This tightly written article considers two fundamental elements of an instinctual drive, its affective value and its representational value, as manifested in humor and in psychosis. There are two fundamental levels of energic organization in Freudian theory. One is biological in orientation and is concerned with instinctual discharge purely on a biological level; the other, psychical in orientation, is concerned with object related perceptions and with the mental representations of instinctual discharge and the pleasure associated with these mental representations. Dubor presents a review of Freud's writings on this topic, culminating in a discussion of the 1924 paper, The Economic Problem of Masochism. There the biological system tends toward inertia, minimization of tension, and mastery by repetition, while the psychical system tends toward constant energy levels, toward mastery of discharge by object quest and by representation. There are then two possible evolutions of psychical manifestations, according to whether