Behavior and experience are organized around the enjoyment and pursuit of incentives. During the time that an incentive is behaviorally salient, an organism is especially responsive to incentive-related cues. This sustained sensitivity requires postulating a continuing state (denoted by a construct, current concern) with a definite onset (commitment) and offset (consummation or disengagement).Disengagement follows frustration, accompanies the behavioral process of extinction, and involves an incentivedisengagement cycle of invigoration, aggression, depression, and recovery. Depression is thus a normal part of disengagement that may be either adaptive or maladaptive for the individual but is probably adaptive for the species. The theory offers implications for motivation; etiology, symptomatology, and treatment of depression; drug use; and other social problem areas.