International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience
Open Access

Abstract

In order to understand how the emotional and relational dynamics particular to these families may contribute to the development of schizophrenia, families affected by schizophrenia have been compared to unaffected households. Research began to move its attention in the middle of the 1950s from schizophrenia symptoms as an intrapsychic condition, or within an individual, to an interpersonal phenomenon influenced by family communication patterns (Goldenberg and Goldenberg 2012). In families with schizophrenia members, Lyman Wynne and his associates (1958, 1963) looked into the social structure and frequently hazy, confusing, and perplexing communication patterns. A relationship between two persons is referred to as pseudo mutuality if problems are ignored in order to be resolved. The case study that follows illustrates how pseudo mutuality functions in narcissistic families. The names are altered. The clinical term pseudomutuality refers to families that appear to be cohesive but are actually chaotically disengaged. The family members react to conflicts with negative behavioural patterns rather than confronting and resolving them in a mutually beneficial dynamic.

Biography

Sam Vaknin is an assistant professor of finance and psychology at CIAPS and a visiting professor of psychology at Southern Federal University in Rostovon- Don, Russia. He is the author of several works on personality disorders, including Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited. Numerous scholarly publications and hundreds of books have referenced his work. He worked on creating a therapy for narcissistic personality disorder over the last six years (NPD). He discovered over time with the help of volunteers that it worked with clients experiencing a significant depressive episode as well.