Institute of Criminological and Sociological Research, Belgrade, Serbia
Received: June 21, 2024
Revision received: July 16, 2024
Accepted: July 22, 2024
UDK: 316.356.2:616.895.8-052 615.851
Pages: 111-126
The research and theoretical findings of the Palo Alto group of systemic family therapists from the 1950s are largely neglected today but deserve to be re–actualized, especially because they emphasize the importance of the way of communication within the family context in which a person is placed for the development of schizophrenia, thus broaden horizons in the treatment of psychosis with psychotherapy. In the paper, the phenomenon of family conditioning of schizophrenia is deconstructed through the systemic and, to a lesser extent, through the anti-psychiatric theoretical tradition, based on which guidelines and hypotheses for research in this direction are offered. A critical analysis of a small number of units of available literature on this topic was used, along with theoretical analysis and synthesis of some empirical findings. The results of existing research in the world and our country have shown that it is difficult to prove and explain that schizophrenia in children arose solely as a result of disturbed communication within the family system and that there are certain methodological problems in conducting research in this way. Nevertheless, the double–bind concept suggested new, more functional interventions and ways to go in clinical work with patients suffering from schizophrenia, such as the introduction of an interactionist perspective in psychotherapy. The question of power relations was also introduced into the psychotherapy discourse, which is sociologically very relevant because, with double messages, a person who has power can (re)shape the operative context of another person.
KEY WORDS: family system / pathological homeostasis / double–bind hypotesis / duplicate messages / schizophrenia
