No More Learning

Having recognized frankly the difficulties in accounting for agoraphobic symptoms entirely in terms of learning theory, Marks believes nevertheless that the theory has much to offer. The
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hypothesis he advances is based on the idea, suggested by learning theory, 'that panic attacks and depression [may] act as super-reinforcers which facilitate phobic conditioning' whenever a patient who happens to be experiencing such affects goes out of his home. This line of thought leads Marks to propose that, in the development of agoraphobia, the anxiety
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attack comes first and the situations that the patient reports he fears come to be feared only later, either as a result of a secondary conditioning effect or as a result of rationalization. In that context both fear of going out of the house and fear of becoming separated from a companion, the two symptoms most characteristic of agoraphobic patients, are held to develop through a process of secondary conditioning.
In keeping with his hypothesis, Marks expresses much scepticism regarding the causal role of precipitating factors, holding that they probably act simply as 'non-specific stressors in a patient already liable to the disorder . . . or that the disorder was already present, but hidden until the stressor elicited or exacerbated it'. In support of his position he lays much emphasis on his claim that 'not a few phobias start suddenly without any obvious change in the life- situation of the patient' (p. 128 ).
Both the sequence of events that Marks postulates and the weakness of his position are illustrated in his description of the case of a woman who sought treatment at the age of thirtythree on account of depression with suicidal ideas. The account she then gave was that, ten years earlier when she was aged twenty-three, she had developed anxiety, sweating, and shaking of the legs while travelling to work by train. Subsequently she had discovered that she felt better if her husband was present and so had taken a job in the firm in which he worked. After a few months, however, she had become afraid of separation from him, had to know exactly where he was and had telephoned him frequently. If for any reason she could not contact him immediately she would panic, feel completely lost and want to scream.
The only information Marks gives regarding this patient's childhood is that 'as a small child [she] used to be frightened when her parents were out and once sent out her younger brother to find them. She had infrequent desires to scream which were hard to stifle. These disappeared in her late teens. '
Despite the uncertain validity of the retrospective data, Marks seems confident about the sequence of symptoms: 'First came the travel phobia and depersonalization, then came the discovery of relief in the presence of her husband and after this he became indispensable. Finally the patient presented for treatment of separation anxiety. ' In accounting for the symptoms Marks proposes two distinct pathologies. On the one hand is the agoraphobia and on the other is the anxiety about
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separation, to which he believes the patient had been sensitized as a child. Originating independently, the two pathologies are held subsequently to have interacted.
There are several flaws in Marks's position. First, in the light of the childhood history of this patient, it is difficult to accept his confident assertion that agoraphobia came first and separation anxiety afterwards. Second, in his ready acceptance of this and other patients'
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accounts that the initial anxiety attack came 'out of the blue', he makes no allowance for a patient's witting or unwitting suppression of information, a process we know to be extremely common and often to hide clues vital for understanding the condition. Third, to postulate two distinct psychopathologies for a pair of symptoms that habitually go together 1 is far from parsimonious. Finally, as Marks himself admits, he can give no explanation of how or why this patient (or any other) first started to experience anxiety and panic attacks.
An alternative hypothesis to account for this patient's symptoms is that, during her childhood, she had been subjected to repeated and realistic threats of being abandoned, so that even after reaching adult life she had continued to be acutely sensitive to any such danger. The case is discussed further below (p. 307 ).
As regards the part played by a patient's parents in the genesis of agoraphobia, learning theorists share with traditional psychoanalysts the same shadowy picture. Whereas neither group attributes much importance to parental behaviour, in so far as they do so both invoke the theory of spoiling. As Andrews ( 1966) points out, Wolpe ( 1958) and Lazarus ( 1960), two leading learning theorists, both regard a patient's tendencies to withdraw to and to remain at home as responses he has learnt during interaction with over-protective parents. Marks ( 1969) in his discussion of prevention implies the same process. Some years earlier Terhune ( 1949), a psychiatrist whose outlook is in many ways similar to that of present-day learning theorists, wrote confidently: 'The phobic person is one who has been over-protected, brought up "soft". '
3. The third main type of theorizing about agoraphobia,
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1 Marks rests his argument on his finding that about 5 per cent of agoraphobic patients are
not helped by company and prefer to be alone while travelling ( Marks 1969: 98). in most syndromes, however, cases occur that lack one or more typical symptoms; an example is measles without a rash. Such atypical cases require special study.
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initiated by Roth ( 1959; 1960), regards the condition as being truly psychosomatic. In presenting his theory, Roth lays much emphasis on the vulnerable personalities of his patients, on the precipitating role of stressful events, and on depersonalization, which he regards as a core symptom of the syndrome. The psychological factors to which he points include both situations that, acting perhaps from early childhood, are thought to have contributed to the development of an anxious dependent personality, and stressful events, such as bereavement and illness, that appear to act as precipitants. The somatic factor he postulates is a specific cerebral mechanism that, once triggered, is difficult to inactivate. After considering certain disturbances of perception and consciousness that he finds in these patients, together with symptoms that he attributes to temporal lobe dysfunction, Roth concludes that the somatic pathology is probably to be understood as arising in the mechanisms regulating awareness, which he postulates to have become chronically deranged. Although he gives little detail of how he believes a difficult childhood and stressful situations of later life interact to produce an agoraphobic syndrome, Roth's approach is not incompatible with that presented here.
We turn now to consider a fourth type of theory, namely the one that results when the problem of agoraphobia is looked at in the theoretical perspective developed in this work.
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Throughout our further discussion it is important to bear in mind that, as all workers now agree, the central symptom of the condition under scrutiny is fear of leaving home.
