The author made a study of a series of busts— die Charakterköpfe —executed by Messerschmidt, a schizophrenic sculptor who worked under the patronage of Maria Theresa. Messerschmidt believed that he was liable to be assaulted or seduced by evil spirits, and that only the fearful grimaces he made could scare them away. The expressions of die Charakterköpfe recorded these grimaces and had therefore a general apotropaic function, while the lips, always tightly pressed together, represented a specific attempt to master impulses of oral sexuality and genital sexuality which had been displaced on to the oral zone. Evidence that the sculptor was fixated in an infantile phase of omnipotence is found in his identification with a creator God and his preference for magic mechanisms of defence.