The proposed formulation attempts to bring genetics, stress, and the conditions of life attendant on social-class position into one coherent interpretation of schizophrenia. The thrust of the argument is that the conditions of life experienced by people of lower social-class position tend to impair their ability to deal resourcefully with the problematic and the stressful. Such impairment would probably result in schizophrenia only for people who are both genetically vulnerable and exposed to considerable stress—but these conditions, too, may impinge with special severity on people in the lowest social classes.