This thesis describes an attempt to develop and test a model
of the relationship between the social environment and mental disorder.
Despite a voluminous literature, and a research tradition
which extends back over thirty-five years, understanding of the part
played by the social environment in the aetiology of mental disorder
remains relatively obscure. This is so even in the case of analyses
of the relationship between social class and mental disorder, where
the research evidence is perhaps more consistent than in any other
part of the field.On the basis of a review of the existing literature, it is
argued that an effective sociological model of the causation of
mental disorder should satisfy three basic criteria. Psychiatrically,
it should explain why "abnormal" behaviour occurs. From
a sociological point of view, it will obviously require to relate
this to the social experience of the individual. Methodologically,
it should be capable of reduction to a set of complementary propositions,
from which a series of testable hypotheses may be logically
derived.Using Popper's terms, a distinction is made between "essentialist"
and "nominalist" models of social structure. Consideration of the
research- literature indicates that studies which invoke an essentialist
model of social structure are unlikely to satisfy these criteria,
because they fail to create an effective link between the individual
and his social environment, and so do not permit direct testing of the
processes presumed to be influential in the causation of psychiatric breakdown. Conversely, studies based on a nominalist perspective
have produced hypotheses which, while more testable, have tended
also to be sociologically rather trivial as accounts of the genesis
of mental disorder. This indicates the need for a perspective which
uses the individual as its focus of analysis, but which also makes
meaningful links between the individual and his social environment.It is argued that symbolic interactionism provides such a perspective.
An analysis of symbolic interactionist theory suggests
that sociological research in psychiatry may usefully be organised
around the concepts of the self and the symbolic environment. It
is further suggested that these may be applied to research at a
"situational" and an "aetiological" level. The present study is
an attempt to establish the utility of these concepts for research
in this area, with particular reference to the relationship bei een
social class and mental illness, through an investigation of the
latter type.On the basis of these two concepts, a set of three basic
assumptions were formulated, concerning the relationship between
parental behaviour, self -conception and psychopathology. From
these three assumptions, and in the further light of a review of
extant literature, ten hypotheses were constructed for testing in
the present investigation. In essence, these predict that there
will be social -class differences in the way the variables of psychopathology,
self -perception and parental behaviour are related to
each other, and that these will be attributable to differences in
the assumptions which underlie interactions within the family in
different class groups.These hypotheses were tested in a prevalence study involving
392 adolescent boys, using questionnaire measures of psychopathology,
self -perceptions and perceptions of parents - the sample being
stratified by social class.The results give some support to the main hypotheses of the
research. In particular, it was discovered that the self-concept
is an essential intervening variable in the relationship between
parental behaviour and psychopathology. Moreover, it was discovered
that the only social -class group in which parental behaviour per se
is related to the existence of psychopathology in the child is social
class 3, where the relationship is significantly greater than that
found in classes 1 and 2 or classes 4 and 5. In the latter group,
the findings tend to suggest that insofar as parental behaviour is
related to psychopathology, anxiety is related to a perception of
father as more relaxed, independent and strong than mother, which
pattern is significantly different from that found in classes 1 and
2, where neuroticism correlates with a perception of mother as more
strict, cold, sure of self, strong and independent than father.
The indications are also that the relationship between self-conception
and psychopathology is stronger in these middle-class than in the
working-class groups, with a particularly strong relationship between
psychopathology and the discrepancy between how boys see themselves,
and what they think their parents would like them to be like.For reasons which are specified in the text, it was however
decided that the concept of the symbolic environment is not in
itself adequate to account for these findings. A revised explanation
is presented, based on the notion of parental behaviours and adolescent
personality-characteristics which are "functional" within particular
types of (class-determined) environment, The findings are analysed
in the light of this revised explanation. Suggestions are also
made concerning methodological improvements which might be effected
in similar studies in the future
