The author states that in her work with patients she often asks the question, 'What is it for which you long?'. Though superficially the answers vary a great deal, she finds that the common theme throughout most of the answers is, 'a wish to belong'. Her paper is a discussion of the ways in which she has seen her patients attempt to satisfy this deep need. She finds that the wish to belong has a primary and a secondary aspect. In psychoneurotics, longings may be expressed in terms which are superficially normal and adult but which are really expressions of unsatisfied wishes of childhood. The primary aspect of the wish to belong is seen 'when the efforts to bring about a complete unity of these actual figures [personalities from childhood] is given up as an impossible task and a friendly relationship is established between the imprints of these figures in the personality of the individual… The secondary aspect is fulfilled by the normal, ordinary daily social activities of human beings, the constructive features of which make up the cohesive force of society.'