This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
The fact that this book has gone into a second edition shows that a good many psychiatrists found it interesting. It is an unusual book since it is made up of studies of the families of schizophrenic women. Usually the patients and their close relatives with whom they lived were all mentally mixed up. Remarkable discussions with the patients and their families were taken down stenographically and published.
What impressed Laing and Esterson is that in every case of psychosis they found that other members of the family were not entirely normal, and perhaps as a result, the patient had not been happy—rather, he had been much disturbed.
Like so many psychiatrists today, the authors do not seem to have been particularly interested that, as in the case of Lucie Blair, one relative had been insane and the father and mother of the patient were not well-balanced. This would seem