Initially, dependency, like other motivational systems to be discussed, starts with the child participating passively, until he can later actively maintain his dependency. Dependency involves a role practice “ by the need to regain control of the parental resources that provide the child with many forms of gratification, especially the expression of love”. The learning of active dependency, therefore, proceeds from a state of passive dependency, with help from the adult as the major reinforcing agent, to a state of dependency, in which the adult no longer plays such a major role. The latter does not occur until the next developmental phase. The child’s dependency becomes a powerful need which can be neither eliminated nor ignored. In fact, the more the child increases his efforts to satisfy his frustrated dependency needs, the more insistent and all-absorbing become his demands for dependency. It is not surprising, therefore, that permissiveness toward dependency serves to meet its needs.The child’s native need for the reduction of his hunger drive becomes quickly associated with two essential and interrelated components of his food-intake sequence: to suck and to be near the nursing person. Because of its constant repetition and powerful association with the goal-directed response, the instrumental act of sucking rapidly becomes an ingrained habit and an independent drive which gets stronger with age as long as it remains the primary means for pacifying hunger. The mother is seen as an indispensable part of the activity of sucking and the intake of all food. Her image, smell, feel, etc. are closely associated with gratification. The child “not only learns to expect her to come when [he is ] hungry, he also learns that he needs her”. It is this link between the desire for food and the mother which is essential to this phase of development, but is a potential deterrent to development in later phases of socialization. The mother bringing food, then fosters a dyadic relationship and simultaneously reinforces dependency on herself as the caring adult.