The Differential Pressures Towards Schizophrenia and Delinquency / סכיזופרניה ועבריינות

Morbidity is not a disease entity but a social deviance caused by breakdown in socialisation — defined as double-bind in the case of morbidity, and as conflict in the case of delinquency. Specifically, autism is a fixation on the early oral phase, resulting in a hazy ego-boundary caused by the lack of sufficient interaction with an "other" — due to a neglecting mother. The postulated behaviour is an inability to distinguish between the self and the outside world, i.e. retreat from stimuli, uncommittedness, hesitation and reaction mainly to non-symbolic stimuli. Paranoia is a fixation on the later oral phase, resulting in an over-strong ego-boundary caused by a rejecting mother. The outcome is a perception of a good "me", while all badness is imputed to the outside, of which the rejecting mother is the prime representative. The postulated behaviour due to imputation of badness to the "other" is a reaction mainly to badness, principally in symbolic communication, and a completely unrealistic perception of the outside world — the self is so well distinguished that the nature of stimuli has little bearing on their perception, which is dictated principally by the self. Delinquency is fixated on a much later phase of socialisation, and caused by conflcting norms transmitted either by different agents or by symbolic and non-symbolic communication of the same agent. The postulated behaviour is a strong awareness of conflicts, specifically in family situations. The populations studied were four groups of thirty Ss each, i.e. autists, paranoiacs, criminals and normal hospital patients, all staying in total institutions for a lengthy period. All were males aged 18 to 30. The hypotheses were tested by Ss' reaction to recorded sentences simulating double-binds by a contradiction between the tone of voice and content, and simulating conflict situations by conflicting contents in a single sentence. Ss reacted to these by grading them on four semantic differential scales running from good to bad, pleasant to unpleasant, soothing to frightening and gentle to cruel. They also specified whether they perceived a contradiction between tone and contents, and then between statements in the contradicting contents sentences. Findings point to a verification of the above hypotheses, except for the conflicts orientation of delinquents, which was not verified.