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In recent years there has been considerable concern about the viability of the family in our changing American society. Conferences are held, books are written, even politicians speak of their concern for the health of the family. When one examines the mounting divorce rate, the increase in juvenile delinquency and drug addiction, and the reports of breakdown of the family in lower socioeconomic groups, these concerns are highlighted. Many worry about the state of middle-class marriages now that no-fault divorce is coming into being. What seems to have occurred is that the family is also being scape-goated just as in previous years it was momism that was responsible for psychological problems. Certain psychiatrists and movements in our society speak of the death of the family or depict marriage only as a trap and recommend alternate forms of group living and child rearing. Since a good deal of our knowledge about family function is derived from the study of psychologically disturbed individuals and their families, it is essential to obtain an unbiased picture of the family by studying the asymptomatic or normal family. Not only will this provide a comparative baseline for researchers concerned with dysfunctional families, but it will help clinicians and educators differentiate which aspects of family functioning facilitate normal personality development. The authors of this book undertake and perform a seminally important piece of work in studying both symptomatic and normal families, and finding out which forms of family functioning are correlated with what types of psychopathology.
The experimental design is multidimensional and comprehensive, consisting of in-depth interviews, global ratings by independent judges, self-report tests, and more object measures such as the microanalysis of communication using the Riskin and Faunce technique. The evaluation scales were able to differentiate families with a psychotic, delinquent, neurotic, and normal adolescent; and the