Family Interaction and Psychopathology

Abstract

Throughout the past century, clinical researchers have been increasingly drawn to explorations of the family’s role in the etiology, course, treatment, and prevention of psychopathological disorders. In attempts to unravel and elucidate relationships involving family life and disordered behavior, various theoretical perspectives and research strategies have been exploited, each of which has been directed toward a somewhat different level, aspect, or concomitant of the family matrix. For the most part, however, investigators have emphasized either the characteristics of individual family members or the family group as a totality. Although interest in relational parameters has been strongly implied throughout much of this literature, programmatic studies of interaction per se have been undertaken only since the mid-1950s.