Pathogenic patterns of family interaction
Whether the theory of anxious attachment, applied already to problems of school phobia, can help to solve problems of agoraphobia also must remain in doubt. For, apart from some limited and mostly rather crude observations, there are few data yet available on patterns of interaction within an agoraphobic patient's family of origin. Almost all the data yet published come either from the patient himself or from a single interview with a relative, with the many distortions and omissions that we know such clinical procedures entail. What is missing, but so necessary to have, is first-hand observations of how a patient and his parents are currently behaving towards one another. In the absence of such data all that is possible here is to draw attention to certain reasonably well-attested findings
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that are at least consonant with the view that many, if not all, cases of agoraphobia can be understood as products of pathogenic patterns of family interaction. There is much evidence of a rather general kind which, although it gives little information about specific patterns of interaction, points to a high incidence of disturbance in the families from which agoraphobic patients come. Before considering specific patterns, therefore, we consider this general evidence. Most reports agree that a majority of agoraphobic patients come from homes that are intact, in the sense that there are two parents living continuously together. Yet there is also substantial evidence that, within these homes, relationships are often far from harmonious; and it is repeatedly indicated that the parents of patients are neurotic or disturbed in some other way. Taking as a criterion clear-cut neurotic breakdown in first-degree relatives, Roth ( 1959) finds an incidence of 21 per cent. Nor should it be overlooked that a minority of patients, in one study as high as 25 per cent, come from homes broken by death, divorce, or other cause. In a recent study of eighty-seven consecutive London patients by M. S. Lipsedge (unpublished), a high incidence of disturbance in the families of origin is reported. The patients ranged in age from twenty-two to sixty-four years; fourteen were men and seventy- three women. Almost all the information was obtained from the patients themselves during an initial interview, though occasionally it was supplemented by information from a general practitioner. Inadequate though this method is for obtaining the information required, it is unlikely to exaggerate the degree of disturbance in the families from which the patients came. On the basis of this information, the patients' families can be divided very roughly into three categories:
I. I intact and reasonably stable families
II. II intact families in which there was much quarrelling, violence, and alcoholism, and/or
almost complete absence of affection
III. III families broken by death or divorce, or in which a parent was chronically ill, and/or
the patient had had prolonged separations from or changes of parent figure.
The number and proportion of patients from families in each category are shown in the following table.
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Category of No.
of % of patients
42 30 28 100
family
I
II
III Total
patients
37 26 24 87
Category I: There were thirty-seven patients who described their home life as having been happy or who gave no particularly adverse information about it. Nevertheless, two of these patients described a parent as having been agoraphobic (one father and one mother), and two others described themselves as having been 'over-protected'. Ten of the patients referred to themselves as having been notably fearful as children; of these, two had been school refusers and one agoraphobic. Thus neurotic trouble of one kind or another is reported in members of about one-third of these not overtly disturbed families.
Category II: There were twenty-six patients whose homes appear to have been intact but who described themselves as having had an extremely unhappy family life when children. Eighteen patients described their parents as having engaged in perpetual quarrels, including violence, and often made worse by alcohol. Another eight complained of having received no affection and/ or of having been rejected. In three of these twenty-six cases the patient's mother had been agoraphobic. Two of the patients had themselves been school refusers as children.
Category III: Of the remaining twenty-four patients, there were twenty-one whose family life had been disrupted by death, divorce, or desertion and/or who had experienced many changes of mother figure. Of these, ten had lost one or both parents by death before their tenth birthday (six a father, three a mother, and one both). In five cases mother had deserted and in at least one other father. Two patients when young children had been evacuated for several years from wartime London, starting in one case at the age of three years and in the other at four. A number of children had been brought up by relatives. In addition to the twenty-one patients who had experienced disruption of affectional ties, three had been brought up by chronically sick mothers: in one case mother had had multiple sclerosis from the time the patient was aged seven.
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Of this total of twenty-four patients three had had a parent figure who had been agoraphobic: one a father, one a mother, and one the grandmother with whom she lived. Eight patients described themselves as having suffered from anxiety as children; of these two were school refusers and one was agoraphobic.
Despite the manifest limitations of this evidence there is good reason to believe that in over half the cases (namely those from families in categories II and III) there was extensive disturbance of family life during the patient's childhood. Of the minority who were said to
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have come from stable homes there is clear evidence of covert disturbance in about a third of them.
Some Specific Patterns
Since, as already noted, there is a striking resemblance between cases of agoraphobia in adults and school refusal in children, there are strong prima facie grounds for suspecting that the paticular patterns of interaction present in the families of agoraphobic patients may be the same as, or similar to, those found in families of school-refusing children. Despite the very poor quality of the evidence available, such evidence as there is supports this expectation.
The following three patterns of interaction found commonly in the families of school-refusing children are probably to be found fairly frequently also in the families of agoraphobic patients:
Pattern mother, or more rarely father, is a sufferer from chronic anxiety regarding attachment A figures and either did in the past or still does retain the patient at home to be a
companion
Pattern the patient fears that something dreadful may happen to mother, or possibly father, B while he (the patient) is away from her; he therefore either remains at home with her
or else insists that she accompany him whenever he leaves the house
Pattern the patient fears that something dreadful may happen to himself if he is away from C home and so remains at home to prevent that happening.
As in the case of families with a school-refusing child, these differing patterns of interaction are not incompatible; mixed cases are probably common.
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The fourth pattern of interaction found in the families of school-refusing children -- pattern D, in which a parent fears for the safety of the child and therefore keeps him at home -- is not directly recorded in the families of agoraphobic patients, but indirect evidence suggests that it probably does occur.
Family Interaction of Pattern A
Much evidence suggests that pattern A, in which a parent is retaining a son or daughter at home to be a companion, is common in these families. Thus the dominant and controlling role that parents, usually mothers, have played and may still be playing in the lives of their children is emphasized in almost every study. Roth ( 1959) describes the relationship of his women patients with mother as tending to be 'close and intense' and as excluding often any contacts outside the immediate family circle. An 'emotionally immature' young woman, whom Roth presents as typical of his series of cases, is reported to have been prevailed upon by her 'masterful domineering mother' to break off her engagement with a quiet clergyman and so to remain at home. Snaith ( 1968) reports that in at least seven of his twenty-seven cases there was clear evidence of 'overprotection'. Webster ( 1953), who studied twenty-five cases, reports all but one of the patients' mothers to have been dominant and over-protective.
