In this study we elucidated some important aspects in the development of early object relationships. We subdivided the stage of need satisfaction and stressed the importance of the stage of the need-satisfying relationship. In concentrating particularly upon the stage of need satisfaction, we emphasized the distinction between primary biological and psychological functioning and the beginning of psychological relationships. We suggested further that the protraction of a descriptively need-satisfying relationship hardly ever represents a true arrest at or regression to that particular

stage of development, but rather involves a persistence of an earlier mode of demanding satisfaction from, and of interaction with, the object.