Communication Patterns of Mothers of Schizophrenics

Patterns of Transactional Style Deviance in the TAT's of Parents of Schizophrenics

“…This scoring system was shown to be composed of six meaningful factors. Still other investigators focus on the lack of clarity that characterizes communication in these families (2,3,15,20). High scores on two particular factors were found only in parents of hospitalized schizophrenics, but four factors were nondiscriminating.…”

“…One viewpoint is that the families of schizophrenics distort communication in order to maintain a family consensus (19,28). Still other investigators focus on the lack of clarity that characterizes communication in these families (2,3,15,20). Another viewpoint holds that the parents in these families consistently mislabel and misrepresent their own behavior (4, 13).…”

Information Exchange and Silence in Normal and Abnormal Families

“…It has been the consensus of opinion among therapists that in pathologic relationships there is a noticeable breakdown in communication (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 33). In abnormal families people do not seem to talk to each other as freely, frequently, or explicitly as they do in normal families.…”

Change in the Organization: The Detriment and Benefit of the Double Bind

“…Most of this research has been in a clinical setting. For example, several studies have demonstrated that mothers of schizophrenics are more likely to present double-bind messages to their children than are mothers of nonschizophrenics (Beavers, Blumberg, Timken, & Weiner, 1965;Berger, 1965;Sojit, 1971;Weakland & Fry, 1962).…”