Trust, ontological security, and a feeling of the continuity of things and persons remain closely bound up with one another in the adult personality. Trust in the reliability of nonhuman objects, it follows from this analysis, is based upon a more primitive faith in the reliability and nurturance of human individuals. Trust in others is a psychological need of a persistent and recurrent kind. Drawing assurance from the reliability or integrity of others is a sort of emotional regrooving which accompanies the experience of familiar social and material environments. Ontological security and routine are intimately connected, via the pervasive influence of habit. The infant’s early caretakers normally place an overriding importance upon the following of routines, a matter of both intense frustration and reward for the infant. The predictability of the (apparently) minor routines of day-to-day life is deeply involved with a sense of psychological security. When such routines are shattered—for whatever reason—anxieties come flooding in, and even very firmly founded aspects of the personality of the individual may become stripped away and altered.

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Moderni…, loc. 240