It is not surprising that Ostow—a pioneer investigator of the correlation between psychopharmacological and psychoanalytic investigation—offers us, in his paper, condensed data and far-reaching findings. He serves us a rich table: theoretical propositions and clinical data that move forward our understanding of normal and pathological affect states.

Ostow, having stressed the difference between instinct and Freud's drive theory, proposes five categories of affect that relate to instinctual behavior. Moreover, he suggests that each of these affect categories has its own characteristic “feeling”: consummation; anticipatory emotion; relief experienced with contentment; the trigger and initiating instinctual sequence; and the pervading mood.

This instinct-oriented affect leads Ostow in a methodical way to study the sequences of affect's experience from initiation to contentment, and each step leads thereby to a guideline for either psychopharmacologic