A Controlled Study of Personality Relationships in Mothers of Schizophrenic Male Patients

Size Estimation of Pictures as a Function of Thematic Content for Schizophrenic and Normal Subjects1

“…JESSE G. HARRIS sequent analysis of these data by Rodnick and Garmez/ revealed a greater deficit m patients with poor premorbid histories (on the "Scolding" scene) than in good premorbid patients or in normal S's, the latter two groups responded similarly to the task The present investigation, a study m size judgment of pictures, was an extension of this series of expenments dealing with motivational factors m schizophrenia As an investigation of the relationship between need state and perceptual behavior it was a direct outgrowth of Dunn's research As m the Dunn study, threat was symbolically conveyed m the stimulus materials rather than externally induced by £'s behavior On the basis of current conceptions of the psychogenesis of schizophrenia (11,13,17,21,22,24,25), pictures were chosen to reflect the presumably relevant themes of maternal domination, rejection (ignoring), and overprotection The selection of these three themes also permitted correlation of perceptual behavior with responses to items on three similarly named variables of an attitude scale (to be discussed under "Results") Previous tests of the general hypothesis that size judgment is influenced by the symbolic value of the object being judged have dealt with the problem of value m diflFerent ways some have assumed differences in value intensity of a given object (e g, coins) as a consequence of the ^s past experience with that object through membership in a group (eg, rich and poor children) (2,5), others have attempted to attach positive or negative incentive value to a previously neutral object withm the laboratory setting through classical or instrumental conditioning procedures (3,16) , still other investigations have introduced value into the stimulus material by presenting pictorial designs which are presumed to have symbolic significance for S by virtue of his past experience with referents of such symbols (4,7,14) The basic assumption was made in this experiment that schizophrenic patients have been more exposed to deviant maternal behavior of a dominating, ignoring, and/or overprotective nature than have psychiatrically normal persons On the additional assumption that maternal behavior can have adverse effects, to varying degrees, on the social and heterosexual adjustment of the individual, it was further reasoned that schizophrenic patients with histories of poor adjustment prior to their illness should have been more exposed to * Personal communication deviant maternal behavior than schizophrenic patients with good premorbid histories The concept of premorbidity was embodied m the underlying asstunptions of this experiment on the strength of previous successful applications of the Phillips Rating Scale of Premorbid Adjustment (20) to expenmental data This scale has been of value not only in predicting psychiatric improvement (the heterosexually more mature showing greater improvement), but also in distinguishing patients who perform adequately from those who perform inadequately in stressful laboratory tasks ...…”

The “Schizophrenogenic Mother” in Word and Deed

“…Quite contradictory findings emerged. In many studies the classical picture of the cold, rejecting, aloof mother appeared (1,11,24), but in others she was found to be overly protective, intrusive or symbiotic in her relations with the patient (2,15,20) while in some studies she showed none of these invidious characteristics (14,17).The variability in findings has been attributed to various causes, particularly to problems of the methodology used in the investigations. For instance, it has been suggested that the case record studies invariably reflect overprotection because the overprotective mother is most likely to contribute information in an anamnesis (21).…”

The Parents of the Schizophrenic

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express his gratitude to the chairman of his committee, Leo A. Hellmer, and to J. McV. Many of these earlier investigators have so concentrated on the mothers of schizophrenics that they have neglected the role of the father of the schizophrenic, stressing, by this exclusion, the presumed pathogenic "schizophrenogenic") talents of the mother (2,4,8,18,22).Historically, the male pre-schizophrenic has been characterized as inadequate and anxious in many aspects of life, e.g., Boisen (3). Specifically, the dominant-mother passive-father notion, frequently reported to be present in the backgrounds of chronic schizophrenics, is empirically evaluated.

Descriptions of the interaction between parents of schizophrenics which supply the empirical foundation for the dominant-mother, passive-father notion have been derived largely from more or less unstructured interviews, objectivity probably suffering from the interviewer's being aware that he is dealing with the parents of schizophrenics (4,8,10,13,22).

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“…Specifically, the dominant-mother passive-father notion, frequently reported to be present in the backgrounds of chronic schizophrenics, is empirically evaluated.Descriptions of the interaction between parents of schizophrenics which supply the empirical foundation for the dominant-mother, passive-father notion have been derived largely from more or less unstructured interviews, objectivity probably suffering from the interviewer's being aware that he is dealing with the parents of schizophrenics (4,8,10,13,22). Many of these earlier investigators have so concentrated on the mothers of schizophrenics that they have neglected the role of the father of the schizophrenic, stressing, by this exclusion, the presumed pathogenic "schizophrenogenic") talents of the mother (2,4,8,18,22).Historically, the male pre-schizophrenic has been characterized as inadequate and anxious in many aspects of life, e.g., Boisen (3). It may be that the quality of early training by the parents results in the induction of this extreme anxiety in the child, which in turn results in the production of a psychotogenic agent as a physiological concomitant of anxiety (9) in the hereditarily prone individual, resulting in schizophrenia.…”