Interpersonal Distance in Families with Emotionally Disturbed Boys

Fallacy of schizophrenic deficit in the interpersonal sphere.

“…While it is certainly true that there are no currently available, universally accepted measures of the desire to associate with or disassociate from others, it does appear from the expanding body of recent literature in this area that methods relying on the organization and construction of interpersonal space possess a high degree of validity. For example, Weinstein (1967) found that the closeness between human pairs is related to perception of greater acceptance by parents; Kleck, Buck, Goller, London, Pfeiffer, and Vukcevic (1968) found that the ascription of epilepsy to a stranger results in a more distant interaction than when epilepsy is not ascribed to the stranger; Higgins, Peterson, and Dolby (1969) determined that normal males differing in adequacy of their social adjustment also differ in their distance placements of family members; Guardo (1969) offers data in support of a strong inverse relationship between the distances between figures and both the degree of acquaintance and the degree of liking; Jarmon and DuHamel (1969) showed that emotionally disturbed boys separated human figures more than matched controls. Despite the consistency of the research presenting sup-port for the construct and concurrent validity of the measure employed, it is suggested that attempts be made to replicate this study with additional instruments.…”

Perceived Parental Attitudes and Family Concepts of Disturbed Adolescents, Normal Siblings and Normal Controls

“…The normal siblings did not differ from normal children in control families on family adjustment and satisfaction, though they did show differences in content factors. In a similarly designed study, Jarmon and DuHamel (9) have obtained clearly different familial schemata (interpersonal distance structures) from disturbed children than from their normal siblings.…”