The author reviews the psychological and developmental needs of the newborn and young infant and reviews the analytic literature. He discusses trauma of birth, physiological prematurity, vegetative immaturity, oral functions, sensorimotor impotence, object relationship, sucking needs, sensory needs, motor needs, and the need of a stable physical environment. He next considers frustrations of these basic needs, such as parental absences, various types of parental rejection, and such specific frustrations as toilet training by a compulsive mother.

A series of basic needs in infancy must be satisfied if the infant is to mature. Major frustrations of these needs result in permanent damage, not in mere neurotic disturbances. Racamier attempts to establish a series of factors in the formation of personality, listing the precocious frustrations of infancy as intermediary between hereditary and congenital factors on the one hand and psychogenic factors on the other.