Anyone interested in a theory of schizophrenia that actually explains the logic behind these behavior patterns would do well to learn about Bateson's "double bind" formulation.
"The basic idea of Gregory Bateson's theory of schizophrenia is that this disorder basically represents a breakdown of metacommunication [messages about messages, indicating how the communication should be understood, i.e. a wink to indicate that this is a joke, /s for sarcasm, etc]. Psychogenetically, this problem can than be traced to a specific disturbance in the communication between the mother and the future schizophrenic which involves what he called a "double bind.”
The basic characteristics of this situation are the following:
1. The child is in a relationship of vital dependency, where it is critical to identify correctly the communication from the mother.
2. He or she is receiving from the mother messages which are contradictory, since the qualifying metacommunication denies the verbal content or is otherwise incompatible with it.
3. The child does not have the opportunity to ask questions to clarify the communication.
4. The child cannot leave the field. Under these circumstances, he or she is forced to distort his or her perception of the outer world and of the inner feelings, and is incapable to develop meta-communicational skills.
Gregory's favorite example was a situation in which a mother, annoyed by a child who is active and noisy, tries to get rid of him by saying: "Darling, it is very late and you must be terribly tired; mommy will put you to bed. You know I mean well for you." The message misrepresents the truth about the matter. It says "you are tired and need to sleep" instead of "I really need some space for myself." Messages and situations of this type force the child to deny or disregard his or her inner clues and accept what the mother is saying.
Metacommunication is extremely important in human communication and individuals who do not master it tend to have great interpersonal difficulties. Metacommunicationally inept persons who are incapable to read subtle signals, understand jokes, and decode hidden meanings become easily victims and scapegoats of their peers. There has been much discussion, whether this mechanism is sufficient to explain serious psychopathology encountered in schizophrenic patients. Gregory Bateson himself believed that much of schizophrenic symptomatology can be understood as a total breakdown of metacommunication."
This theory is total bunk. It is widely considered to be discredited and a great example of fanciful psychological theory with no scientific backing.
I mean, if this theory was true, you would expect to find schizophrenic families--after all, they all had the same mother. It also doesn't line up with the timing of onset at all.
You provide absolutely no evidence of this theory being widely discredited. The reality is it seems to be very difficult to test empirically. The most comprehensive survey I have found to date is here: http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/1997/Koopmans.html
"I mean, if this theory was true, you would expect to find schizophrenic families--after all, they all had the same mother."
First of all, maladaptive social behavior of the kind that is labeled as "schizophrenia" (or other so-called mental illnesses e.g. "bipolar", "depression") does tend to cluster in families. This is why doctors screen for things like "family history of depression."
Secondly, there are major differences in siblings' roles and how they are treated, despite having the same mother. The birth order concept is the most obvious version of this. There is another concept of the "identified patient" which explains how in some cases one family member plays the role of the "sick one" as a way to maintain stability of the family unit as a whole.
"It also doesn't line up with the timing of onset at all."
I don't see how this theory conflicts with whatever timing of onset you are referring to. Perhaps you can clarify or provide citations for what appears to be a very strongly held opinion.
Yes but not necessarily at the sibling level, which is what you'd expect if this was a problem caused by bad mothers.
Also, you would predict that siblings should be highly correlated regardless of their genes if it was "mothering" but instead what you find is this (from the study you cited):
Monozygotic Twins 44.3
Offspring two schizophrenic parents 36.6
Dizygotic Twins 12.1
Siblings 7.3
Offspring one schizophrenic parent 9.4
Half-siblings 2.9
So a half-sibling raised with the same parenting is barely correlated on schizophrenia, but a twin has a 44 percent correlation. That puts the schizophrenogenic mother theory 100% off the reservation in my book. Reasoning past that damning fact is just wishful thinking.
> I don't see how this theory conflicts with whatever
The average age of onset is 18 in men and 25 in women. If this disordered thinking style is created in say 6 year olds, it seems odd that it takes 12-20 years to cause a problem.
Anyhow theories are a dime a dozen, and the burden of proof is on those proposing the theory to prove it, and that has failed rather spectacularly in this case.
The important bit: It was concluded that genetic factors are important in the transmission of schizophrenia, whereas there was no evidence for environmental influences in the rearing family.
Do you have a citation for wide discreditation? Wikipedia is more circumspect
> Bateson's double bind theory was never followed up by research into whether family systems imposing systematic double binds might be a cause of schizophrenia. This complex theory has been only partly tested, and there are gaps in the current psychological and experimental evidence required to establish causation [citation?]. The current understanding of schizophrenia emphasizes the robust scientific evidence for a genetic predisposition to the disorder, with psychosocial stressors, including dysfunctional family interaction patterns, as secondary causative factors in some instances.
I think it's highly unlikely that there is any meaningful causal link between a particular parenting style and Schizophrenia.
We currently have a very robust physiological understanding of the disorder, and the symptomatology is linked to observable structural changes in the brains of Schizophrenic individuals.
As with many psychological disorders, there appears to be a stress component: i.e. individuals may be more or less predisposed to the disorder, and therefore some individuals will only ever experience symptoms if triggered by a high level of stress, while for others it's unavoidable.
So in some cases, yes it's possible that a problematic family life was the stressor that pushed them over the edge to develop full-blown Schizophrenia, but that person might have equally been effected by being mugged at gunpoint, or going through prolonged sleep deprivation during basic training in the military.
