Familial attitudes in paranoid schizophrenics and normals from two socioeconomic classes.

Thinking About the Family—Psychiatric Aspects

“…This is not surprising since the family is the mediating agency of cultural influences. There seems to be a trend in this country for the mother to be the more dominant figure in lower class families (76,101). Ethnic and cultural differences have been reported (59), particularly in Opler's work on Irish and Italian schizophrenic families (104,105,106).…”

“…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). In contrast to the strong, influential position of the mother, the father of the drug addict provided little more than a shadowy background figure (94); a similar constellation has been observed in fathers of manic‐depressives (47).…”

“…As a general rule, where one partner assumes a more dominant, ascendent, or aggressive stance, the other partner is found to occupy a more submissive, compliant, dependent or passive position. This can be found in families where the child is phobic (5, 77), maladjusted (12, 124), and schizophrenic (29, 39, 45, 46, 86, 111). In the case of schizophrenia, as an example of more general trends, no clear‐cut pattern is discernible (62, 82) but reciprocal functioning is the usual finding (54).…”

“…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).…”

Maternal Childrearing Control History and Subsequent Cognitive and Personality Functioning of the Offspring

“…Empirical support for a nq;arlve relationship between maternal control and the offspring's level of adjuscmenr comes from direct clinical observation (Dworin & Wyant, 1957;Gerard & Siegal, 1950;Jenkins, 1952;Lidz & Lidz, 1949;Reichard & Tilman, 1950;Tietz, 1949) and a variety of psychometric or laboratory studies (Baxter & Becker, 1962;Farina, 1960;Freeman & Grayson, 1955;Garmezy, Clark, & Stockner, 1961;Harris, 1955;Kohn & Clausen, 1956;Lane & Singer, 1959;Mark, 1951). Five previous studies in which the PARI has been employed as a measure of perceived maternal control have shown the predicted 'Seclusion of morher, breaking the will, martyrdom, fear of harming the baby, excluding outside influences, approval ot activity, avoidance of communication, inconsiderateness of husband, suppression of sex, ascendance of mother, intrusiveness, acceleration of development, dependency of mother.…”