VARIETIES OF CONSENSUAL EXPERIENCE: III. CONTRASTS BETWEEN FAMILIES OF NORMALS, DELINQUENTS AND SCHIZOPHRENICS

It was suggested that an overall model of consensual experience remained a plausible explanation of family performance but that an individual information processing model was equally plausible.

Abstract

A selective review of the literature permitted us to predict that normal families would experience their environment as patterned, logical and masterable (environment-sensitive); that members in families of delinquents would experience themselves in their own universe where others' behavior and opinion was irrelevant (distance-sensitive); that families of schizophrenics would experience the environment as confusing and hostile and would strive toward shared, stylized and distorted notions of it as a means of mutual protection and support. An array of experimental findings, using objective measures from a card-sorting procedure, confirmed most of these predictions. It was suggested that an overall model of consensual experience remained a plausible explanation of family performance but that an individual information processing model was equally plausible. Three distinctive contributions of the present methods and concepts were discussed: their provision of a typology of families based on objective classificatory techniques, the possibility of bypassing notions of the ideal and defective in family life and the study of families' interaction with their communities.