Psychological Explanations

• what is the schizophrenogenic mother hypothesis?

  • Fromm-Reichmann (1948) proposed that schizophrenia comes from being reared by a cold and dominant mother who is both overprotective but rejecting.
  • Although such a mother appears self-sacrificing, she actually uses the child to satisfy her own emotional needs.
  • Therefore, individuals brought up with this mothering style develop schizophrenia as they are confused by their mothers overprotective but rejecting nature.
• what is the double-blind hypothesis?

  • Bateson (1956) proposed the double-bind hypothesis which suggested that schizophrenia is a reaction to a pathological parent presenting the child with a no win situation.
  • This is created by contradictory communication between tone of voice and content. For example, a mother may say, ‘Come and give mummy a cuddle’, but then freezes when the child approaches, and then tells the child off for not being affectionate.
  • This leads to a negative reaction of social withdrawal in order to escape double-bind situations.
• evaluation of double-blind (1)

  • A major drawback of this theory is that there is little evidence of double-bind communication in families associated with schizophrenia, and when it does occur it may well be the result of having a schizophrenic in the family, rather than be the sole cause of it. However, there is some evidence to support this account. Berger (1965) found that schizophrenics reported a higher recall of double-bind statements by their mothers than non-schizophrenics. This evidence may not, however, be reliable as patients’ recall may be affected by their illness.
• evaluation of double-blind (2)

  • Liem (1974) measured patterns of parental communication in families with a schizophrenic child and found no difference compared with normal families. In addition, Hall and Levin (1980) analysed data from previous studies and found no difference between families with and without a schizophrenic member in the degree to which verbal and non-verbal communication were in agreement.
• what is the expressed emotion explanation?

  • families persistently exhibit criticism, hostility and a general negative influence upon recovering schizophrenics, who when returning to their families react to the expressed emotion by relapsing and experiencing positive symptoms, such as delusions.
  • Expressed emotion (EE) is a family communication style in which members of the family of a schizophrenic talk about the person in a critical or hostile manner, or in a way which indicates emotional over-involvement or over concern.
• evaluation of expressed emotion (1)

  • Hooley et al. (1998) conducted a meta-analysis of 26 studies and found that schizophrenics returning to a family environment of high EE experienced more than twice the average rate of relapse. This was supported by Kavanagh (1992) who also conducted a meta-analysis, finding that the relapse rate for schizophrenics who returned to live with high EE families was 48% compared with 21% for those who went to live with low EE families. These studies support the claim that EE could be responsible for a patient’s relapse.
• evaluation of expressed emotion (2)

  • not all patients who live in high EE families relapse and not all patients who live in low EE homes avoid relapse and individual differences appear to play a role in how people respond to EE. Altorfer et al. (1988) found that one-quarter of the patients they studied showed no physiological responses to stressful comments from their relatives. Consequently, the vulnerability to the influence of high EE may be psychologically based.
• evaluation of family dysfunction theories (1)

  • Having a schizophrenic within a family can be problematic and extremely stressful. Therefore, it is possible that rather than dysfunctions within families causing schizophrenia, it could be that having a schizophrenic within a family leads to these dysfunctions. For example, it may be an effect of living with a schizophrenic rather than the initial cause. There is a general lack of support for family dysfunction as a causal factor, if anything it is more likely to be a maintenance factor.
• evaluation of family dysfunction theories (2)

  • fail to explain why some children in such dysfunctional families often do not go on to develop schizophrenia. If family dynamics were the sole cause of schizophrenia, then all children raised in similar environments should be sufferers but this is not the case. It is more likely that the schizophrenic has a biological predisposition to the disorder and that the unhealthy family environment combines with the biological vulnerability to cause the illness, like the diathesis-stress model proposes.