• Frequency in families with schizophrenia: The sources emphasize that partner conflicts are significantly more common in families with schizophrenia than in comparison groups. This is often associated with a tendency to escalate.
  • Inherited patterns: Conflict patterns can be transferred from the families of origin to the partnership.
  • Emotional dynamics: The arguments are often emotionally charged, with both sides trying to make themselves heard at the same time without really listening.
  • Unresolved conflicts: Conflicts often go unresolved and repeat themselves as both partners hold on to their opinions and hope for empathy.
  • Hasty interpretation: People with ADHD tend to hastily interpret statements, leading to misunderstandings.
  • Authoritarian conflict resolution: In patriarchal structures, conflicts are often suppressed by authority, but this is not always effective.
  • Conflict avoidance: In families with schizophrenia, conflicts are often avoided or denied, leading to pseudo-unity.

Triggers and causes of partner conflicts

  • Unfulfilled needs: Unfulfilled needs for affection and support from childhood can manifest themselves in the partnership.
    • This can lead to deep-seated anger and resentment towards the partner.
  • Lack of self-fulfilment: If a partner is unable to fulfil themselves in the relationship, this can lead to frustration and conflict.
    • Women in particular often develop anger issues when their autonomy is restricted.
  • Role patterns: Traditional role patterns, in which one partner takes on the role of “provider” and the other that of “care recipient”, can lead to conflict.
  • Dependency: One partner may remain dependent on the other in the relationship and try to compensate for unmet needs from childhood, which can lead to conflict.
  • Jealousy and mistrust: Jealousy can arise from feelings of insecurity and inadequacy.

Specific conflict patterns

  • Tug-of-war: Constant pulling back and forth in the partnership, often triggered by different views on parenting or one person’s need to control the other.
  • Competition of needs: A fight over who deserves more support, with needs being projected from childhood into the partnership.
  • Distancing: A partner can withdraw from conflict situations, thus making the situation worse.
  • Overinvolvement: Mothers can be overinvolved and weaken the father in his role.

Impact on children

  • Triangulation: Children are drawn into conflicts between partners and made into a “substitute partner”.
    • This leads to disturbed emotional development.
  • Divided loyalty: Children experience a loyalty conflict when their parents argue.
    • This conflict can also persist after a divorce.
  • Feelings of guilt: Children may develop feelings of guilt when they try to reconcile their parents.
  • Behavioral problems: Children may show behavioral problems as a result of their parents‘ conflicts.
  • Mental illness: Conflicts between parents contribute to the development of schizophrenia in their children.

Conflict resolution and prevention

  • Calm down before solving the conflict: Conflicts should not be solved in the heat of the moment.
    • Both partners should calm down before trying to solve the conflict.
  • Change of perspective: Both partners should try to understand the other’s perspective.
    • It is important to listen to the other person and understand their motivation.
  • Equal exchange: Conflicts should be seen as an exchange between equals, not as a power struggle.
  • Controlling your own emotions: Especially for parents of children with ADHD, it is important to keep your own emotions under control.
  • Systemic therapy: Systemic therapy can help to understand the causes of conflicts and develop new behavior patterns.
  • Reflection on the family of origin: reflecting on one’s own family history can help to recognize recurring patterns.
  • Open communication: open and direct communication is important to avoid misunderstandings.

Special aspects of ADHD

  • Increased willingness to conflict: partners with ADHD tend to have rapid escalations and impulsive reactions.
  • Difficulty listening: People with ADHD have difficulty listening and not interpreting statements prematurely.

In summary, it can be said that relationship conflicts in families with schizophrenia represent a complex interplay of individual, relationship-specific and systemic factors. The causes often lie in unfulfilled needs, unresolved conflicts from childhood and dysfunctional communication patterns. To successfully overcome them, a systemic view is needed, as well as reflecting on one’s own family history, open communication and the willingness to embrace new behavioral patterns.

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From a systemic point of view, parental changes in behavior are far more effective and efficient than any therapeutic attempt at controlling the schizophrenic symptoms of the family member. The hidden mission of schizophrenia, which is to reveal the dysfunction of the family system as well as the impaired parental relationship, is closely examined in this book. Understanding schizophrenia from this broader, interrelated perspective means dealing with the disease in a way that no longer perceives it as a hopeless, incurable diagnosis, but rather as a manifestation of intergenerational entanglements encrypted in family systems. This unorthodox perception of the much-feared illness offers a better understanding within the family system and a new way of regarding those “crazy individuals”. Using individual real-life clinical examples instead of analyzing statistically collected impersonal data with a theoretical search key – a method which neglects all biographical socio-interactive factors – it can be demonstrated how family systems research allows us to decode the development of this long-term illness and makes it easier to grasp its complexity. The frequent question as to whether schizophrenia is ever curable must be answered affirmatively; it is indeed curable if the persons concerned have trust in family systems therapy, and the parents are willing to learn.