The author achieves a remarkable thesis of psychoanalytic develop¬ mental theory, family psychodynamics, and the cognitive developmental scheme of Piaget on the development of the individuals to become schizo¬ phrenic and their family settings.
The careful scrutiny of the 14 families containing schizophrenic offspring reveals that the marital relationships of all parents were seriously disturbed and the family environments provided by their marriages were badly distorted or "skewed".
The Boer War and first World War gave rise to descriptions of the appearance of Graves' disease in relation to the stress of combat and the role of emotional factors in the etiology of thyrotoxicosis.
This presentation is concerned solely with a group of refractory patients who were repeatedly readmitted to the Johns Hopkins Hospital in diabetic acidosis, and generalizations from this study cannot be extended to other diabetics unless through the assumption that study of the most pathologic sharpens perception of lesser abnormalities.
Scrutiny of differences between families containing schizophrenic sons and those with schizophrenic daughters serves to clarify many of the apparent inconsistencies in the literature concerning characteristics of the parental personalities and their ways of relating to their schizophrenic offspring.
Evidence is provided that the parents of schizophrenic patients show significantly more evidence of thought disorder than control and that family forms and styles of thinking and communicating are related to thought disorder in the offspring.
Analysis of the data provided by the Danish-American studies of the relatives of adoptees who became schizophrenic demonstrates that the data do not support the investigators' claims that their studies provide conclusive evidence of a significant genetic factor in the etiology of schizophrenia.
Altschule has been unable to validate findings which indicate that schizophrenic subjects do not show normal responsiveness of the adrenal cortical hormones to ACTH or to stress: findings which Hoefer and Glaser have clearly shown that ACTH alters the activity of the central nervous system.
The twofold intent is to adapt psychiatric insights and skills to the needs of a medical service, and to modify the orientation of medical therapy to include the emotional and social needs of the patient.