Behind the boy’s tie to the mother on the genital level exists a much deeper and more irrational tie. The infant―boy or girl―is tied to mother as the life-giving, all-helping, all-protecting, all-loving figure; mother is life, is security; she shields the child from the reality of the human situation, which requires activity, making decisions, taking risks, being alone, and dying. (…)
Deeper and still more irrational than the wish to be loved and protected by mother throughout life is the craving to be one with her, to return to her womb, and eventually to undo the fact of having been born; then the womb becomes the grave, the mother earth in which to be „buried,“ the ocean in which to drown. There is nothing „symbolic“ in this. The cravings are not „disguises“ for repressed Oedipus strivings; on the contrary, the incestuous strivings are often an attempt to save oneself from the deeper, life-threatening cravings for mother. The deeper and more intense these cravings, the more repressed they are. Only in the case of psychosis and in dreams do they become conscious.― (1990f [1969]: The Dialectic Revision of Psychoanalysis, in: E. Fromm, The Revision of Psychoanalysis, Boulder (Westview Press) 1992, pp. 37f.)