Psychological meanings of clothes are described, with particular reference to schizophrenic adolescents. Parents' attempts to continue their psychopathological communications and maintain the 'amorphous family nexus' with their children through the medium of clothes are illustrated. In order to diminish such pathological communications, the author recommends that patients be allowed to choose their own clothes and that parents be asked simply to provide the money for such purchases. Part of the over-all treatment program includes the conversion of such pathological messages into verbal communications which can then be clarified and resolved in scheduled family therapy meetings. Significant information may be obtained and considerable psychological work often accomplished by discussing a patient's choice of clothes with him. Such topics as sexual identity, body image, and symbiosis have been raised for discussion through the medium of initially talking about clothes with individual patients.