The foetus is not an isolated, flourishing laboratory sample that starts living at birth, but is in the later months a being with a psychical organization and instinctive safety apparatus striving to maintain a homeostasis that includes a fluid balance with its environment through the deglutitive (swallowing) apparatus. This deglutitive phase precedes orality, appears in later phases, and may emerge in regression. Disturbances in this phase have a share in the genesis of stammering, swallowing, tics, anorexia, depression, and they contribute to a basic lack of satisfaction with tendencies toward resignation, homeostatic quiescence, and abandonment of an extravertive attitude. The tendencies may be transformed into various masochistic, conversion, and other phenomena and culminate in suicidal fantasies. Sudden eruption of the deglutitive phase occurs in states of collapse and shock.