Twenty-eight male schizophrenic patients, whose psychosis was related to a pregnancy or the birth of a child, were found to have a characteristic relationship to the important persons in the environment. Their demands for dependency, because they could not be satisfied, produced hostility and poorly suppressed aggression, frequently directed against the self. Their wives were controlling and possessive; they were unable to accept excessive demands, and often regarded their husbands as additional children. The patients themselves had suffered unusually severe deprivations in their very early relationships and came mostly from large families; a significant proportion of them had lost one or both parents by death or separation before the age of twelve. As parents they sensed the new child as a rival for the satisfaction of their wishes for pregenital dependency.