LEADING spokesmen in psychiatry have pointed out the great need for extending and improving clinical research and studies.1,2 This need is particularly clear in the depressive syndromes. Grinker,1 in 1961, noted that it seemed as if the psychiatric profession had taken for granted that all that can be known about depressions had already been discovered and thoroughly described. In fact, relatively little new had been added to the description of depressions in general since antiquity. He felt that more accurate clinical definitions of the depressive syndrome would lead to the isolation of subcategories, which when correlated with nonpsychological data might further our knowledge of etiology, course, prognosis, and therapy. A description of a major phenomenological research program directed by Grinker at the Institute for Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Research and Training of Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, is to be found in The Phenomena of Depressions.1 Five patterns of