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Freud categorized psychosexual growth as it relates to the development of certain erogenous zones at chronological ages. As the child moves through them they bring new anxieties, new defenses for coping, as well as new cognition. Just as external trauma may heighten anxieties and help to contribute to a pathological fixation of sexual interests at a pregenital level, other events facilitate growth and coping. Fairy tales, and to some degree myths, appear as agents of the latter and provide the child with means of identification. The psychoanalytic themes regarding the unconscious content which contribute to the universal appeal of myths have been reported by Freud5 and Róheim.11 Schuurman12 and Heuscher6 have attempted to provide an understanding of the fairy tale in psychosexual terms. Little has been done, however, to tie up the loose ends in relating some aspects of the fairy tale, in particular the ubiquitous dwarf, to ego development and ego pathology, although the groundwork has been well laid by two fascinating studies, those of Kramer7 and Niederland,9 which deal with dwarf fantasies in characterologically disturbed patients. Except for these studies, there has been virtually nothing written establishing the link between the dwarf of fairy tale and mythology and identification crises, although the dwarf appears in children's stories with great persistency.
My interest in dwarfs resulted from sessions with a twenty-six-year-old woman, Patricia. The dynamics of her case presented an opportunity to relate the psychoanalytic concepts of child development to the symbolism of the dwarf. Such a relationship is suggested by Niederland's analysis of an obsessive patient who developed dwarf