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Terhune ( 1949), reviewing eighty-six cases, concludes that the phobic syndrome arises 'when an apprehensive, dependent, emotionally immature person is trying to realize his ambitions to become an independent member of society'.
Despite these consistent findings, no student of the syndrome seems yet to have given thought to the question why a mother should treat her daughter (or son) in this dominating and possessive way, or by what techniques she succeeds in maintaining her hold over her offspring. In a case reported in the psychoanalytic literature by Deutsch ( 1929), however, we find evidence to the effect that the patient's mother was making insistent demands upon her daughter to act as companion and caretaker to her. But Deutsch does not discuss why the mother should have behaved in this way.
In presenting the case, that of a twenty-year-old girl who suffered from typical and severe agoraphobic symptoms, Deutsch describes the patient's mother as being 'highly neurotic' and as having from the first 'concentrated all her unsatisfied libido on the child', her only one. By contrast, the
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patient's father is said to have been treated by mother as a nonentity. Although mother claimed that 'ever since her daughter's birth she had been a slave to her' and that her daughter could never bear her to be away, the evidence suggests strongly that, as in similar cases of school refusal, the account given by mother was the inverse of what the relationship had really been and still was. In other words, it seems likely that, while claiming that her daughter was making great demands upon her, mother was herself making great demands upon her daughter. Support for this interpretation comes from the unpublished study by Lipsedge already referred to. Of the eighty-seven patients in his series, no fewer than eight reported that one or other parent figure was agoraphobic.
Admittedly the findings referred to amount to no more than presumptive evidence for the presence of pattern A in a number of the families from which agoraphobic patients come. At the least they point to the need for systematic research, not only into the relations between a patient and his parents but also into the relations between parents and grandparents. For, if a proper understanding of the psychodynamics of the condition as it passes from one generation to another is to be obtained, it is vital that the neurotic difficulties of the parents of patients should be looked at sympathetically in the context of their own experiences as children. It is also necessary to examine the relationship between an agoraphobic patient and his (or her) spouse. Fry ( 1962) reports seven patients whose husbands were also agoraphobic, though covertly so. In some of these cases the husband was most insistent that his wife needed to have him with her, though on examination it turned out that the pressure for the other's company was more his than hers.
Family Interaction of Pattern B
A patient's fear that something dreadful may happen to one of his parents is only rarely reported in the literature on agoraphobia. Whereas that might mean that fear of such an eventuality is truly uncommon, it may mean no more than that it goes unreported, either because patients find themselves unable to talk about the situations they fear or else because psychiatrists, ignorant of the significance of family interaction, fail to inquire. 1
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1 another reason might be that a psychiatrist without training in the recognition of pathogenic
patterns of family interaction fails to report the situations a patient says he fears and, instead, describes the patient
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The picture, given by Lipsedge, of disturbed interaction in many of the families of agoraphobic patients is such that it would hardly be surprising had some of his patients been living during their childhood in chronic fear of what might happen to one or both of their parents. Eleven of his eighty-seven patients reported that one or both parents had shown violent behaviour, and another seven described perpetual quarrels between them. Anyone with experience of children or adults who have grown up in such homes knows how terrifying to a child the violent and quarrelsome behaviour of parents can be. In the first place, violent acts may seem to be of literally murderous intent. In the second, the mere threats uttered may fill a child with horror; for, in quarrels between parents, threats to desert the family or to commit suicide are probably extremely common. The constant apprehension of losing one or both parents by murder or suicide that pervaded Mrs Q's life as a child is described in Chapter 15.
In addition to the threats that are aimed principally at a spouse are the threats that may be used by a parent as a means of controlling the children. And it must be remembered that threats, for example that if a child does not behave mother will get ill or die or commit suicide, can be continued not only throughout adolescence but into adult life as well, and, if applied consistently, can result in an adult's being reduced to a state of permanent intimidation.
A family situation of this kind, it is plausible to believe, may have lain behind one of the cases of agoraphobia already alluded to (p. 303 ), that of the girl of twenty on whom, in Deutsch's words, mother 'had concentrated all her libido'. Let us consider the case material further.
In this young woman a principal symptom was fear that something dreadful might happen to mother. When her mother left the house she was afraid lest she be run over; each day she waited anxiously at the window and heaved a sigh of relief when she saw her mother return safe and sound. Alternatively, the patient was afraid lest, while she herself was away from the house, something dreadful should happen to mother before she got back.
____________________
1 simply as suffering from 'irrational fears', a category to which are too often consigned clues
that are among the most illuminating for understanding a patient's condition. Of thirty agoraphobic patients described by Harper & Roth ( 1962) nineteen are reported by them to have suffered from irrational fears.
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In commenting on the origin of this patient's anxiety, Deutsch adopts, without discussion, the hypothesis that she claims would be adopted by anyone versed in analytic work: that the patient's 'exaggeratedly affectionate anxiety' is an over-compensation for unconscious hostile wishes directed against mother; and that these hostile wishes have arisen as a result of the patient's oedipus complex. Although there are many psychoanalysts who would still adopt that hypothesis (though they might attribute the hostility to a pre-oedipal rather than an oedipal phase), others, through their experience in family psychiatry, would be aware of
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several other possibilities. One is that this 'highly neurotic' mother was given to threatening suicide. Another, which assumes Deutsch to be right in thinking that the patient was afraid mainly that her own hostile impulses might be enacted, is that the patient's mother had evoked such wishes by the insistent yet unacknowledged demands she had made upon her daughter over many years. Furthermore, prone as offspring are to adopt patterns of behaviour observed in a parent, it should be borne in mind that this patient, in developing a wish to push her mother under a tram (as Deutsch reports she did wish), might have taken her cue for such an action from a perhaps oft-repeated threat of her mother to throw herself under one.
