The aim of this article is to review and put in their historical context today's data, methodologies and concepts concerning subaffective disorders. The historic roots of dysthymic and cyclothymic disorders — part of the subaffective spectrum — are essentially Greek, but the first use of the word `dysthymia' in psychiatry was by C.F. Flemming in 1844. E. Hecker introduced the term `cyclothymia' in 1877. K.L. Kahlbaum (1882)further developed the concepts of hyperthymia, cyclothymia and dysthymia — with possible subthreshold symptomatology — in 1882. After Kraepelin's rubric of `manic-depressive insanity', the term `dysthymia' was widely forgotten, and `cyclothymia' became ill defined. Nowadays the latter term is used in three, partially contradictory, senses: (1) a synonym for bipolar disorder (K. Schneider), (2) a temperament (E. Kretschmer) and (3) a subaffective disorder (DSM-IV, ICD-10). A renaissance of subaffective disorders began with the development of DSM-III. Therapeutically important research has focused on dysthymic disorder and its relationship to major depressive disorder, while cyclothymic disorder is relatively neglected; nonetheless, operationalized as a subaffective dimension or temperament, cyclothymia appears to be a likely precursor or ingredient of the construct of bipolar II disorder.