A person with predisposition to ulcer has made a partial regression to the oral stage of the libidinous organization. Ulcer is an illness provoked by the psychic image of a bad and frustrating mother who, in the same way as food which is hard to digest, injures the patient in his digestive tract.

The future ulcer patient's mother does not, as a rule, provoke great oral frustrations in his childhood, but she usually worries excessively over his food, thus creating fixations in the oral instinctive organization. Later on, she often keeps him in a situation of Oedipal dependence on her, with the prohibition of extra-familiar genitality. At the same time she is apt to impel her child towards an active social life.