Twenty-five mothers of adult schizophrenic patients were studied psychiatrically, each for about six interviews. They were found to be overanxious, obsessive and domineering in type, rigid, perfectionistic and oversolicitous in their attitudes toward their children. Their own psychosexual development was warped and inhibited and was reflected in their repressive attitudes toward libidinal gratification in their children. Rejection of and hostility toward the children were almost always present, either directly or in more subtle forms. Particularly dangerous and traumatic were the mothers whose domination of the children took subtle forms of expression and was hidden under a superficial layer of seemingly passive and docile behavior.