What is dependency? It is a technique of adaptation through reliance on another person. It is based on a conviction of helplessness and is normal in infancy, but infantile dependency in the adult is a confession of adaptive failure. The developmental prototype for the dependency relationship is the relationship between the child and the mother. It is this relationship that the dependent adult seeks to reestablish. To this end he solicits support, help, protection. In extreme instances he wants another person to take over all responsibility for his welfare just as his mother did when he was a child. These are the conscious expressions of the wish to be dependent.

Unconsciously, the wish is expressed in terms of being fed, an act that symbolizes the incorporation of the maternal breast. In this way the dependent person hopes to recapture the infantile state in which his every need was gratified by the all powerful mother. The breast fantasy is the most direct route to dependency gratification. There is, however, an alternative route via the equation, penis = breast. There are two ways in which this equation can be used. The first conceives of the father's penis as a feeding organ similar to the mother's breast. The reparative fantasy is then one of sucking the penis in which the semen is equated with milk. No incorporation of the penis need be involved, and the woman who makes use of this fantasy may do so without any desire to be a man. The second way involves the incorporation of the penis and the subsequent alteration of the woman into a man. It is this fantasy that forms the basis for masculine aspirations in the dependent woman. The fantasy is made possible by the magical properties symbolically assigned to the male genital in the culture. (see THE DEPENDENCY MOTIVATION PART II)