R ELATIVE OBLIGATIONS are psychologically based on the relations between father and mother, mother and child, father and child, and the child and his fellows. They are not discernible at the same stage of development; nor are the required performances identical. Nevertheless, the typical infantile unconscious motive for their formation is the same for all four kinds of obligations in spite of their emergence at different periods of mental and bodily development and in spite of their different contents. This motivation is the child's overwhelming fear of being abandoned and his corresponding desire, or at least inclination, to conclude unions with others. The search for the infantile source from which each of the various kinds of obligations evolves should logically begin with the marital obligations, which are the earliest, since they are usually established before the child's conception and birth. However, the maternal obligations will be discussed first, merely for the technical reason that fear of isolation is easier to demonstrate by examining the contents and origin of the mother-infant reciprocal relations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.