In view of what we know can happen in families, though we are hardly ever told that it does, none of these ideas is fanciful. Yet all too often such possibilities are not even dreamed of by a clinician because the theory he is applying has no place for them. Only if every case is explored anew with knowledge of the part that can be played by family influences of these kinds are we likely to make progress in understanding and helping our patients.
Family Interaction of Pattern C
Fear that something dreadful may happen to themselves while they are out of the house is an extremely common symptom in agoraphobic patients. The principal situations mentioned as feared are of dying and of becoming helpless. Not infrequently such fear is linked to the various physical symptoms the patients experience -- palpitations, dizziness, weakness of legs -- which are interpreted by them as signs of imminent disability or death. By other patients again their fear is described as an overwhelming feeling of insecurity.
Although the situations a patient says he fears are frequently
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dismissed without further ado as irrational, knowledge of what can sometimes lie behind fear of similar happenings in children who refuse to go to school should alert us to the possibility that an agoraphobic patient is being, or at least has been, subjected to threats either of being abandoned or of being ejected from the family. As in the case of school-refusing children, information about such threats is hard to come by, but there is enough in the literature to make it clear that systematic investigation is required.
In most of the studies that have been referred to it is apparent that the possibility has never occurred to the researchers that the symptoms from which their patients suffered may have been a response to threats of being abandoned to which they may have been exposed during many years of childhood and adolescence. An example of the type of case that should clearly be considered in this light is the agoraphobic patient described by Marks ( 1969), and referred to earlier in this chapter, who recalled how as a child she had often been frightened when her parents left the house and how once she had sent her younger brother to find them.
Among the many studies of agoraphobia published, there appears to be but one in which threats are mentioned and are moreover, considered to have played a causal role in the patients' condition. This is a study by Webster (1953) who reports findings on twenty-five married women suffering from agoraphobia, all of whom had been in psychotherapy for a minimum of three months. Using as his data the clinicians' notes, Webster rated the attitude of the mothers of these patients towards their daughters. Of twenty-five mothers, twenty-four were rated as being dominant and over-protective. In making these ratings Webster adopted as
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his main criterion that the mother 'be most solicitous of the daughter's welfare, rewarding her often without good reason and rejecting or threatening to reject her or actually telling her she would not love her any more if she did not behave'. The patients' feelings of insecurity, Webster suggests, were probably a direct result of their having been treated in this kind of way. 1
As it happens, some years ago I treated a patient in her mid-twenties whose symptoms were typical of severe agoraphobia. Although for a year or more she insisted with great emphasis that nothing too good could be said of her mother,
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1 Webster does not discuss the possibility that some of these mothers may have threatened to
abandon or eject their daughters. -307-
later she described her mother as 'a tartar' who had always used the most dreadful and violent threats, including outright rejection, to get her own way and still used them. Her father, she said, was frightened of his wife and occupied himself as much as possible outside the home; the patient said she was fond of her father and felt sorry for him. The consistency of the story, and especially the coercive and threatening way in which the patient often treated her analyst, suggested that the picture she painted of her mother was probably not exaggerated. Were I to be treating this patient today I should give far greater attention than I did then to the part I now believe her mother's threats to have played both in the aetiology and in the maintenance of her condition.
Support for the view that a substantial proportion of agoraphobic patients have been subjected to harsh treatment in their homes comes, as we have seen, from the unpublished study by Lipsedge. In addition, Snaith ( 1968) presents evidence that, whereas the mothers of some agoraphobic patients are indeed over-protective, others are rejecting: in his series of twentyseven patients, seven are reported to have been over-protected and eight others to have been rejected. 1
Nevertheless, these simple categories are likely to be far too crude to do justice to the facts. Not infrequently a parent who gives the impression of being consistently over-protective is found on occasion to be exactly the reverse; while a parent who appears to be consistently rejecting can on occasion be affectionate. The behaviour of the parents of many agoraphobics, like that of the parents of many school refusers, is probably very often intensely ambivalent. In both types of case the parental behaviour is usually, no doubt, a direct legacy of similar behaviour that the parents in their turn have suffered from one or other grandparent.
Family Interaction of Pattern D
In pattern D a parent is afraid that harm will come to the child and so, in the interests of the child's safety, keeps him at home. In the case of school-refusing children a main reason for a parent's fear of such happenings is the memory of some tragic event that has occurred earlier in his own life.
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1 In the remaining twelve cases evidence either was inconclusive or suggested that
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relationships were 'normal'; though in view of other findings it seems open to question that this was so.
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No direct evidence of this pattern in the families of agoraphobic patients seems to be on record, though repeated references to the over-protectiveness of parents make it likely that the pattern does occur.
This completes our attempt to discover to what extent the clinical features of agoraphobia can be understood in terms of one or other of the four patterns of disturbed family interaction that emerge so clearly in our study of cases of school refusal. With the quality of the data available on agoraphobic patients and their families so ill fitted for the task, the verdict must remain open. It is hoped, nevertheless, that our examination is such as to ensure that, in future studies of the syndrome, skilled attention will be given to interaction within the patients' families of origin, extending, whenever possible, over at least two generations. Only if data are specially gathered for the purpose will it be possible to explore further the set of hypotheses sketched and, in due course, to subject them to systematic test.
'Agoraphobia', bereavement, and depression
There is at least one other respect in which a close resemblance is found between agoraphobic adults and school-refusing children. This is that, in a high proportion of cases of both conditions, acute symptoms are found to have been precipitated by a bereavement, a serious illness (of relative or of patient), or some other major change in family circumstances. In most clinical accounts such events are mentioned only in passing. In the study by Roth ( 1959; 1960), however, statistics of precipitating events are given.
In Roth's series of 135 cases of agoraphobia, a bereavement, or a sudden illness in a close relative, 'usually a parent, upon whom the patient had been extremely dependent', is reported in 37 per cent. In a further 15 per cent there had been a severance of family ties or some other domestic crisis. Illness of the patient or some other acute danger to him had occurred in yet a further 31 per cent. That gives a total of 83 per cent of cases in which a precipitating event could be identified. Beyond noting the similarity of these findings to those found in cases of school refusal, however, little can be said until cases are reported in far more clinical detail than hitherto. In particular, Roth's material casts no light on the possible mode of action of the events he records.
