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THE CONCEPT OF "EXPRESSED EMOTION" (EE) represents one of the most important discoveries in the field of psychosocial treatment of schizophrenia over the last decades. According to a recent review (Kavanagh, 1992, p. 616), it "may prove to be the most significant treatment breakthrough in schizophrenia since the discovery of neuroleptic medication." The studies that later led to the refinement and validation of this concept, and to its utilization for preventing schizophrenic relapses, were initiated in England by Brown and his collaborators (1958), (1962, etc.) in the late fifties. At the time, the cultural atmosphere was characterized both by the newly discovered phenothiazines treatment for schizophrenia, and by the English social psychiatry movement, which, with its trend toward deinstitutionalization, was gradually challenging the traditional vision of mental illness and its treatment. The discharge of many patients from psychiatric hospitals and their management in the community brought new problems to the attention of mental health professionals and patients' families. The importance of EE studies derives from the possibility, offered by these studies, to test, through a rigorous methodology, a psychosocial approach to the treatment of schizophrenia.
It is interesting to note that this trend is somehow at odds with the