This article will review in detail the current status of quantifiable family interaction research. It will concentrate on the work done since 1960. An extensive reference list and glossary covering key workers and their concepts are appended.

An evaluative review of family interaction research

The role of the family in the development of psychopathology.

This is a slightly edited version of a chapter to appear in a forthcoming book. It is a beginning attempt at codification of existing tools and techniques and is therefore nonexhaustive. The authors welcome feedback from readers concerning omissions and information on new techniques, references, and applicability to therapeutic settings.

Tools and techniques for diagnosis and evaluation in marital and family therapy.

The belief that the patient's family has played an important role in the development of his mental disease appears to be held by a large proportion of professional workers concerned with psychiatric conditions. The idea is the central one in many attempts to explain the etiology of mental illness, and it appears to guide the professional activity of the majority of clinicians and researchers alike. While this hypothesis is held with conviction, data unambiguously supporting it, and especially data which elaborate the role of the family in mental illness more specifically, cannot readily be found, as Spiegel and Bell 22 have pointed out. Ambiguity as to just what role, if any, the family does play in the development of mental illness is not due to lack of attempts at clarification. Reports of such research efforts are plentiful. There are, however, some very substantial reasons for the con

Measurement of family relationships and their effects.

Psychologists generally make the assumption that the experiences to which the individual is exposed over a period of time lead to the development of learned patterns of behavior. From this, psychologists have reasoned that the experiences the individual has in his early life at home, with his family, in general, and his mother, in particular, are major determinants in the learning of the constellation of behaviors subsumed under the rubric, personality, and in particular, the development of psychopatholo gy. A review of the research of the past 40 yr. failed to support this assumption. No factors were found in the parent-child interaction of schizophrenic s, neurotics, or those with behavior disorders which could be identified as unique to them or which could distinguish one group from the other, or any of the groups from the families of the controls. As psychopatholo gy came to be viewed as the consequence of the emotional experiences to which the individual was exposed, interest was focused on the earliest of such experiences, those that occur in the family. The human infant is born incapable of sustaining its own life for a considerable length of time following birth, and is, in consequence, dependent upon the mother or a mother substitute for its very existence. There is no wonder, therefore, that the mother-child relationship is a dose one and is expected to be influential with regard to the psychological development of the child. Some explanations for the development of psychopathology have therefore focused on this particular relationship as the major etiological factor. Levy (1931, 1932, 1937, 1943) has described a pattern centering around \"maternal overprotection,\" involving a constellation of attitudes which he felt contributed to the development of neurotic disorders, and Despert (1938) focused on a kind of mother-child relationship which seemed to her to be closely associated with the development of schizophrenia, a pattern which has come to be termed the \"schizophrenogenic mother.\" The hypothesis that the emotional climate of the interpersonal relationships within the family—and between the child and its mother in particular—ha s a decisive part in the

"The role of the family in the development of psychopathology": Erratum.

Direct study of childparent interactions. Workshop, 1959. 1. The structured situational test: a method for studying family interaction in schizophrenia.

Richard Q. Bell

Papers

Direct study of childparent interactions. Workshop, 1959. 1. The structured situational test: a method for studying family interaction in schizophrenia.