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Kubie describes the confusion and complexity in our present concept of instincts. All instinctual patterns have physiological roots which fall into a series of increasing complexity. Each of these primary roots is the source of 'a spreading network of interdependent derivative patterns of behavior of increasing complexity, and finally … in man, for each of these at a specific point, psychological (to wit, symbolic) processes enter into the picture'. In man the automatic components of instinctual behavior are influenced by: 1, certain homeostatic patterns such as time intervals for physiological processes, and the warning mechanisms they produce; 2, increasing opportunities for choice of alternative objects and alternative aims; 3, the increasing complexity of networks of interdependent instinctual patterns; 4, the increasing role of symbolic processes and their compulsive and phobic mechanisms. The greater the complexity of the various physiological systems, the greater is the choice of alternative objects and aims and the greater is the possible psychopathological distortion. This concept is particularly apropos to procreative activities, in which there can be no choice of tissue substance but a wide choice of objects and aims limited only by psychological and symbolic factors. Each step in the network of 'primary instinctual acts' and all the instinctual derivatives receive symbolic representations by which psychological pressure can increase or decrease the instinctual activity quite apart from any qualitative or quantitative variation in the underlying