The psychotherapy of two adolescent girls with asthma, neurodermatitis, and schizophrenic reactions revealed the importance of the role of primary process concepts of the body. The perceived body, i.e., the unconscious conception of the body, was experienced as a breast, as a penis, as invisible and concretized. There were primitive identifications with the parent of the opposite sex along with the experience of the skin as a direct extension of the mother. Psychosis and psychosomatic conditions may be associated with pathological introjects. Verbalization, the use of secondary process thinking (as well as a therapeutic milieu) may decathect these introjects. There is a discussion of Schur's concepts of ego defect, primary to psychosis, ego impairment, and psychosomatic illness, and the nature of the regression in these illnesses.