Success and Failure in the Treatment of Childhood Schizophrenia

Thinking About the Family—Psychiatric Aspects

“…The association of mental illness is high not only between parents and child, but also between spouses themselves (74). Kaufman (71) also found that the parents of schizophrenic children tended to fall in the same category of disturbance with significant frequency. If the categories (29, 71) can be regarded as related to degrees of immaturity, this would indicate a tendency for people of equivalent personal immaturity to marry.…”

“…Kaufman (71) also found that the parents of schizophrenic children tended to fall in the same category of disturbance with significant frequency. If the categories (29, 71) can be regarded as related to degrees of immaturity, this would indicate a tendency for people of equivalent personal immaturity to marry. There are also some indications that the mutually supportive meshing of neurotic needs is an important factor in determining the marriage partner (121).…”

“…Delay's (29) catalogue of disturbed parental types regards the “psychotic character” as the most frequent and he describes this as a type of latent schizophrenia. Another classification of schizophrenic parents divides them into pseudoneurotic, somatic, pseudodelinquent, and overtly psychotic (71). In general, it seems safe to say that there is a positive relation between the degree of parental symptoms and the degree of illness in the child, or that maladjustment in the parents increases the probability of maladjustment in one or more of the children (41, 49, 67, 125).…”

“…Alcoholism, threats of divorce, and symptoms of anxiety and depression in the marital partner have been found following on therapeutic improvement of the patient (73). Improvement is not always followed by the eruption of symptoms, but may be accompanied by maturation of the marital partner (121) or by a realignment of relations leading to greater emotional separation and flexibility (24,70). There seems to be some agreement that the improvement of the schizophrenic child makes him less vulnerable to the mother's neurotic control and conflicting demands, thereby threatening the mother's emotional needs and rousing her anxiety (10,14).…”