Schizophrenia

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28702, 27 September 1958, Page 3

Schizophrenia

A New Approach to Schizophrenia. By Julius 1. Steinfeld. Hutchinson Medical Publications. 159 pp. -

Schizophrenia is one of the most baffling and intriguing problems in the field of mental illness and is the focal point of much contemporary research. Dr. Steinfeld’s new approach to schizophenia is to declare it the result of an early hunger trauma in the first few weeks of life. This theory, which is nothing if not. versatile, emerged, according to -the author, from the examination of the case histories of-134 schizophrenics. In the case of almost lalf these patients the early life history was unobtainable, but the author disarmingly asserts that the large chronic group amongst these “would very probably have shown the specific early history had we been in, a position do study it.” The information on the dust cover seems more than usually unhelpful. It describes the late Dr. Steinfeld as a man with an international reputation without indicating the field in which this reputation was earned. It also describes the book as ending with a "remarkably full bibliography,” a statement which is simply not true. For these errors of omission and commission respectively, the author cannot of course be held responsible. Dr. Steinfeld’s criticism of the position held by such people as Bowlby, who lay great stress on the importance of the emotional quality of the early mother-child relationship, is one which wijl appeal to readers, if only for its novelty. "Romulus and Remus.” the author declares, "grew up without a mother, cared for only by a plenty-pf-milk producing female wolf, and from all indications it seems that later in life they became anything but schizophrenics.” The first reaction of the reviewer was to suggest that the introduction of mythological data was hardly in keeping with the presentation of empirical evidence. A second glance at the 39 case histories, however, tended to confirm the author’s assumption that any differences between the two types of data were more apparent than real.