The lack of affection is one of the main characteristics of human beings. From the lack of affection, contact, dialogues, and participation, one has the possibility to relate, to integrate with the other, to complement each other. Experienced as a possibility, this lack allows the perception of the other, enabling encounters, misencounters, and discoveries.

The processes of nonacceptance of oneself, of the other, and of the world - with the consequent self-referrals - usually transform lack of affection into a lever and magnet to meet the demands for affection. By reification, that is, by transforming the processes of lack of affection - immanent to living beings - into an object, a thing, an established platform for the fulfillment of desires, one transforms this lack of affection into the need for affection. This reification establishes criteria, goals, standards of what is needed to resolve lacks, voids, and desires.

The psychoanalysis and all Freudian-oriented psychology consider being needy as a significant aspect, a symptom of the neurotic configurations that plague the individual. This conclusion is fundamental to their therapeutic processes and theoretical orientations.

It turns out that being needy is just like having eyes, hands, and feet. The lack of affection is intrinsic to the human being, it is his relational possibility. When denied, the lack of affection becomes an appendix, a reference from which everything is configured, perceived, thus becoming the need for complement, satisfaction, and fulfillment of dependencies, a protection from fears and disabilities. This experience of what is needed creates attachments, faults, fears, uses, and desires. Having someone who satisfies sexual desires, someone who makes social commitments, who represents and signifies, who pays bills, who helps, respects, and satisfies becomes the great purpose of life. Society itself regulates these processes, creating parameters and institutions for this purpose. Affective stability and, consequently, good living in society, result from marriages, from unions that supply this lack, that meet this need. Being alone is proof of incapacity, it is an index of failure: poverty, old age, ugliness, ignorance, which prevented one from becoming desirable and thus being chosen, formalizing the desire to find a partner, the complementation, the union, the engagement in the world of people who mean something.

Being alive establishes the possibility to move, to perceive, to speak, to listen, to dialogue. Scaffolding, passwords, codes, and bridges are not necessary for this to happen, it is intrinsic to the life process. It is only broken by accidents or by prenatal, genetic configurations, generally rare and yet always compensated or even neutralized by the unfolding of other possibilities and configurations. When these intrinsic human possibilities occur as a function of values, considerations, conveniences, and inconveniences, it creates a dense void, an abyss that swallows everything: it is the lack of affection transformed into a need. Knowing what is good or bad, what is correct or incorrect as initial determinants of relational processes establishes a priori. This anticipation empties the present as it hides or covers through relational overlays. For example, the other in front of me is what serves or does not serve to fit my schemes and purposes. The very idea of fitting in, of serving, destroys vital and dynamic conditions. This idea will also create the criteria of valid, invalid, possible, impossible, adequate, inadequate. Thus, one transforms the other into a thing, an object. This process results in use, destruction, solitary beings who lack love, affection, company. Feeling alone means being closed in on oneself, self-referenced in nonacceptance and despair, looking for someone who can be used by submission, who can be coopted by advantages, deceived by despair, and who is able to fulfill gaps, destroy fears, and be the necessary cane that one can buy or steal.

Lack of affection configures the other in the sense of possibility or need for a relationship. When intrinsic, assumed, this lack enables the other; otherwise, as a need for relationship, it is a barrier, and the other becomes a goal or an obstacle.