ABSTRACT
There is a great variety of physical attachments in early life, each presumably with an emotionally experienced counterpart: in the womb umbilically, in arms, mouth-to-nipple, locked in loving eye-contact, and so on. The need for attachments evolved as something favouring the survival of the species. Because of the way psychodynamic theory has developed, some kinds of attachments, and hence some sources of well-being, are more easily recognized than others. Patients who wish for an attachment whose prototype is being lulled and rocked were, at least until quite recently, regarded with disapproval in many case-discussions at which author have been present. Very few natural sources of well-being were available to Ken, with both parents in one way or another unable to allow him gratifications. Donald Winnicott conceived of a process by which a person gets cut off from the biologically based sources of satisfaction characteristic of what he called the "True Self".
