THIS PAPER describes an attempt to delineate the family environment of a group of young adult schizophrenics in a clear, circumspect, and objective fashion and to examine the relationship between family interaction patterns and the convalescent outcome of the schizophrenics.

While much speculation has taken place regarding the etiological significance of a hypothesized cold, rejecting "schizophrenogenic mother" and her passive, ineffectual spouse, and considerable research has been directed toward these matters, in the beginning mostly by psychiatrists but later by psychologists and sociologists, the characteristics of the social behavior of the schizophrenic and the associated characteristics of his parental family environment have never really been clearly and unequivocally delineated.

In many studies the classical picture of the cold, aloof, and rejecting mother has appeared,^1,20,34 but in others she has been found to be overly protective, intrusive, or symbiotic in her