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Ego Development (ego + development)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Psychology63%
Medical Sciences36%

Selected Abstracts

Ego Development and the Ethics of Care and Justice: The Relations Among Them Revisited

JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 4 2002
Eva E. A. Skoe
ABSTRACT This study examined the links among ego development and the ethics of care and justice in 144 Norwegian men and women, 15 to 48 years old, taking into consideration age, sex, education, and verbal intelligence. As expected, the relationship between Loevinger's model of ego development and care-based moral reasoning as measured with Skoe's Ethic of Care Interview (ECI) was significantly stronger than the one between ego development and justice as measured with Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT). Both ethics correlated significantly with verbal ability. Analyses showed that beyond its overlap with verbal intelligence, the variance shared between the ECI and ego development was substantial. By contrast, when verbal intelligence was controlled, the DIT was not significantly related to ego development or to the care ethic. [source]

Ego Development, Psychopathology, and Parenting Problems in Substance-Abusing Mothers

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ORTHOPSYCHIATRY, Issue 1 2008
Nancy Suchman PhD
The authors examined maternal ego development in relation to psychopathology and parenting problems in a sample of substance abusing mothers. Given predilections at higher levels of ego development for introspection and guilt, the authors expected mothers at higher levels to report more psychopathology. Given predilections at lower levels of ego development for dichotomous perceptions and limited conceptions of causation, the authors expected mothers at low levels to report more problematic parenting behaviors. Intelligence was expected to correlate but not overlap with ego development. Subjects were 182 mothers who expressed interest in a randomized clinical trial for a new parenting intervention. Measures included the Washington University Sentence Completion Task,Short Form, the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire, the Brief Symptom Inventory and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test. Results of correlation and multivariate analyses of variance confirmed predictions. Implications for future development of interventions for substance abusing mothers are discussed. [source]

Ego Development and Ethnic Identity Formation in Rural American Indian Adolescents

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2005
Denise L. Newman
Ethnic identity development was assessed in the context of ego development in 12- to 15-year-old students from a Southeastern American Indian community. Self-protective was the modal level and was characterized by awareness of ethnic group membership but little exploration or self-reflection. Impulsive adolescents had the least developed ethnic identities and highest levels of interpersonal vulnerability. Conformist adolescents expressed positive feelings about ethnic group affiliation, described relationships as harmonious, but demonstrated moderate social anxiety. Postconformist adolescents had the highest levels of agency, social competence, and identity achievement, but also had high levels of psychological distress and family conflict. Adolescent identity strivings may be understood in context with the level and timing of psychosocial maturity, for which ego development appears a useful marker. [source]

Ego Development and the Ethics of Care and Justice: The Relations Among Them Revisited

JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 4 2002
Eva E. A. Skoe
ABSTRACT This study examined the links among ego development and the ethics of care and justice in 144 Norwegian men and women, 15 to 48 years old, taking into consideration age, sex, education, and verbal intelligence. As expected, the relationship between Loevinger's model of ego development and care-based moral reasoning as measured with Skoe's Ethic of Care Interview (ECI) was significantly stronger than the one between ego development and justice as measured with Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT). Both ethics correlated significantly with verbal ability. Analyses showed that beyond its overlap with verbal intelligence, the variance shared between the ECI and ego development was substantial. By contrast, when verbal intelligence was controlled, the DIT was not significantly related to ego development or to the care ethic. [source]

Maturity and adherence in adolescent and young adult heart recipients

PEDIATRIC TRANSPLANTATION, Issue 3 2006
Carol S. Stilley
Abstract: Background: Pediatric transplant (txp) teams note high rates of non-adherence and risky behaviors linked to morbidity and mortality among adolescent and young adult recipients. Clinicians and parents alike report symptoms of social immaturity and failure to appreciate consequences of risky behavior; relationships between the two have not been studied in this population. Method: This two-phase mixed method study examined adherence, high-risk behaviors, and maturity in a sample of 27 heart recipients, aged 15,31, who underwent transplantation in childhood or adolescence at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. All subjects completed a projective ego development measure and a questionnaire about adherence to the post-txp regimen. Nine recipients, purposely selected for good or poor adherence according to criteria determined by the transplant team and matched on age, participated in phase 2 qualitative interviews and mood assessments. Results: Sixty-three percent of the phase 1 sample missed medications, 67% missed appointments, 11% smoked, 37% had difficulty with diet, 89% exercised infrequently, 33% had tattoos, 26% had more than two body piercings, and 11% used street drugs. Six themes and a core construct of maturity were identified with qualitative methodology. Poor adherers were less mature on every theme and consistently scored at a less mature level on the projective measure of ego development. Chronological age was not related to the level of maturity in qualitative or projective data. Most interview subjects reported high levels of anxiety, and two reported clinically significant levels of depression and anger; mood was not related to adherence. Conclusions: Non-adherence and high-risk behaviors are prevalent among adolescent and young adult heart recipients. Level of maturity appears to be associated with ability to adhere to the treatment regimen and avoid high-risk behaviors. [source]

