ABSTRACT
Pathogenesis is defined as the degree to which, when the needs of someone who depends on you conflict with your own needs, you do or do not take their conflicting needs into account (without awareness of its impact). Since it is understood to be an unconscious defense, not merely conscious malevolence, it was necessary to use a measurement technique capable of measuring unconscious processes. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) was an obvious choice (Karon, 1981; Murray, 1943). The Pathogenesis Index has been used to study the differences between parents of schizophrenics and parents of normals and to study helpful versus unhelpful therapists, child-abusive parents, parents of
delinquents, and problematic parenting in general. It has been useful in research, and the hope is that it may be useful in clinical work in predicting problematic parenting, in studying reparative treatments, and possibly in selecting potentially problematic parents so that reparative treatments might be used before their children develop serious problems.
