*Parent Child Relationship; Psychopathology IDEWTIFIERS *Communication Styles; Rorschach Test

Parental communication, particularly in the areas of cognitive clarity and affect, has been implicated in the etiology of psychiatric disorders in children. This paper reports a method for studying Healthy Features in parental communication, aspects of verbal style that counteract a child's exposure to genetic and social environmental risk factors. A set of coding categories was applied to Rorschach protocols from 61 parents of 10-year-old boys selected (from the ongoing University of Rochester Child and Family Study) to be at risk for the development of severe mental disorders. One parent in each family had previously been hospitalized for a mental disorder. Hea IF Features measures were developed that correlated with criterion teacher and peer ratings of the child's school adjustment. Positive attentional and affective features of parental communication were found to occur independently of parents' psychopathology. They also add significantly to Communication Deviance in predicting offspring adjustment, indicating that beneficial and pathogenic communication are separate domains of parenting. (Table 1 provides a detailed summary of the 11 Healthy Features categories.) (Author/JAC) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document