Data gathered in the analyses of eight highly creative male scientists, several with international reputations in the field of physical and biological science, were examined from the standpoint of the ego functions characteristic in their creative endeavors. Their ages ranged from the mid-thirties to the mid-forties. All eight described their mothers as extremely domineering, aggressive, seductive, and demanding, pushing their children to achievement in order narcissistically to gratify themselves and tenaciously binding the patients to them as their favorite children. The fathers were submissive and depreciated, failing to give protection against the mothers and to provide a clear masculine model. Consequently the masculine identification of these patients was self-created and idealized, transcending the actualities of the environmental models. Fears of being overwhelmed by hostile destructive impulses, predominantly anal and oral sadistic in nature, were prominent; they habitually used obsessive-compulsive defenses against