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Nevertheless, there is already evidence that in the psychopathology of agoraphobia bereavement plays a specific part, and not just, as Marks is inclined to argue (see above, p. 297) an incidental one. Using a specially designed projection test consisting of seven poorly structured diffused faces, each of which, the tester suggests, represents a person who has 'experienced trouble' at one time or another in his life, Evans & Liggett ( 1971) found that a sample of ten agoraphobic patients tended to identify the 'trouble' as a bereavement significantly more often than did matched patients suffering from some other form of phobia, and also more often to identify the bereaved person in the picture as themselves.
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To pursue further the relation of anxiety to bereavement would take us beyond the bounds of this volume. It can, however, be noted that studies of bereaved people, for example those of Parkes ( 1969; 1971a), show that it is very common for them to suffer panic attacks and other symptoms of anxiety. Reflection on these findings suggests that there is a spectrum of cases towards one end of which are patients diagnosed by psychiatrists as agoraphobic and towards the other end of which are the much larger proportion of people whose symptoms are either less severe or less long-lasting and who are, therefore, never seen by psychiatrists.
Relevant also to the overall argument of this work is the close link that exists between agoraphobia and depression. First, symptoms of agoraphobia and of depression tend to change simultaneously and in the same direction, either both getting worse or both getting better (Roth 1959; Snaith 1968). Second, agoraphobic patients stand a higher risk of developing depressive illnesses than do other people (Schapira, Kerr & Roth 1970). In the third volume it is hoped to explore these relationships and their implications in greater detail.
A note on response to treatment
In a thoughtful review, Andrews ( 1966) has pointed out that, in their ways of treating agoraphobic patients, therapists of quite different schools often have more in common than they suppose. In both the behaviour therapy tradition and in some psychoanalytic traditions (e. g.
Freud 1919; Fenichel 1945: Alexander & French 1946), it is believed desirable for the patient's relationship with the therapist to develop through two phases. During the first the patient comes to look to the therapist for support. During the second the therapist uses this
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relationship to urge the patient to confront the situations he most fears. 1 Since the technique of confrontation has been carried furthest by behaviour therapists, who claim some measure of success with it, it may be useful to consider what implications for theory that may have. During recent years a series of trials of the efficacy of different forms of psychological treatment has been conducted by Marks and Gelder at the Maudsley Hospital, London. Behaviour therapy has been given in two forms: (a) graded retraining together with systematic desensitization in imagination; and (b) flooding, a technique in which a patient is encouraged to visualize his most frightening phobic images continuously and without relief for a fifty- minute session, while the therapist talks constantly about the phobias and endeavours to maintain anxiety at maximum pitch. After the fifth and sixth sessions, moreover, the patient, accompanied by the therapist, spends a further hour exposing himself to all the situations that he believes frighten him most. In a recent report of the results of a crossover trial of the two treatments (Marks, Boulougouris & Marset 1971), improvements in the patients' condition, seen immediately after treatment and maintained twelve months later, are described. In the case of nine agoraphobic patients a combination of both treatments reduced symptom level from severe or very severe to moderate or mild. Of the two techniques flooding proved the more effective. A question that can properly be raised is whether these results are compatible with the hypotheses advanced in this chapter or incompatible with them. When treatment started the patients were of an average age of thirty-three years and had had their symptoms for about twelve years. They were all highly motivated towards treatment. Many of them regarded the flooding method as a challenge to prove that they could face the phobic situation, and for some it was the first time in years that they had exposed themselves to it. That they benefited from the experience might be attributable, on the basis of the present theory, to two circumstances:
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a. The phobic situations, e. g. being out alone or travelling by public transport, were not the core situations of which
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1 In a paper on technique, Freud ( 1919) expressly advises that in the treatment of
agoraphobic patients an analyst should 'induce them by the influence of the analysis . . . to go into the street and to struggle with their anxiety while they make the attempt' ( SE 17: 166).
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the patients were or had been afraid but complementary. situations on which a patient's attention, with that of his family, had become focused. Thus although the patient was genuinely afraid of these situations, once he confronted them he found that they were not so frightening after all.
The agoraphobic symptoms in these cases had developed an average of twelve years earlier when the patients were in their early twenties. Whatever the family situation to which a patient was responding may have been then, it is likely to have changed materially during the interval. Thus for some of the patients, and perhaps for all, the family situation that it is postulated had produced the symptoms may have ceased to exist. Once resolutely tackled, therefore, many of the symptoms might be expected to diminish.
Were the latter explanation to prove valid, it would imply that phobic symptoms, once fully developed, may in some cases persist long after the situation that has produced them has changed. That contingency is in keeping with the present theory. Nevertheless, because the theory posits that childhood models of attachment figures persist, it would predict that these patients would continue to be especially sensitive both to loss of an attachment figure and to any situation that they construed as presaging loss. They would thus remain prone to develop anxiety symptoms. Whether this is so is unclear.
The conclusion appears to be, therefore, that there is little in the results of treatment reported so far that is incompatible with the theory advanced. At the same time no claim is made that the results support the theory. In any case to argue from results of treatment to theories of aetiology is notoriously dangerous.
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Chapter 20
Omission, Suppression, and Falsification of Family Context
Suppressio veri suggestio falsi
THOSE who support the view advanced here, that school refusal, agoraphobia, and some forms of animal phobia are best understood in terms of anxious attachment arising from disturbed family interaction, have an obligation to answer two questions that their theory poses. First, how comes it that a phobic patient is afraid, or at least is thought to be afraid, of so many situations, such as schools, crowds, or animals, that have nothing to do with his relationships with parents? Second, and conversely, if the basic problem of a phobic patient lies in his relationships with parents, how comes it that that fact so often goes unrecognized and that his problem is thought to lie elsewhere?
