In the psychoanalytic, as well as the psychiatric literature, there is a tendency to use elation, hypomania, and mania synonymously. This tendency is incompatible with the findings of developmental studies, such as Mahler's, which establish the concept that elation is a basic mood. Clearly, an ego state or a mood that is basic must be nonpathological; and pathological conditions such as hypomania or mania, though obviously related, can hardly be conceived as being "basic" in the same sense.

I have attempted to examine the developmental sequence described by Mahler in the child's practicing period par excellence, and the basic mood of elation which is characteristic of this period. Mahler's assertion that the elation of the practicing period is a basic mood is a view I believe useful in the genetic and dynamic understanding of the more complex normal states of later elevated moods.