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From birth, the infant oscillates between a state of quiescence and a state of need which may be manifested in the emotional, tonic crisis of the cry. These physiological variations last throughout life, differentiated, of course, as time goes on. The perceptive-motor activities which represent the beginning of the cognitive functions occur only when the infant is in a state of euphoria, and disappear when the tonic emotional crisis develops after unpleasant stimulation. These physiological oscillations represent the original prototypes for evolution and regression. The same sequence of events occurs at a later stage when anxiety-producing stimuli have become better differentiated. At this point regression leads to a loss of the object; new acquisitions are lost; older acquisitions can no longer be directly integrated and thus become anxiety producing, for example, in terrifying fantasies such as the fantasy of body fragmentation. These oscillations between new activities, strongly cathected, and anxiety-producing fantasies, which have been internalized, remain in the course of the subsequent evolution. In any event, the author states that regression must be considered not as a static phenomenon but rather as a phenomenon of dynamic adaptation.