Schizophrenia: A Family's Projective Identification
JAMES R. STABENAU M.D.1
1 Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Hartford, Conn. 06112
By means of projective identification, parents may contribute to the differential life course leading to schizophrenia in a family member. The author presents the case history of a family with a set of monozygotic male twins discordant for schizophrenia. The father, by suggesting that one twin was more vulnerable than the other, helped establish in that twin a negative identity, an inhibition (rather than a neutralization) of instinctual expression, and an aggressive (rather than libidinal) tie with the parents. The ego splitting that resulted seemed to be based on the child's projective identification in a pathologically defensive way.
