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OR the past six years, staff members of the Judge Baker Guidance F Center have been interested in studying and treating schizophrenic children and their parents. A grant from the Scottish Rite Committee for Research in Dementia Praecox made it possible to organize a research team to consolidate our previous hypotheses and systematically test them. During the course of our ongoing research we have seen a total of 38 boys and girls and their parents in intensive treatment. These children are in the latency and adolescent age groups. They are all severely ill children who show the characteristic primitive oral fixations and defense structure of childhood schizophrenia. Experience indicates that these are long-term cases, extremely difficult to treat. The results of treatment have ranged from no improvement in some children to acceptable functioning in their intellectual and social adjustment in others.Most of our information comes from prolonged treatment with mothers and children. Some cases have been in continuous treatment as long as eight years. There are fewer fathers who have been in continuous long-term treatment. The range of personality organization which we describe below applies in varying degrees to both parents.Our hypotheses regarding the etiology of childhood schizophrenia are as follows :The core anxiety of the parents and their schizophrenic child is fear of annihilation. The parents express the fear that they will be destroyed if they permit themselves to experience their inner tensions. This stems from an inadequate development of ego mechanisms necessary to deal with their primary anxiety. These parents retain the characteristics of primitive ego functioning demonstrated by the following interrelated processes: (a) Difficulty in differentiating one variety of tension from another so that aggressive, libidinal and anxiety feelings are all confused as threatening. (b) Attempting to deal with these perceptions of danger by confining the tensions to a level which is tolerable. (c) Blocking off extensive areas of life experiences and their affective associations from consciousness. (d) Organizing life into separate roles defined by known procedures. The parents assume different ego * The papers included under this heading were presented at the 1956 Annual Meeting. t This research was made possible by a grant from the Scottish Rite Committee for Research in Dementia Praecox. 683

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