Adolescent Maladjustment and Family Dynamics

Thinking About the Family—Psychiatric Aspects

“…Another classification of schizophrenic parents divides them into pseudoneurotic, somatic, pseudodelinquent, and overtly psychotic (71). In general, it seems safe to say that there is a positive relation between the degree of parental symptoms and the degree of illness in the child, or that maladjustment in the parents increases the probability of maladjustment in one or more of the children (41, 49, 67, 125). Ehrenwald (32, 33) even goes so far as to speak of “psychological contagion,” applying it to the transmission of symptomatology from parent to child.…”

“…Mothers of school phobic children are described as anxious, ambivalent, hostile, immature, insecure in their maternal role, and demanding (5,23,26,35,40). Mothers of children with adjustment problems are found to be ineffective, irresponsible, weak, self-critical, competitive for authority, completely giving, completely rejecting, mothering, and hostile (12,112,124). Children suffering from ulcerative colitis seem to have mothers who are insecure, inadequate in their maternal role, and ambivalent (75,98).…”

“…Here too the maladjustment of the child was found to be associated with personality disturbance, as had been the case in research on mothers. Fathers of poorly adjusted children were often found to be domineering, authoritarian, hypercritical, or passive, ineffectual, unable to cope with family responsibility, and engaged in a passive-aggressive undercutting of the mother's authority (12,31,116,124). In cases of school phobia, the father's position was often weak ineffectual and passive (26,77,97).…”

“…It seems likely, therefore, that the emphasis given to these factors in the genesis of mental illness has not been altogether warranted. The question is more complex, however, since it has been noted that the decline in the dependence of the mothering figure on the child in cases of adolescent maladjustment is often experienced by the adolescent as rejection (124). By the same token, Bowen (14) has reported that in his small group of research families, none of the mothers was rejecting, but that they were all perceived by the schizophrenic patient as rejecting.…”

“…As a general rule, where one partner assumes a more dominant, ascendent, or aggressive stance, the other partner is found to occupy a more submissive, compliant, dependent or passive position. This can be found in families where the child is phobic (5,77), maladjusted (12,124), and schizophrenic (29,39,45,46,86,111). In the case of schizophrenia, as an example of more general trends, no clear-cut pattern is discernible (62, 82) but reciprocal functioning is the usual finding (54).…”