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During the preparation of an article on the communication habits of members of “schizophrenic families,” I was impressed with the continued preoccupation in the field with the concept of “schizophrenogenic” mother. Many published studies and articles relating to the interpersonal, psychogenic etiology of schizophrenia emphasize the role of the mother in this etiology frequently, to the exclusion of consideration of the roles of other members of the family of of other interpersonal influences.
Despite the fact that this concept is attractive in several ways as an explanation of the genesis of schizophrenia, there has accumulated sufficient clinical, statistical and experimental evidence to raise considerable doubt as to its validity. In addition, a growing trend in psychiatric thinking toward a broader understanding of the etiology of schizophrenia directs us away from such a simple concept as this. I believe, therefore, that a short review of the concept and some of the conflicting evidence is in order.
This concept of the schizophrenogenic mother has been familiar and has commanded considerable attention during the past one-and-a-half decades. It is generally accepted that the term first used in a paper by the late Frieda Fromm-Reichmann.8 In context, the term appears to have served Fromm-Reichmann as a convenient phrase in a review of “schizophrenic dynamics” before getting down to the business of discussing the therapy at which she was so close to her capacious heart. No extensive theoretic comment accompanies her use of the term either