In women neurotic obesity can be understood as an autoplastic materialization, unconscious impulses using the body rather than external reality as a medium for expression and alteration. Bychowski's psychoanalytic experience brings out the following main dynamics: early fixations on the preambivalent oral level, identification with both parental love objects, regression and reactivation of oral drives aiming at partial incorporation with resulting denial of true femininity, and trends toward masculinization. The physiological mechanisms involved are discussed, particularly fluid retention and the utilization of glycogen storage. Dreams and other material from the analyses of three women patients, including an afteranalysis letter, serve to illustrate the unconscious self-perception as both breast and phallus, the significance of guilt in relation to eating, the ambivalence and the specific interference with genitosexual development.