Data from the analyses of two women clarify some of the ways in which disturbances in separation and individuation produce or aggravate later psychopathology. The data also demonstrate that the often critical events of the preverbal years are more accessible to psychoanalytic investigation in the treatment of adults than has heretofore been assumed. Patients whose preverbal development has been impaired tend to reveal frequent body manifestations of conflict, and they tend to have florid physical complaints more often than other patients.