ABSTRACT
The dynamic concept of the reticulum is very useful in helping to understand drive development and its relationship to relational development. The P-I dynamics, approached in the right way, shed light not just on the way in which the mother directly influences the maturation of certain neural areas, but also on the way in which these developments typically identify different perspectives in psychoanalytic theory. Atopic dermatitis and precocious respiratory diseases can therefore be interpreted as conflictual responses to pathogenic patterns that have no other way of revealing themselves other than in the somatosensory apparatus itself, which has been excessively sensitized by the mother. The widely held belief that mother-child relations necessarily produce cerebral changes has a plausible explanation in the effects that maternal patterns can have on the development of the "s-o" pathways of the reticulum, as will be illustrated.
