Schizophrenia and Parental Rejection or Ambivalence

Abstract

Two groups of psychiatric patients, schizophrenic and nonschizophrenic (ns = 19) rated “my mother,” “my father,” “my childhood,” and several other concepts on semantic-differential scales shortly after admission to hospital. Schizophrenics showed lower ratings of these three concepts on the evaluative, potency, and activity factors. Schizophrenics showed greater semantic space between the concepts “my mother”—“love” and “my father”—“love” than non-schizophrenics but a smaller semantic space between “my childhood”—“hatred,” “my mother”—“hatred,” and “my father”—“hatred.” On other concepts there were no across-the-board differences between the groups. The results were in line with the prediction that schizophrenics would exhibit a different meaning of concepts in the parent-child sphere. These results are consistent with the hypothesis of Sullivan, Arieti, and Meehl that maternal rejection or ambivalence is a prime factor in schizophrenia.