Answers to these questions are not difficult to sketch. Several processes seem to be at work through which the situations truly responsible become obscured and distorted and other situations are picked upon instead.
When an insecure individual, uncertain whether his attachment figures are going to be accessible and responsive, or even alive, is faced with a potentially fear-arousing situation, he is more likely to respond to it with fear, and also more likely to respond with intense fear, than is an individual who feels secure and confident in his attachment figures. Thus the increased propensity of an insecure individual to fear any and all of the myriad of potentially fear-arousing situations present in his life outside his family is readily explained. What then remains unexplained is why concern is commonly so narrowly focused on his fear of those extra-familial situations while his fear of what may be happening to his attachment figures is overlooked.
In Chapter 11 it is noted that, in any one instance, it may be far from easy to identify the nature of the stimulus situations
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that are arousing fear in a person. Several reasons for the difficulty are discussed. One stems from the properties of compound situations. Whenever fear is aroused by a compound situation, there is a marked tendency to single out one of its components as the one that is arousing fear and to ignore the other(s). An example given there is of a person who is afraid when, alone and in the dark, he hears strange noises. Whereas the intensity of fear aroused in such a situation is likely to be a result of the fact that all three conditions are present simultaneously, there is a strong likelihood that attention will be focused on only one of them, while the other two are regarded as merely incidental or else are overlooked entirely. Which of the components is singled out and which are ignored is likely to be determined by the various biases of the person himself and of those around him.
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In Western cultures, at least, there is a bias to give attention to that component in the situation that is most readily taken to spell real danger, in the example given the strange noises, and to disregard the others. By contrast, little weight is given to the component 'being alone'. Indeed in our culture for someone to confess himself afraid when alone is often regarded as shameful or merely silly. Hence there exists a pervasive bias to overlook the very component of fear- arousing situations that a study of anxious patients suggests is usually the most important.
Nevertheless, it is most unlikely that cultural biases alone account for the strong tendency, not only for patients and their relatives but for clinicians also, to misidentify the situations that are giving rise to a patient's fears. In many cases other far more specific factors are at work as well. Those that require attention include: omission of the family context in which a patient's symptoms have developed and are being exhibited; suppression of the family context; and falsification of the family context.
Much emphasis has already been placed on the marked tendency of the parents of patients (both young and old) to keep silent about the part they themselves are or have been playing. Information about their quarrels, or about their threats to separate, to abandon or eject their children, or to commit suicide, is very rarely volunteered to clinicians trying to help. Sometimes such information is not given because a parent genuinely fails to recognize its relevance, or because the clinician seems uninterested. At other times, it is clear, omission is motivated. For example, during the practice of family
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psychiatry it happens frequently that, when the confidence of parents has been gained, they admit frankly that in the account of events they gave during initial interviews they either suppressed or deliberately falsified key information. Often they did so, they say, because of fear of being criticized; and this is certainly true in many cases. But in a number of others suppression and falsification have much deeper roots.
In certain families it becomes plain, as work proceeds, that the parents are concerned, sometimes at almost any cost, to present the patient's behaviour as unreasonable and incomprehensible and themselves as reasonable people who have done all in their power to help. A perceptive clinician can see how acutely sensitive such parents often are to any sign of criticism of themselves, especially when it comes from the patient, and with what determination they seek to clear themselves of having played any part in creating the problem. The patient's behaviour, they claim, is to be understood solely in terms of the patient: he is emotionally disturbed, ill, mad, or bad. 1
Alternatively, whenever the patient's problems can plausibly be ascribed to some extra- familial situation, the parents seize eagerly upon it. Unsympathetic teachers, bullying boys, barking dogs, the risk of a traffic accident--each is caught at hopefully in order to explain the patient's condition. Thus are phobias born: and, because so often they provide a convenient family scapegoat, they grow to have a life of their own.
If this analysis is correct, we conclude that both in determining the birth of a condition plausibly diagnosed as phobic and in fostering it parental influence is likely to be dominant. 2 Yet there are two other parties active on the scene, the patient himself and the clinician. Both, it is evident, often play strongly supportive roles.
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Patients, it seems, vary enormously in the degree to which they accept their parents' definition of their situation. Not a few rebut it, either wholly or in part. Thus, as described in the preceding chapters, only a minority of children diagnosed as
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1 Scott presents evidence that in some cases a parent adopts this attitude because he is
alarmed lest he be regarded as mentally ill himself ( Scott, Ashworth & Casson 1970). In other cases a parent's perception of, and behaviour towards, the patient is shot through with fear lest he (the patient) should take after a relative who became psychotic during the parent's childhood ( Scott & Ashworth 1969).
2 To this generalization certain restricted animal phobias may be exceptions.
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school phobic are likely to make any complaint about either teacher or schoolmates. Similarly, studies of agoraphobic patients show repeatedly that the principal fear of which many complain is of leaving home and not of what will happen outside it. Given understanding and encouragement, and sometimes without it, many of these patients, whether child or adult, will describe accurately the situations that they really most fear. All too often, unfortunately, a clinician does not grasp the import of what the patient is saying and his story is dismissed or ignored.
Nevertheless, it must be recognized, there are many other patients who seem genuinely to believe that the root of their trouble lies in an unreasonable fear of some extra-familial situation, and who may even go to great lengths to discredit any suggestion that there may be difficulties at home. How, we may ask, does that come about? Here again several potentially interacting processes seem to be at work.
In the first place, no child cares to admit that his parent is gravely at fault. To recognize frankly that a mother is exploiting you for her own ends, or that a father is unjust and tyrannical, or that neither parent ever wanted you, is intensely painful. Moreover it is very frightening. Given any loophole, therefore, most children will seek to see their parents' behaviour in some more favourable light. This natural bias of children is easy to exploit.
