Psychological Explainations

• Family Dysfunctions - Explainations that attempt to link schizophrenia to childhood and adult experiences living in a dysfunctional family.
• The three family Dysfunction explainations are; Schizophrenic mother, Double Blind and Expressed Emotion.
• Schizophrenic Mother

  • proposed by Fromm-Reichman who used explainations based on accounts from her patients about their childhood.
  • Cold, rejecting and Controlling - family climate marked by tension and secrecy
  • Leads to distrust and later paranoid delusions.
• Double-Bind Hypothesis 


  Bateson et al suggests that children that frequently recieve contradictory messages from parents are more likely to develop schizophrenia. This causes the child to be unsure how to act and when they are wrong they are punished with the withdrawn of love. They may view the world as dangerous and confusing - disorganised thinking and paranoia.
• Expressed emotion - the level of negative emotion expressed towards a patient by a carer.

  • Verbal criticism & possibly violence - hostility, anger + rejection.
  • Emotional over-involvement in the life of the patient.

  Source of serious stress for the patient - can cause relapse or onset of symptoms in vulnerable patients.
• Dysfunctional thinking - information processing that dows not represent reality accurately and produces undesireable consequences - Focuses on the role of internal mental processes.
• Frith identified 2 dysfunctional thought processes; Meta-representation and central control.
• Meta represenatation refers to the ability to reflect on our own thoughts and behaviour - allows us insight into our intentions + goals.

  • A dysfunction in this area would impact our ability to recognise our thoughts and behaviour as our own.

  Explains delusions like thought insertion.
• Central control refers to our ability to suppress automatic responses - Allows us to focus on deliberate/intentional actions

  • Dysfuntion in this area would lead to derailment of thought - disorganised thoughts , each word leads to a new association which cannot be surpressed.

  Explaination for disorganised speech.
• Evaluation Psych Explainations- Research Support

  • Indicators of family dysfunction include insecure attachment and exposure to childhood trauma
  • Read found adults with schizophrenia disproportionately like to have insecure attachment.
  • 69% of women and 59% of men with schizophrenia have a history of physical of sexual abuse.
• Evaulation Psych Explaination - Lack of Support

  • Although there is plenty of evidence for the role of family dysfunction, there is little evidence for schizophrenogenic mother or double binds.
  • Both these theories are based on clinical observations of patients, and informal assessment of the personality of mothers of patients, but not systematic evidence.
• Evaluation Psych Explainations - Parent Blaming

  • Insecure attachment and experience of childhood trauma may affect individual vulnerability to schizophrenia. However this reseach is socially sensitive as it can lead to parent balming and adds insult to injury
• Counterpoint to Parent Blaming

  • However psychologists should not shy away from investigating sensitive topics. With the correct precautions and considerations taken. The benefits of such reseach will hugely outweigh the costs and will have countless real world applications in childcare, parenting skills, social work and many more.
• Evaluate Cognitive Explain - Impairing Cognitive Functions

  • Stirling et al found people with schizophrenia took over twice as long to complete the stroop task compaired to non-schizophrenic patients - cognitve impairment

  Suggesting that the cognitive processes of people with schizophrenia are impaired.
• Evaulate Cognitive Explain... - Proximal Explaination

  • These explainations are only proximal as they only explain what is happening right now to produce symptoms - rather than distal explainations which focus on what initially caused the condition, such as genetic and family dysfunction.
  • This is a reductionist explaination.