I have primarily been trying to convey the inherent connection between schiophrenia and the linguistic and cognitive disturbances that are critical attributes of the condition. Ego functioning depends upon language and the ability to abstract common attributes in experiences and categorize them by the appropriate words. The capacity to use language is a uniquely human capacity which all undamaged infants possess; but learning language is a highly involved process that depends largely on the nature of the tutelage and the tutors in the family. It is not a skill learned in isolation but involves and reflects the entire process of personality development. I have tried to indicate some of the ways in which parents of schizophrenic patients are deficient tutors and how the family they create is an inappropriate milieu for teaching the child his cardinal adaptive tool. I have sought to illustrate both how poor grounding in linguistic abilities prepares the way for schizophrenic withdrawal and also how distorted meanings and ways of thinking become an inherent part of the offspring in such families.