Not only are most children unwilling to see their parents in too bad a light but there are parents who themselves do all in their power to ensure that their child does not do so or at least that he does not communicate an adverse picture to others. When Mrs Qwas a girl, it will be remembered, her mother was adamant that on no account should she reveal the appalling quarrels that raged between her parents. As a result Mrs Q. told nothing to friendly neighbours, to teachers, or to schoolfriends; and she also had the greatest difficulty in revealing anything to the therapist who treated her after she was grown up; for to disobey a dominant and ruthless parent, even for an adult, is by no means easy.
Thus, threatened by sanctions against telling the truth as he sees it, a patient may habitually connive to present the family scene in a falsely favourable light. Yet in his heart he may know well enough what is true and, given support, may pluck up courage to describe it.
Such a state of mind is very different from another and related -316-
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one, in which a patient gives a misleading picture of the family because he hardly knows where truth lies. The latter condition develops, it seems likely, when a person is plied from childhood onwards with systematically false information about family figures, their motives and relationships. This requires expansion.
In Chapter 14 an account is given of how during the course of development a child constructs for himself working models of his attachment figures and of himself in relation to them. The data used for model construction are derived from multiple sources: from his day-to-day experiences, from statements made to him by his parents, and from information coming from others. Usually the data reaching him from these diverse sources are reasonably compatible. For example, not only may a child experience his parents as accessible, considerate, and responsive but information coming from other sources may amply endorse that view. Others tell him how lucky he is to have loving parents; and his parents tell him how much they love him and how lovable they find him. Alternatively, both the experience a child has of his parents and the information he receives from them and from others about them may point consistently to their being unloving. Many more complex relationships can be imagined; but, provided in each case the information reaching the child from the different sources is reasonably compatible, the working models that he builds of parents and of self will be internally consistent in themselves and also complementary to one another. As such the models are able to reflect with a fair degree of accuracy the sort of people the child's parents are, how they see him and how they are likely to treat him. Thus, whether relationships are happy or the reverse, the child is able to make firm and accurate predictions and, on that basis, to construct plans of action likely to prove effective.
For a minority of children, by contrast, the data reaching them from the different sources may be regularly and persistently incompatible. To take a real, though by no means extreme, example: a child may experience his mother as unresponsive to him and unloving and he may infer, correctly, that she had never wanted him and never loved him. Yet this mother may insist, in season and out, that she does love him. Furthermore, if there is friction between them, as there inevitably is, she may claim that it results from his having been born with a contrary temperament. When he seeks her attention, she dubs him insufferably demanding; when he interrupts
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her, he is intolerably selfish; when he becomes angry at her neglect, he is held possessed of a bad temper or even an evil spirit. In some way, she claims, he was born bad. Nevertheless, thanks to a good fortune he does not deserve, he has been blessed with a loving mother who, despite all, cares devotedly for him.
In such a case, the information reaching the child from his parent not only is systematically distorted but is in sharp conflict with what he infers from his first-hand experience. If he were to accept his mother's view as correct, the model he would build of her, reflecting her behaviour and motives, and the model he would build of himself, reflecting his own behaviour and motives, would be such-and-such; whereas, if he were to accept the view he derives from his own experience as correct, the models he would build would be just the opposite. In such a situation the child is faced with a most grave dilemma. Is he to accept the picture as he sees it himself? Or is he to accept the one his parent insists is true?
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To this dilemma there are several possible outcomes. One is that the child adheres to his own viewpoint, even at the risk of breaking with his parent(s). That is far from easy, especially if the parent should back the demand that the child accept the parental version by threatening to abandon or eject him, or else to become ill or commit suicide. Whenever a child or a young adult does take that course the rupture between him and his parent(s) is bound to be serious and may well prove unbridgeable. A second and opposite outcome is complete compliance with the parent's version at the cost of disowning his own. Both parties will then construe his behaviour and how he feels as due to his disturbed condition and as being altogether unintelligible in terms of the family context as they see it and present it. A third, and perhaps common, outcome is an uneasy compromise whereby a child tries to give credence to both viewpoints and oscillates uneasily between them. A fourth is when he attempts desperately to integrate the two pictures, an attempt that, because they are inherently incompatible, is doomed to failure and may lead to cognitive breakdown. If Schatzman's formulation of the case of Schreber is correct (see Chapter 11), Schreber's condition would be an example of the fourth outcome.
There are many psychiatrists today, including the present writer, who believe that a number of very serious disorders can be understood as developing from cognitive conflict of this
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kind. 1 Here, however, only two of the possible outcomes need be considered. These are the second and third, in which the maturing child continues to accept his parent's version of the family scene, either without apparent reservations or else with them. When this is so, the child, even though fully adult, is still accepting his mother's picture of herself as a devoted and selfsacrificing woman when to an outsider she may appear demanding and possessive, and is still accepting her picture of himself as selfish and given to unreasonable tempers when to an outsider he may appear pathetically compliant. Should he at any time show signs of questioning her version of their relationship, moreover, she may use threats to insist he maintains it. Should he then be frightened that she will carry out her threats, she may disclaim ever having made them. And should it then be plausible to attribute his anxiety to some extra- familial situation, she will be quick to seize on it. Exposed to all these pressures, it is not surprising that he despairs of establishing his own construction of events and instead complies weakly with his mother's, or even assertively endorses it.
For parents systematically to suppress or falsify the roles they are playing in family life is, of course, gravely pathological. Yet the way in which they tell their story may be so convincing that anyone not alive to the possibility of systematic distortion may be deceived; and this is especially likely whenever the patient endorses the parents' account. Many a clinician, unfortunately, imbued with irrelevant theory and untrained in the field of family psychiatry, finds himself sadly ill equipped to see what is happening. In consequence the family's phobic scapegoat attains the status of psychiatric diagnosis.
