Psychological Explanations

• Family dysfunction

  • Schizophrenogenic mother
  • Double-bind theory
  • Expressed Emotion
• Cognitive explanations

  • Dysfunctional thinking
  • Frith 1992 et al = Central control dysfunction & Metarepresentation dysfunction
• Schizophrenogenic Mother

  Fromm-Reichmann 1948; psychodynamic

  • a mother who causes schizophrenia in a child by being cold, rejecting, controlling and creates tension in thee family and are secretive therefore distrust therefore paranoid delusions
• Double-Bind theory


  Bateson 1972 emphasised role of communication

  • feeling trapped and unable to comment on the unfairness of the the situation or seek clarification
  • child is punished by withdrawal of love therefore views world as confusing and dangerous - paranoid delusions, disorganised thinking
• Expressed Emotions


  carer's level of emotion expressed towards patient - serious source of stress and explanation for relapse

  • verbal criticism with violence
  • hostility - anger and rejection
  • emotional over-involvement - needless self-sacrifice
• Dysfunctional Thinking


  impaired cognition from inaccurate representations of reality

  • reduced thought processing in ventral striatum correlate to negative symptoms
  • Simon 2015 et al = reduced thought processing in temporal and cingulate gyro associated with hallucinations
• Metarepresentation Dysfunction


  disruption of ability to recognise own actions and thoughts

  • hallucinations of hearing voices and delusions
• Central Control Dysfunction


  inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts

  • derailment of thoughts due to words triggering associations therefore schizophrenic person unable to suppress automatic responses to these
• Support - research

  • Berry 2008; Read 2005; Mørkved 2017 - schizophrenic adults had family trauma therefore strongly suggests family dysfunction increases vulnerability to schizophrenia - CA: highly socially-sensitive as it can lead to parent-blaming which adds to stress and pain of watching their schizophrenic child suffer
• Read 2005


  meta analysis - 69% women and 59% men have physical/sexual abuse history
• Berry 2008


  adults with an insecure attachment more like to be schizophrenic
• Mørkved 2017


  schizophrenic adults have at least one childhood trauma
• Limitation -

  schizophrenogenic mother & double-bind - doesn't support family based theories as they are based on clinical observation and informal assessments of mother's personality therefore no systematic evidence to account for link between childhood trauma and schizophrenia - CA: it's useful evidence as it shows childhood attachment affects vulnerability
• research support - dysfunctional thought processing

  Stirling 2006 = schizophrenics struggled with stroop task, twice as long to name the colour that the word is written in - results are what Frith predicted with the central control theory as there was difficulty in suppressing automatic processing therefore cognitive processes of schizophrenics are impaired
• limitation - approximal explanation


  cognitive explanations only explain proximal origins of symptoms (what is happening now to produce symptoms) - it doesn't address how genetic variation or childhood trauma may lead to problems with metarepresentation or central control therefore cognitive explanations only provide partial explanations
• stroop task

  name the ink color of a color word if there is a mismatch between ink color and word. For example, the word GREEN printed in red ink.