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To highlight his developmental/object relations frame of reference, Giovacchini, at the beginning of this paper, demonstrates the polemic between those analysts who continue to believe in the death instinct versus those who are devoted to the centrality of the oedipus complex. His point of view has caused controversy and attack from "orthodox" psychoanalysts. After defining psychoanalysis and its methodology and stating that the only principle essential to it is psychic determinism, he introduces the concept of a prementational level of development. This concept is illustrated in two clinical vignettes. In the discussion he elaborates on a scheme of development wherein there is a prementational phase dominated by circadian rhythms, followed by a presymbiotic phase, then symbiotic fusion, then the establishment of part objects, and finally, well-structured object relations. While acknowledging that his theorizing is subject to a good deal of "adultomorphization," he presents a new idea that during the transitional phase, not only objects, but also nurturing functions may be subject to blurred boundaries. A further explanation of the prementational phase, including the postulation of a "nurturing matrix," is undertaken, leading to Giovacchini's speculation that the borderline pathology which was evident in the clinical material presented can be understood in terms of disturbances in the development of this nurturing matrix.