Ego Development, Psychopathology, and Parenting Problems in Substance-Abusing Mothers

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ORTHOPSYCHIATRY, Issue 1 2008
Nancy Suchman PhD
The authors examined maternal ego development in relation to psychopathology and parenting problems in a sample of substance abusing mothers. Given predilections at higher levels of ego development for introspection and guilt, the authors expected mothers at higher levels to report more psychopathology. Given predilections at lower levels of ego development for dichotomous perceptions and limited conceptions of causation, the authors expected mothers at low levels to report more problematic parenting behaviors. Intelligence was expected to correlate but not overlap with ego development. Subjects were 182 mothers who expressed interest in a randomized clinical trial for a new parenting intervention. Measures included the Washington University Sentence Completion Task,Short Form, the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire, the Brief Symptom Inventory and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test. Results of correlation and multivariate analyses of variance confirmed predictions. Implications for future development of interventions for substance abusing mothers are discussed. [source]

From unity to atonement: Some religious correlates of Hans Loewald's developmental theory

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 3 2003
Jenifer A. Nields
Loewald's understanding of ego development offers a way to conceptualise, from a psychoanalytic perspective, those aspects of religious experience that can reflect or contribute to the enrichment of the ego, in contradistinction to the defensive and regressive elements of religious experience that have been well detailed in the psychoanalytic literature in the past. In Loewald's view, a dynamic and metabolic interplay between ego and reality characterises the developmental process. With increasing levels of internalisation, differentiation, individuation and integration, ego and reality are restructured into increasingly resilient and durable forms. An ongoing dialectical tension between separation and reunion provides the driving force for development. Loewald's emphasis on the synthetic rather than defensive aspects of ego functioning forms the basis for his characterisation of sublimation as a ,genuine appropriation' rather than a defence, thus opening up one way to understand non-defensive aspects of religious experience from a psychoanalytic perspective. In the course of this exploration of Loewald's view of ego development and its implications for an understanding of religious experience, the author offers perspectives on Freud's views of religion, on some extreme forms of religious fundamentalism, and on the dynamics of ,mature' faith as illuminated by Loewald's developmental theory. [source]

Attachment, ego,identity development and exploratory interest in university students

ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2002
Warren A. Reich
We investigated the relationships between attachment security, ego,identity development and exploratory interest in 161 university students who completed categorical and dimensional scales of attachment style, an ego,identity development scale based on Erikson's theory, and an exploratory interest scale. Factor analysis yielded three interpretable dimensions of exploratory interest: intellect, escape and activity. High ego development was associated with attachment security. Exploratory interest was weakly associated with attachment security, but more strongly associated with high ego,identity development. Further analyses revealed that ego,identity development predicts escape only for those with a negative model of self (i.e. preoccupied and fearful attachment styles), an ego,identity development predicts activity only for those with a positive model of self (i.e. secure and dismissing attachment styles). [source]

Ego Development and Ethnic Identity Formation in Rural American Indian Adolescents

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2005
Denise L. Newman
Ethnic identity development was assessed in the context of ego development in 12- to 15-year-old students from a Southeastern American Indian community. Self-protective was the modal level and was characterized by awareness of ethnic group membership but little exploration or self-reflection. Impulsive adolescents had the least developed ethnic identities and highest levels of interpersonal vulnerability. Conformist adolescents expressed positive feelings about ethnic group affiliation, described relationships as harmonious, but demonstrated moderate social anxiety. Postconformist adolescents had the highest levels of agency, social competence, and identity achievement, but also had high levels of psychological distress and family conflict. Adolescent identity strivings may be understood in context with the level and timing of psychosocial maturity, for which ego development appears a useful marker. [source]

The Two Faces of Adolescents' Success With Peers: Adolescent Popularity, Social Adaptation, and Deviant Behavior

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2005
Joseph P. Allen
This study assessed the hypothesis that popularity in adolescence takes on a twofold role, marking high levels of concurrent adaptation but predicting increases over time in both positive and negative behaviors sanctioned by peer norms. Multimethod, longitudinal data, on a diverse community sample of 185 adolescents (13 to 14 years), addressed these hypotheses. As hypothesized, popular adolescents displayed higher concurrent levels of ego development, secure attachment, and more adaptive interactions with mothers and best friends. Longitudinal analyses supported a popularity-socialization hypothesis, however, in which popular adolescents were more likely to increase behaviors that receive approval in the peer group (e.g., minor levels of drug use and delinquency) and decrease behaviors unlikely to be well received by peers (e.g., hostile behavior with peers). [source]