My talk addresses a psychoanalytic understanding – or, perhaps, the psychoanalytic understanding – of how we develop what German psychologists call Urvertrauen. Sometimes referred to in English as “basic trust,” Urvertrauen forms during our earliest childhood experiences and, once in place, becomes a life-long source of stability for the psyche. In describing this phenomenon I will discuss two patients under my care who were unable to establish a sense of basic trust in early childhood and the effects it has had on their personality and development.