THE INTRAFAMILIAL ENVIRONMENT OF SCHIZOPHRENIC PATIENTS: II. MARITAL SCHISM AND MARITAL SKEW

The careful scrutiny of the 14 families containing schizophrenic offspring reveals that the marital relationships of all parents were seriously disturbed. Eight of the families were split into 2 factions by the overt schism between the parents. In these schismatic families the parents repeatedly threatened to separate; one spouse sought to coerce the other to conform to rigid expectations and aroused defiance; difficulties of almost any type engendered recriminations between parents rather than mutual support. The parents derogated and undercut one another, and thus the child could not use one parent as a model for identification or as a love object without antagonizing the other parent. The other 6 couples lived together in reasonable harmony, but the family environments provided by their marriages were badly distorted or "skewed" because in each marriage the serious psychopathology of the dominant parent was accepted or shared by the other. Studies now in progress will seek to clarify further the difficulties in these marriages, the personalities involved, and the effects upon the children.