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This book is Research Monograph No. 6 of the American Orthopsychiatric Association; and it describes the nature and results of a joint study of schizophrenia in terms of the three disciplines of psychology, psychiatry, and social study. The actual material studied was that provided by two groups of patients referred to the Michael Reese
Hospital, Chicago, and considered on clinical grounds to display evidence of schizophrenic involvement—viz. a group of children and one of adults. The contribution of the psychiatrists was to supply, in the case of each patient, numerical ratings on a scale of 1–11 for 120 selected traits regarded as constituting 'a trait universe'. These traits were selected on the basis of clinical observation interpreted psycho-analytically in terms of (a) defences, (b) ego-functions, (c) emotions, and (d) restitutive forces. The contribution of the psychologists was to provide a Rorschach assessment for each patient in terms of clusters of significant traits and significant combinations of such clusters; and it is interesting to note that among the clusters isolated were (1) preoccupation with genitality and bodily functions, (2) perceptual inaccuracy with low mental drive, (3) withdrawal from the outer world, (4) indifference to familiar and conventional stimuli, and (5) emotional indifference. The data obtained by the psychiatric (clinical) and psychological (experimental) investigations were then correlated—a task rendered easier by the fact that the psychiatric approach pivoted upon an ego-psychology and the Rorschach approach upon the theory of an ego-affect balance. Attention was thus primarily concentrated upon the functioning of the ego. The statistical analysis to which the Rorschach results were subjected was effected by means of Stevenson's Q-technique, which possesses the advantage that it does not depend upon the establishment of norms derived from the study of large samples of the population, but is capable of yielding vali