[Toward a new approach to mania]

After giving a brief summary of the classical psychiatry contribution (taken down a medical pattern of psychiatry diseases) to the knowledge of manic-depressing disorder, the problem of clinical-biological connection to which this classical psychiatry is still confronted is underlined. As a possible answer to this problem, a new approach to mania is possible in a dimensional perspective of the mental disease taking into account the connection model as well as the pathological characteristics within the clinical chart. The notion of integrated behaviour will supply to notion of syndrome (in which all symptoms are equivalents). So, a behaviour dimension, well defined from a clinical analysis connected with a factorial analysis, is proposed as a specific maniac size and as a compartmental aim to the treatments. A dividing of mental pathology in terms of behaviour anomalies should allow a better link between the clinical and the biological.