FEST Writing Group

The problem

In the general population, about 10% of people had a grandparent death within two years of their birth.  My brother and I are two of those.  Froma Walsh(1978) found that among young adult hospitalized schizophrenics, that figure was around 41%.  In today’s statistical parlance, that would be an Odds Ratio of 4.1.  Researchers never found an adequate explanation for that finding.  A couple of researchers said that intense maternal stress provoked by the grandparent death might have interfered with the child’s brain development during pregnancy. That clearly does not explain the outcome.  It would not explain the cases where grandparent death occurred after the birth.  What might explain it?

Plausible Bowen Theory-driven speculations about possible solutions for the problem

  What are some possible mechanisms consistent with Bowen theory which could produce that bump in prevalence of schizophrenics who had a grandparent death near their birth?  Anything that could trigger an abnormally intense parent-child symbiosis could be enough to produce schizophrenia in a child who had vulnerability in the direction of schizophrenia.  An emotional shock wave reaction after the loss of an important person in a low differentiation extended family system could provoke anxiety intense enough to destabilize the system.  A parent with a newborn would be tempted to cultivate an intense symbiosis with the baby, in order to stabilize their neighborhood of the system.  That loss of an important person could be a grandparent death or could be the death of a spouse of one of the baby’s parents.  It could be any event that might destabilize the extended family system or the marriage of the baby’s parents.

An example might be the difficulties in the pregnancy or birth of the baby, two conditions known to occur more often in those who late are diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Some oddity in the functioning of the baby could make him/her into a target for an intense symbiosis.  Some possibilities include the eye tracking disorder or the movement disorder known to occur more often in those who later are diagnosed with schizophrenia.

So, we have anxiety produced by the extended family or by the nuclear family combined with a vulnerability in the child to produce an intense parent-child symbiosis that acts as a stabilizing factor for that nuclear family but over years aggravates the child’s vulnerability to produce schizophrenia when that child reaches young adulthood.

The low differentiation of the extended family and/or the nuclear family of the child works against the child developing solid self.

Some Interpretations of Bowen Theory to help understand the problem

When a stable individual or system is destabilized, there is an immediate increase in anxiety.

When an individual or a system experiences an increase in anxiety, they look for ways to reduce anxiety. and restabilize themselves.  This can be done by solving any reality problem which may have contributed to the problem.  It can also be done by focusing on something away from the anxiety, a way to deny the anxiety.  Another way is to develop a symptom, which also can become a way to focus away fro the anxiety.  This often is called binding the anxiety into a symptom.  I think of an intense parent-child symbiosis as a symptom or an anxiety binder.

A symbiosis can last years or decades.  If so, the outcome is often unfortunate for the child, especially if he/she has a vulnerability for a condition, like schizophrenia.  An intense symbiosis like this is often part of a family projection process.  Neither the symbiosis nor a family projection process exists in a vacuum.  They have a systems context.  If that is low differentiation, the symbiosis is intensified.