The widely scattered psychosomatic and psychoanalytic literature dealing with the psychodynamics of asthma, hay fever, urticaria, and neurodermatitis is reviewed with great care and thoroughness. Miller comes to the conclusion that in allergic children unconscious maternal hostility, resulting either in marked rejection or overprotection, is the outstanding factor. In those asthma cases in which psychogenesis plays a prominent role, the attack seems to be one of acute anxiety and a demonstration of helplessness. In psychogenic urticaria, the attack seems to be more one of repressed weeping. In neurodermatitis there seem to be strong exhibitionistic and masochistic defenses against intense unconscious aggression toward a competitive figure of the same sex. The urge to be taken care of as a sick, helpless child, so noticeable in urticaria and asthma, seems equally typical of the neurodermatitis cases. In the latter the urge to exhibit failure is a typical defense against guilt and anxiety.