All behavior may be rated on a paranoid-depressive scale. On the paranoid end of this continuum are those who attribute the responsibility for their lives and feelings to the outside world; on the depressive end, those who feel entirely responsible for their state of being. The clinically paranoid person constructs this outer influence to compensate for an underlying conviction that he lacks the power or responsibility to affect others. Depression, in this view, represents an escape from the feeling of destructive power within by regression to a powerless state. Therapy should be directed toward the underlying self-concepts rather than the compensatory symptoms.