Testing the serial invalidation hypothesis in the genesis of schizophrenic thought disorder: a research with repertory grids

Starting from the concept of family environment as the first significant context in wich each individual’s system of meanings develops, this paper will analyze how a particular organization of the construct system that defines schizophrenia can be related to certain aspects of family interaction. Two traditionally distinct methods have been combined together in order to better deal with such matters: the study of the individual and the study of relations. To do so, the linear epistemology had to be replaced by an “ecosystemic” approach that will highlight interrelations, their complexity and context, on the basis of a no longer unique or given reality, but one recurrently connected with the observer. Referring to Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory, we researched how the loosening of the construct system, misured in terms of contructs intercorrelation, in ten schizophrenic patients relates to similarity, predictive accuracy, acceptance and identification with their parents. On the basis of Kelly’s claim that the group expectancies can validate personal constructs we hypotized that the less commonality and socialitity, as well as acceptance and identification as their corollaries, there would be in a family, the less the child’s personal construct system would be validated. So, if Bannister’s hypothesis is valid we should have found less correlation beetween the constructs of the person diagnosed as schizofrenic. The first interesting results seem to indicate this may be a productive research method wich should be extended to and developed through the study of new cases and a deeper knowledge of the cases. Anyway, it opens a new direction in the psychology of personal constructs: the quantitative study of a psychological disorder related to social relations.