Continuing the investigations of M. Mahler, E. L. Abelin, and other psychoanalytic authors, Rotmann elaborates the significance of the "uncontaminated" and "less ambivalently cathected" father within the preoedipal triad. Case excerpts are presented as illustrations. The "triangulation" of early infantile social relations (around the eighteenth month of life) is designated as a "psychic organizer" in Spitz's sense; without this, the child's detachment from the mother, as well as the mastery of the oedipal conflict, can be achieved only with grave difficulty.