Zacharias proposes a scheme of psychic development in which particular forms of compromise correspond to seven successive phases of libidinal development and object relations. Three 'heteronomous' phase-specific compromise formations on the oral, anal and phallic levels correspond, like mirror images, to three 'autonomous' compromise formations at the stages of latency, puberty and mature genitality. The change from heteronomous to autonomous compromise formations occurs in the oedipal phase, characterized by the identificatory compromise formation. Beginning with the oedipal phase, and thereafter increasingly, autonomous compromises exact sacrifices.