The term basic fault refers to the structural deficiency in the personality of subjects who during their early stages of development formed certain types of object relations—which later become compulsions—to cope with a considerable initial "lack of adjustment" between their psychobiological needs and the care provided by a "faulty" environment devoid of understanding. The effects of the basic fault on a person's character structure and "psychobiological dispositions" (which may predispose that person to certain illnesses) are only partially reversible.

Michael Balint developed this concept in The Doctor, the Patient, and the Illness (1957), as a result of his research with physicians in the area of psychosomatic disorders. Additionally, in "The Three Areas of the Mind" (1958), Balint developed the notion of the "basic fault zone" to situate therapeutic processes relating to states of regression in certain...