Rosolato's intention is not so much to make evident the use of prime numbers in rational or scientific work, but rather to discuss what he feels are symbolic constants in the usage of the prime number. He recognizes that his work will meet with resistance because prime numbers are also used in mystico-religious or parapsychological contexts. However, Rosolato believes his work is a metapsychological approach, an attempt to show that each numerical configuration is determined by crucial experiences of childhood which psychoanalysis has made evident as a crossroad of psychic development. He then discusses the metapsychological aspects of numbers. He sees one as unity and permanence, the emergence of one's own body and psyche. Zero signifies emptiness, contradiction, and death. Two suggests the conflict or struggle between life and death impulses, and the differences in the sexes. Three would introduce oedipal considerations, and so on.