The psychic development of the human being, to reach maturity, is a long journey, which takes place from the earliest childhood, until psychic autonomy, understood as the ability to set one's own laws, without needing to be contained from the outside. Education has the role of leading the child out of the impulsive state. Authority is therefore central in the psychic construction of the child.

Faced with psychological suffering such that it causes intense distress, the person will try to resolve this conflict of loyalty, and this resolution can occur in two ways: a conflict of loyalty with a neurotic type of resolution, and a regressive conflict of loyalty, with a psychotic type of resolution.