion and to Dr. Joseph D. Lichtenberg for his helpful criti-cisms and suggestions