Depressive personality and depressive illness are examined from an evolutionary adaptationist standpoint. It is postulated that the depressive state evolved in relation to social competition, as an unconscious, involuntary losing strategy, enabling the individual to accept defeat in ritual agonistic encounters and to accommodate to what would otherwise be unacceptably low social rank.

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We trace the development of ideas about the relation of mood to social rank and territory. We suggest that elevated mood enabled a person to rise in rank and cope with the increased activities and responsibilities of a leadership role, while depressed mood enabled a person to accept low rank and to forego the rewards associated with high rank. This led to the concept of a trio of agonist/investor strategy sets, each consisting of escalating and de-escalating strategies, one set at each of the three levels of the triune forebrain. Depressed mood can be seen as a de-escalating (appeasement) strategy at the lowest (reptilian) level; this should facilitate de-escalation at the highest (rational) level, but sometimes this rational level de-escalation is blocked (e.g., by stubbornness, courage, pride or ambition) and then clinical depression may ensue. These evolved psychobiological mechanisms survived the partial transition from agonistic to prestige competition. We discuss difficulties which have arisen with our ideas, and their implications for clinical work and research.

The possible role of environmental stress in precipitating the onset or relapse of acute schizophrenia was investigated by Brown and Birley (1968), Birley and Brown (1970). They enquired about events which could be dated to a definite point in time and which usually involved either actual or threatened danger or important fulfilments or disappointments. They distinguished between independent events, which were outside the control of the subject, and possibly independent events, which were not so clearly out of his control but which seemed unlikely to be produced by unusual behaviour of the subject himself. In their main group of patients a significant concentration of independent events (about 60 per cent) was found in the three weeks preceding onset or relapse of schizophrenia. In examining two small sub-groups they found that 4 of 13 patients (31 per cent) who relapsed after reducing or discontinuing phenothiazine therapy had experienced a life event in the three weeks before relapse, compared with 3 of 5 patients (60 per cent) who had been taking phenothiazines regularly at the time of relapse. Although these proportions are very different, the numbers in the groups are too small for the difference to reach significance. Furthermore the groups were not matched in any way, and there may be important differences between patients who discontinue medication themselves and those who carry on taking it regularly.

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Personal questionnaires were constructed for seven members of a psychotherapy group. Self-reported changes during group sessions and over a period of up to 10 months' treatment were analysed. There was no general pattern of 'improvement' either during sessions or in the longer term. There was evidence suggestive of an inverse relationship between changes during sessions and over the period of the study. Some clinically meaningful relationships were discerned between the present data and repertory grid and verbal behaviour measures on the same group members reported in a previous paper. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.