Sequential patterning of emotional interaction in families with a schizophrenic son

Abstract

In 30 families with a schizophrenic son conjoint family discussions which had been generated by Strodtbeck's "Revealed Differences Technique" were analyzed on the strength of the "Relationship-Scale" developed by Riskin and Faunce. All three members of the family triad (two parents and son) proved to be more hostile and rejecting than their parallels in a control group of families whose sons had been admitted because of an acute surgical condition. However, no significant difference could be ascertained in the sequential patterning of interaction assessed by means of time-series analysis. In both family groups Bernoulli processes predominated, i.e. there was no dependence between the sequentially recorded speech units. A 2-year follow-up of the schizophrenic patients showed a contradictory pattern of results. In families with re-hospitalized sons there was only a slight and statistically insignificant tendency towards more negative relationships but the sub-groups of families containing a schizophrenic son differed clearly on the level of sequential data; more families with re-hospitalized sons showed autoregressive (morphogenetic) or moving average (morphostatic) processes.