Patient-Family Similarities in Schizophrenia

Thinking About the Family—Psychiatric Aspects

“…(55) The family system evolves into a self-reinforcing and mutually destructive network of interaction in which the primary emphasis is on the preservation of existing patterns. The family system is consequently highly resistive to external change (106,115). The operation of such homeostatic mechanisms has been observed by other family therapists (2,3,7,14).…”

“…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).…”

“…As soon as the anxiety becomes severe enough, the parents revert to the former ways of functioning (17). The family thus forms a sort of highly inflexible system which is quite resistant to any external alteration (54,76,115). It has been found that even advice given to the parents is badly distorted by the emotional involvement of the parents in the child's symptoms (78).…”

A Review of the Double Bind Theory

“…“Symonds (81) sees in the double bind situation one of the sources of the schizophrenic process but does not believe that it accounts for the entire disorder. Also, Rosenthal (65), in a study on identity confusion in twins, refers to the double bind concept as one of the patterns of mother‐child relationship leading to this confusion. Clausen and Kohn (21), Rioch (63), Meyers and Goldfarb (55), Goldfarb (38), Varley (85), and Spiegel and Bell (78) concur in the specificity of the double bind situation in the families of schizophrenics.…”

Family Relationship Variables in Schizophrenia

“…Stierlin ( 1959) has also corroborated these general observations, focusing primarily on the mother-child dyad, where he has proposed the term "minority reality" for the model of irrationality she provides. Rosenbaum ( 1961 ) has investigated the proposition that the schizophrenic and his illness are dynamically related to the environment in which he lives. He has proposed that "all the qualities of disordered thinking and interpersonal relation which have been described for the individual schizophrenic have recognizable counterparts in his family".…”