Ego Development and Psychopathology: A Study of Hospitalized Adolescents

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between ego development and psychiatrically relevant behaviors in a group of hospitalized adolescents. Building on Loevinger's model of ego development, we administered the Sentence Completion Test to 114 adolescent girls and boys. To study psychiatric symptoms, Achenbach and Edelbrock's Child Behavior Checklist was used. With these procedures, the Achenbach and Edelbrock factor scores were compared to ego stage using correlational and multiple regression analyses. Findings indicate significant negative correlations with the externalizing and internalizing factors as well as a variety of behavioral subscales. A significant relationship also exists between the total number of symptoms and ego development. Ego development is found to be an important predictor for the externalizing factor and 2 subscales after the background variables of age, sex, and SES are partialed out. Our discussion addresses the question of the relationship between stages and transitions in ego development in relation to psychopathology. In addition, "age-stage dysynchronies" are discussed as ways of understanding psychopathology from a developmental perspective.

Vulnerability and Resilience: A Study of High-Risk Adolescents

“…Ego development was found to be a robust compensatory Factor, having strong relationships in expected directions with three of the four indices of competence, that is, school grades, classroom assertiveness, and classroom disruptiveness. These results are consistent with several earlier empirical findings establishing that ego development is a significant concomitant of various aspects of adjustment and mental health (Browning & Quinlan, 1985;Frank & Quinlan, 1976;Hauser et al, 1984;Noam et al 1984).…”

“…Ego development, a construct conceptualized by Loevinger (1976), is a "master" trait refiecting character development which is related to various aspects of cognitive and interpersonal development, but which represents more than any of them considered individually (Hauser, 1976). Inclusion of ego development as a moderator variable in this study was based on previous research showing that levels of this construct are negatively reiated to various indices of coping Eind maladjustment (Browning & Quinlan, 1985;Frank & Quinlan, 1976;Hauser et al, 1984;Noam et al, 1984).…”

Ego development in women without higher education

“…Although Loevinger has argued against viewing ego development as a dimension, this has repeatedly been done in the empirical literature (e.g. Noam et al, 1984;Bond et al, 1983;Hauser et al, 1983). In the present study, ogive scores were used for the analyses.…”

“…Recent empirical studies of adolescents have shown that the amount of psychiatric symptoms as well as symptoms reflecting mechanisms of internalization and externalization are all negatively related to ego development (E.g. : Noam et al, 1984;Hauser d al., 1983). Style of defense has also been found to correlate with ego development, i.e.…”

Growing Pains: A Theory of Stress and Moral Conflict

“…Blakeney and Blakeney (1976) found that among Massachusetts's most troubled adolescent girls, two thirds were caught in the moral confusion between moral stages two and three. Among his in patients at Mcl.ean's Hospital/Harvard Medical Center, Noam (Noam, Hauser, Santostefano, Garrison, Jacobsen, Powers, & Mead, 1984) found that the adolescents used a stage of moral development that was inadequate to solve the moral problems that adolescence presented to them.…”