Family-Based Psychological Explanations
Psychology: AQA A Level, topic 12.2.1
Introduction to Family-Based Explanations
Psychological explanations focus on the psychological environment and abnormal cognitions, such as family relations, communication patterns, and thought processes involved in the experience of schizophrenia.
Family dysfunction
- Family dysfunction studies investigate the link between schizophrenia and childhood and adult experiences of living in a dysfunctional family.
Theory of expressed emotion
- The theory of expressed emotion (EE) highlights the impact of negative environments (hostile or critical) on schizophrenic patients.
- If family/carers direct high levels of negative expressed emotion towards the patient, this can place the patient under a great deal of stress.
- This situation correlated to relapses in schizophrenic patients after being discharged. Vaughn and Leff (1967).
- But stress might also be a contributory factor in the initial onset of schizophrenia.
Family-Based Explanations - The Schizophrenogenic Mother
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1948) proposed the theory of the schizophrenogenic mother.
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1948)
- Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1948) proposed the theory of the schizophrenogenic mother.
- The theory is based on reports from her own patients about their childhoods and their relationship with their mothers.
Results of Fromm-Reichmann (1948)
- Many of Fromm-Reichmann’s (1948) patients spoke of cold, rejecting and controlling mothers and a family climate characterised by tension and secrecy.
- She referred to these mothers as schizophrenogenic, meaning schizophrenia causing.
- Schizophrenogenic mothering leads to distrust that can later develop into paranoid delusions and, ultimately, schizophrenia.
Family-Based Explanations - The Double-Bind Theory
Bateson et al. (1972) proposed the double-bind theory.
Importance of communication patterns
- Bateson et al. (1972) proposed the double-bind theory.
- They agreed with Fromm-Reichmann (1948) that the family climate was a factor in the development of schizophrenia.
- But they placed greater emphasis on the role of communication patterns.
Fear of doing wrong
- Double-bind theory proposed that developing children often find themselves in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing, but receive mixed messages about what this is. They feel unable to comment on the unfairness of the situation or to seek clarification.
Belief in a confusing world
- Double-bind theory suggests that, when the child is punished for getting things wrong by the parent withdrawing love, the child is left with a belief in a world that is confusing and dangerous.
- This results in symptoms such as disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions.
Risk factor, not cause
- Bateson (1972) emphasised that such patterns of communication were not the main type of communication, and that the double-bind represented a risk factor, not a cause of schizophrenia.
Test yourself on Family-Based Psychological Explanations
Who found a correlation between high levels of negative expressed emotion towards the patient and relapses in schizophrenic patients after being discharged?
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann proposed the theory of the schizophrenogenic mother in which year?
Which of these is true of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1948)?
Bateson et al. (1972) agreed with Fromm-Reichmann (1948) that the family climate was a factor in the development of schizophrenia. But they placed greater emphasis on what?