Perceptual and Perceptual-Motor Dissociation

Abstract

TWO OPPOSING points of view, the functional and the organismic have been advanced to account for the development of schizophrenia in children. Representative of the psychodynamic approach to etiology are Bettelheim,⁵ Bateson et al,¹ Boatman and Szurek,⁶ Sullivan,¹² and Becker² who believe that schizophrenia derives from the disordered character of interpersonal relations existing in undesirable or destructive family and social circumstances. For this group of theorists the mother's rejection of the child, or a family configuration characterized by a dominant mother and passive father, is assumed to be the causal agent. Bender^3,4 and Pasamanick and Knobloch,¹¹ on both clinical and epidemiologic grounds, have been contributors to the view that organismic factors are primary in the development of schizophrenia, and that as a developmental defect deriving from primary neurologic and malfunctioning it is capable of being grouped with