Contradictory Parental Expectations in Schizophrenia

This paper reports some preliminary findings of one aspect of a research on schizophrenic patients and their families. Previous investigations such as the works of Lidz,¹²⁻¹⁶Hill,⁶Wynne,²¹Bowen,²,³Bateson,¹and Jackson⁸have indicated that parental pathology or pathological patterns of interpersonal relationships in the family are of etiological significance to the development of schizophrenia. Most of these studies have concentrated on the patients' families. In comparing parental or parent-child relations in the schizophrenics' families with those in the nonschizophrenics' families, other investigators use "normals" or "psychoneurotics" as controls. The pieces of research by Kohn,¹⁰Clausen,⁴and Myers and Roberts¹⁸are examples of this type. These latter researches have shown the prevalence of certain patterns of parental authority structure in the schizophrenics' families which are different from those in the nonschizophrenic families, at least