The causal mechanism is almost certainly an interaction with Cortisol or other stress hormones, or some other well understood biological pathway. It's outdated pseudoscience at this point to take seriously the idea that Schizophrenia is the result of mixed messages during childhood.
> We currently have a very robust physiological understanding of the disorder, and the symptomatology is linked to observable structural changes in the brains of Schizophrenic individuals.
While I agree overall with your point, I think your wording emphasizes a common but mistaken view that psychological experience can't induce physiological changes in the brain. This is obviously false.
Yeah I absolutely agree that there is a feedback loop by which neural activity actually shapes physiology. But there’s also a degree to which psychological disorders are contributed to by errant thought patters, verses being the result of a functional problem with the brain as an organ. For example, with some forms of depression cognitive behavioral therapy (changing your thought patterns about certain things) can be very effective, while in the case of serious bipolar disorder, medication may be the only way to mitigate manic episodes.
For lack of a better analogy, there’s a degree to which different disorders are the result of a software problem or a hardware problem, and all the evidence points to Schitzophrenia as being firmly toward that hardware end of the spectrum.
I again agree with everything you've said, but to tie this all back to the article and the microbiome, while the body does have discrete, specialised organs, we have to recognise that they are leaky abstractions.
Microbiota could influence psychology and thus physiology, or it could directly affect physiology and thus psychology. The fact fecal transplants triggered schizophrenic behaviours in mice shows there's some direct connection here that needs explanation.
> Microbiota could influence psychology and thus physiology, or it could directly affect physiology and thus psychology.
On maybe it's neither and also both. Personally I think Physiology vs Psychology is the wrong terminology to use: Psychology's domain is the mind which is a somewhat abstract concept, and usually refers to things in terms of thoughts and emotions. Our "psychology" is an emergent property of our physiology, but to me it seems like the wrong abstraction to use as a reference point when speaking about the pathology of something like Schizophrenia.
Rather, what I think we're more concretely talking about is the division between nervous system structure (physiology), and activity (which includes, but is broader than psychology).
To me, saying the physiology affects the physiology implies the wrong interpretation: i.e. it would be inaccurate to say that the gut bacteria made rat feel certain emotions or have certain thoughts, and those led to long term structural damage. However, it might very well be the case that the gut biome causes a neural activity pattern which leads to long-term pathological adaptations in nervous system structure.
If I had to guess, there's probably not a one-way causal relationship, but these systems likely feed back on each-other in a way which results in the symptomatology we describe as Schizophrenia.
In HN you will find a very hostile audience towards the idea that an _inner world_ exists at all. This is unfortunate, when I denied my inner world I lived only half of what I experienced, and I insisted that all my problems could be resolved with pills and external stimulus. This leads to a barren emotional life and a distinct sensation of being stuck in the same place, which eventually leads to depression.
The problem is which of the billion _Inner worlds_ ideas to accept. I mean, isn't religion/spirituality good enough for you? Why should we pollute science with such stuff?
If you have an opinion or idea that isn't reproducible, verifiable or testable and the only thing you can do is "accept" it based on how good it sounds to your ears then it doesn't belong in science.
So please, leave that stuff out of science, it's our last barricade.
i know some people who think math is nonsense. turns out that they don't know any. So i must ask if its nonsense to infer that you have no experience with families and people other than your own circle, no experience with subtle factors of any kind?
if so, you'd be quite vulnerable the next time someone offers you a double bind.
Dr. Stanislav Grof's essay "Mind, Nature and Consciousness" provides a very lucid introduction to this theory (http://www.stanislavgrof.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Gregory_...):
"The basic idea of Gregory Bateson's theory of schizophrenia is that this disorder basically represents a breakdown of metacommunication [messages about messages, indicating how the communication should be understood, i.e. a wink to indicate that this is a joke, /s for sarcasm, etc]. Psychogenetically, this problem can than be traced to a specific disturbance in the communication between the mother and the future schizophrenic which involves what he called a "double bind.”
The basic characteristics of this situation are the following:
1. The child is in a relationship of vital dependency, where it is critical to identify correctly the communication from the mother.
2. He or she is receiving from the mother messages which are contradictory, since the qualifying metacommunication denies the verbal content or is otherwise incompatible with it.
3. The child does not have the opportunity to ask questions to clarify the communication.
4. The child cannot leave the field. Under these circumstances, he or she is forced to distort his or her perception of the outer world and of the inner feelings, and is incapable to develop meta-communicational skills.
Gregory's favorite example was a situation in which a mother, annoyed by a child who is active and noisy, tries to get rid of him by saying: "Darling, it is very late and you must be terribly tired; mommy will put you to bed. You know I mean well for you." The message misrepresents the truth about the matter. It says "you are tired and need to sleep" instead of "I really need some space for myself." Messages and situations of this type force the child to deny or disregard his or her inner clues and accept what the mother is saying.
Metacommunication is extremely important in human communication and individuals who do not master it tend to have great interpersonal difficulties. Metacommunicationally inept persons who are incapable to read subtle signals, understand jokes, and decode hidden meanings become easily victims and scapegoats of their peers. There has been much discussion, whether this mechanism is sufficient to explain serious psychopathology encountered in schizophrenic patients. Gregory Bateson himself believed that much of schizophrenic symptomatology can be understood as a total breakdown of metacommunication."