Basic Trust According to Marcia Westkott (pg. 69) Karen Horney's claim that a child's fundamental need is for a loving and warm atmosphere that provides inner security (Horney, 1937, p. 80), foreshadowed Erik Erikson's assumption that an infant needs first and foremost to experience "basic trust" in relation to his or her caretakers. Erikson (pg. 82) writes: "Only a relatively 'whole' society can vouchsafe to the infant, through the mother, an inner conviction that all the diffuse somatic experiences and all the confusing social cues of early life can be accommodated in a sense of continuity and sameness which gradually unites the inner and outer world. The ontological source of faith and hope which thus emerges I have called a sense of basic trust: it is the first and basic wholeness for it seems to imply that the inside and the outside can be experienced as an integrated goodness. Basic mistrust, then, is the sum of all those diffuse experiences which are not somehow successfully balanced by the experience of integration." Erik H. Erikson (1968). Identity, Youth, and Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton. Karen Horney (1937). The Neurotic Personality Of Our Time. New York: W. W. Norton. Marcia Westkott (1986). The Feminist Legacy of Karen Horney. New Haven: Yale UP.

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