Both the autistic and the symbiotic forms of childhood schizophrenia reveal ego defects, inborn or acquired very early. In the autistic type, one such defect may be the inability to discriminate the animate from the inanimate, and to perceive the mother as a living being. In the symbiotic child the basic ego defect 'is the insufficiency of the stimulus barrier', the mother consequently being unable to protect the child from external overstimulation. All relations to the object world and the concepts of the self are gravely disturbed. Object cathexis suffers especially during the phallic phase, when narcissistic cathexis becomes even more accentuated.