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Published on: March 1, 2019
Familial contexts of adolescent ego development
Child Development
|February 1, 1984
Summary
This study introduces the Constraining and Enabling Coding System (CECS) to analyze family interactions and adolescent ego development. Findings show adolescent ego development links to enabling behaviors and inversely to constraining ones within families.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Family Studies
Background:
- Adolescent ego development is a critical aspect of psychological maturation.
- Understanding family dynamics is key to supporting adolescent development.
- Existing coding systems may not fully capture the nuances of family interactions related to ego development.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce and validate the Constraining and Enabling Coding System (CECS).
- To investigate the relationship between family interactions and adolescent ego development.
- To examine how parental and adolescent ego development scores influence family dynamics.
Main Methods:
- Developed and applied the CECS to analyze audiorecorded family discussions.
- Utilized the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test for ego development assessment.
- Included 61 families (2 parents, 1 adolescent) from matched high school and psychiatric populations.
Main Results:
- Adolescent ego development positively correlated with enabling behaviors and negatively with constraining behaviors.
- Parental behaviors were associated with both parent and adolescent ego development.
- Progressive discourse change in family interactions strongly correlated with ego development.
Conclusions:
- The CECS is a reliable tool for assessing family interactions relevant to adolescent ego development.
- Adolescent and parental ego development significantly influence family interaction patterns.
- Further sequence analyses are recommended to explore the directionality of these influences.
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