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The author describes and reviews case material from two analyses in further elucidation of the 'Little Man' phenomenon representing an isolated segment of the ego (Kramer, 1955). The phenomenon seems to follow and compensate for the loss of infantile omnipotence by the erection of a magical separate structure in the ego which still remains ego-syntonic. In one case 'the dwarf', an angry creature without bone or muscle, ugly, deformed, dirty, and big-headed, represented the patient functioning as a shady and successful business man identified with Alberich of the Niebelungenlied. Living within the patient's anus, the dwarf stood for his triumph over the threat of castration and a safeguard against it. The patient had suffered severe nutritional disturbances and, following rickets, had defective bone structure in the chest and head. As a child his head seemed overlarge. He identified with animals he had seen slaughtered in an abattoir and had observed excreting in the death throes. The retention of the dwarf in his anus represented an assurance against death.
A second patient, who experienced a thoracic deformity as 'a hole in the middle of his body', defended himself with the help of an amoeba fantasy which allowed him to withdraw his pseudopods at will, recreate them again, and to encapsulate himself so as practically to disappear. Isolated character qualities corresponded to this fantasy. This patient also suffered from infantile diarrhoea in which his body seemed to melt away. The amoeba fantasy, a variant and perhaps a forerunner of the 'little man', defended against the dreaded sensation of bodily dissolution. In both patients reality testing was intact except at such time as the 'dwarf' and 'amoeba' segments took over. In contrast to the Schreber case they functioned therefore in a non-psychotic way. Essentially traumatic in origin, they formed part of severe character disorders and can be viewed as an attempt to perpetuate infantile omnipotence and