Not only are most clinicians untrained in these matters but all too often they show bias. Sometimes the bias is pro-children
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1 Most of the research stemming from this viewpoint deals with interaction in the families of
schizophrenic patients. In this tradition are the works of Batesonet al. ( 1956), Lidzet al. ( 1958), Wynneet al. ( 1958), Laing & Esterson ( 1964), and Scott, Ashworth & Casson (
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1970). The conclusions to which the findings of these and other studies point are, first, that the pathogenic potential of suppression and falsification as they occur within a family is fully as great as the pathogenic potential of repression and splitting as they occur within an individual, and, second, that processes of the two types interact. This is a field to which we shall return in the third volume. Well-planned research designed to explore this interaction is likely to yield insights of the greatest value to psychopathology.
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and anti-parents. More often it is the other way about. Clinicians are often themselves parents, and so are likely unwittingly to identify over-readily with another parent's viewpoint. Parents may be thought of as experienced and sensible; the patients, by contrast, are young, and seen, perhaps, as inclined to exaggerate or even fabricate. In telling their stories parents may seem more lucid and coherent than their children. Furthermore, parents may be respected citizens, perhaps acquaintances or even friends whose account the clinician is reluctant to question. It may be no coincidence that Little Hans's parents were among Freud's 'closest adherents' ( SE 10: 6). Pervading the scene, moreover, and influencing all parties is the timehonoured commandment 'Honour thy father and thy mother'.
Yet another factor tipping the balance in the same direction is the tendency, as notable in clinicians as it is in laymen, to reify emotions, especially the more uncomfortable ones. Instead of describing the situation in which a person experiences fear, the person is said to 'have' a fear. Instead of describing the situation in which a person becomes angry, he is said to 'have' a bad temper. Similarly, someone 'has' a phobia, or is 'filled with' anxiety or aggression. 1 Once emotions are reified the speaker is spared the task of tracing what is making the person in question afraid or angry, and will hardly notice when family context is omitted or suppressed. Thus any clinician who thinks in these ways is all too apt to fall in with a parent's claim that the behaviour of a child is altogether baffling and unintelligible, and thence to attribute it to some psychological or physiological anomaly inherent in the child. Preoccupation with nosological entities or biochemical anomalies has the same effect. Much present-day theorizing, both psychoanalytic and non-analytic, is of these kinds.
As a result of all these influences, which, as Scott ( 1973a and b) argues, converge to form the cultural image of mental illness as it is today, the dominant bias in psychoanalysis and psychiatry is to give credence to a parent's constructions and to throw doubt on a child's. Discrepancies are attributed with great readiness to the distorting effects of a child's feelings and phantasies, and only reluctantly to the distorting effects of those of a parent.
Nevertheless in certain quarters the boot is put firmly on the other foot. By those espousing anti-psychiatry the patient is
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1 The tendency to reify emotions is discussed further in Appendix III.
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deemed right and well and the parent is wrong or ill. Unfortunately, so strident and condemnatory of parents have some of these claims been that a family perspective becomes discredited and valid points are lost to sight.
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The position adopted here is that, while parents are held to play a major role in causing a child to develop a heightened susceptibility to fear, their behaviour is seen not in terms of moral condemnation but as having been determined by the experiences they themselves had as children. Once that perspective is attained and rigorously adhered to, parental behaviour that has the gravest consequences for children can be understood and treated without moral censure. That way lies hope of breaking the generational succession.
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Chapter 21
Secure Attachment and the Growth of Self-reliance
People are much greater and much stronger than we imagine, and when unexpected tragedy comes . . . we see them so often grow to a stature that is far beyond anything we imagined. We must remember that people are capable of greatness, of courage, but not in isolation. . . . They need the conditions of a solidly linked human unit in which everyone is prepared to bear the burden of others.
ARCHBISHOP ANTHONY BLOOM 1
Personality development and family experience
Throughout the last half-dozen chapters attention is concentrated on conditions within a family that lead a developing child to grow up more than usually prone to be anxious and fearful. Here, in the penultimate chapter, we examine conditions that lead to an opposite and happier outcome. And just as we found that there is a strong case for believing that gnawing uncertainty about the accessibility and responsiveness of attachment figures is a principal condition for the development of unstable and anxious personality so is there a strong case for believing that an unthinking confidence in the unfailing accessibility and support of attachment figures is the bedrock on which stable and self-reliant personality is built.
Naturally any simple statement of that kind needs elaboration. Thus the family experience of those who grow up anxious and fearful is found to be characterized not only by uncertainty about parental support but often also by covert yet strongly distorting parental pressures: pressure on the child, for example, to act as caretaker for a parent; or to adopt, and thereby to confirm, a parent's false models--of self, of child, and of their relationship. Similarly, the family experience of those who grow up to become relatively stable and self-reliant
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1 The David Kissen Memorial Lecture, 26 March 1969.
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is characterized not only by unfailing parental support when called upon but also by a steady yet timely encouragement towards increasing autonomy, and by the frank communication by parents of working models--of themselves, of child, and of others--that are not only tolerably valid but are open to be questioned and revised.
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Because in all these respects children tend unwittingly to identify with parents and therefore to adopt, when they become parents, the same patterns of behaviour towards children that they themselves have experienced during their own childhood, patterns of interaction are transmitted, more or less faithfully, from one generation to another. Thus the inheritance of mental health and of mental ill health through the medium of family microculture is certainly no less important, and may well be far more important, than is their inheritance through the medium of genes.
Evidence to support these propositions fully is, inevitably, insufficient. In the studies available the criteria adopted for deciding who are and who are not stable and self-reliant individuals can be challenged; the adequacy of methods used in collecting information about parental behaviour can be faulted; the assumptions made regarding continuity of personality organization over time can be questioned: and the restriction of samples to Western cultures casts doubt on how far findings can be generalized. Even so, the consistency of findings so far reported remains impressive. This means that those who are inclined to challenge either the evidence or the conclusions to which it leads have a case to answer. Only if they present such data as in their judgement point in a different direction can their objections be taken seriously.
In what follows the results of about a dozen studies, all reported since 1960, are drawn upon. It is not an exhaustive list and is, unfortunately, confined to studies undertaken in the United States.