ABSTRACT
The notion that any family, when confronted with stress, tends to cope by adopting the mutually most satisfying pattern of interpersonal trans actions was proposed. Where basic conflicts preexist in family relationships, this arrangement tends to place excessive strain on one or more family members. This strain, at times, is considered to be relieved when the vulnerable family member(s) develop an illness that expresses the em o tional conflicts within the family as a whole. This illness often takes the form of a severe cognitive or emotional disturbance, such as schizophrenia. These notions that distorted family relationships are a primary factor in the etiology of schizophrenia are supported by a host of studies that showed
abnormalities in the interpersonal communication in families in which one member suffered chronic schizophrenia (Goldstein, Rodnick, Evans, May, & Sternberg, 1978). Unfortunately, few of these studies controlled for the effects of having a chronic, handicapped member. The few that did control for this chronic illness variable found no pattern of communication that was specific to schizophrenia (Farina & Holzberg, 1968; Ferreira & Winter, 1965; Hirsch & Leff, 1975). It appeared that the abnormalities of com munication are a feature of the excessive stress on the family of coping with a disturbing chronic disorder in one member. Unfortunately, despite abundant clinical evidence that interventions that involved conjoint m eet ings between the whole family and a psychotherapist were effective in improving the course of schizophrenia, disillusionment with the ability to discover a specific family communication deficit as the cause of the disorder resulted in a lack of enthusiasm for family therapy in this disorder.
