THE ROLE OF GEOGRAPHIC MOBILITY IN SOME ADJUSTMENT PROBLEMS OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

Abstract

Diagnosticians and psychotherapists have benefited enormously from the collaboration of sociologists and psychologists in studying such questions as the impact of parental divorce on children, the impact of changing moral standards on individual psychopathology, and the impact of death in the family on surviving members. Sociology, social psychiatry and social psychology have consistently provided a necessary reminder to the therapeutic professions that not all problems are intrapsychically determined; man is a social animal also. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, presses us to consider the complexity and subtlety of the unconscious compromises man makes with himself and with society. The clinician must consider the people he wishes to understand and help against the background of insights and information provided by these differing theoretical orientations. His obligation is to attempt to assess the contribution of social factors and intrapsychic conflict to the current state of the patient who presents himself for treatment. The purpose of this paper is to consider the interaction of a sociological factor: geographic mobility, and a psychological factor: some degree of neurotic illness, and their varying effects on family adjustment. Because effects can vary so widely, we have often been puzzled