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The psychoanalytic theory of instinct, with its emphasis upon energic considerations and its attempted distinction between sexual and aggressive energies, has proved to be burdened with inconsistencies which weaken its claim to a valid biological basis. An epigenetic approach provides an alternative conceptual structure with cross-referential clarity and consistency in respect both to basic analytic and biologic theory. Its central thesis is that hierarchies of structuro-functional units and orders arise due to the inherent structuro-energic properties of reaction patterns consistent for all levels of physical, chemical, and biological activity. Thus 'living' processes, with their emergent characteristic of self-duplication, are epigenetic expressions of structuro-functional phenomena characteristic for the physicochemical components making up the 'living' entity. The general mechanisms descriptive of reaction patterns in chemistry are applicable to biological reaction patterns, and in turn to the reaction patterns of the mental system. Thus a 'reaction pattern' (a term preferred over 'instinct') is defined as any structuro-energic process which can be said to have an initiation, propagation, and termination. The term is preferred because it can generally be applied to all hierarchic levels of function without terminological confusion. It is possible to conceive of a continuum in terms of structuro-energic reactions ranging from physicochemical, biochemical, bioinstinctual, instinctuo-psychological, through a relatively less instinctualized psychological level with its own continuum of hierarchic levels of structure function. Function on the three levels relating to the environment is called 'behavior'. Psychic development can be described in epigenetic terms: the mental system is highly susceptible to many signals from the organism and its environment. These signals, either structuro-energic or purely energic, will leave notations in the mental system in