The author analyzed four married women presenting common features: anaclitic depression; excessive maternal dependency and living with the mother after marriage; passive, depreciated fathers; husbands resembling the fathers. 'These patients projected onto their own children the overanxious and rejecting attitudes of their own mothers.' The mothers of these patients seemed strongly motivated to preserve the dependency of their daughters, to avoid separation and its traumata. While the daughters were, at one level or another, aware of the hostilities underlying the overprotection and other aspects of the pseudo-loving relationship, they were unable to break up the symbiosis without first finding a substitute bond (the analyst).