CHILD HYGIENE IN HUMAN ECOLOGY 347 



At a first glance this picture would seem to indicate that these children 

 represented a definitely psychopathic group and that their psychopathy was 

 related to the psychoses of the parents. However, to properly evaluate 

 the findings it was necessary to compare them with control material. For 

 this purpose groups of children were selected from broken homes, from 

 among the "problem" children referred to a child guidance clinic, and un- 

 selected children from a rather better-than-average public school. The 

 control material was analyzed along lines similar to those used in the study 

 group. An effort was also made to compare our group with other children 

 of psychotic parents, but the two older studies available were made before 

 the development of the newer technic and hence a comparison was not satis- 

 factory. 



The comparison of our group (children of psychotic parents) with the con- 

 trol groups, where similarity of technic made the analyses comparable, 

 caused a revision of our first impression. Our group seemed to be rather 

 better adjusted than the wards of the child-placing agencies, and they com- 

 pared very favorably with the unselected school group— the so-called "nor- 

 mal" group. 



The traits noted most frequently in the study group were sensitiveness, 

 disobedience, temper tantrums, fears, aggressiveness, and food fads. In 

 every instance, except in aggressiveness, these traits were more marked in 

 the "normal" group. While 24 per cent of the study group were classed as 

 sensitive, this trait was found in 56 per cent of the normals. Twenty per 

 cent were disobedient as against almost 23 per cent in the normal group. 

 In the matter of temper tantrums and fears, these traits were found in 18 

 per cent of the study group, while 27 per cent of the normals had temper 

 tantrums and almost 59 per cent showed fears. Twelve per cent of the 

 study group exhibited food fads which were present in nearly 35 per cent of 

 the normals. 



Apparently these personality traits in the children of psychotic parents 

 could have little relation to psychosis in the parent. As Dr. Preston re- 

 marks: "On the basis of percentage occurrence of 'undesirable' behavior 

 traits, the advantage seems to be with our group" — which is the group of 

 children of psychotic parents. The group of "normals" showed much more 

 frequent deviations from an accepted "normal behavior pattern" than did 

 the children in the homes from which psychotic parents had been removed. 



It was also shown that, on the whole, the children of psychotic parents 

 showed far less deviations from so-called "normal behavior" than the chil- 

 dren in the problem group. 



There were no frankly psychotic children in our group, but this may easily 



