This painstaking statistical paper tests the broad hypothesis that the degree of illness of a patient is a function of the degree of illness of his parents. Both parents of twenty normal men, twenty neurotic men, and twenty schizophrenic men were tested and rated by a variety of psychological tests and interviews. The results were not striking. In general, parents of the normal were less disturbed than those of the other two groups. The only point of note was that in this study there was no evidence that the mother had the decisive role of impact on the child, but, rather, that the interaction between the parents did.