According to Wolman, schizophrenia is not a disease in the medical sense nor a narcissistic disorder as suggested by Freud. Following, to some extent, Federn's ideas, Wolman sees in schizophrenia a human tragedy evolving out of improper social relations in early childhood. Normally, a child is narcissistic: he wants his needs to be taken care of (in Wolman's terminology the child's social attitude is “instrumental”). As a result of both maturation and learning, one develops a give-and-take or “mutual” attitude. Mature adults are also capable of a “give without take” or “vectorial” attitude. Obviously, the infant-versus-mother attitude is instrumental, adult sexuality and marriage are mutual, and the parent-versus-child attitude is vectorial.

Wolman's study of the families of 101 hospitalized and ambulatory schizophrenics has disclosed certain peculiarities in these families. The intraparental attitude is hostile: mothers' attitudes to children who will become schizophrenic are allegedly self-sacrificing and pseudo-vectorial, but