Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

1998

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Psychology

Advisor

Diana Diamond

Committee Members

Steve Tuber

Paul Wachtel

Subject Categories

Psychology

Keywords

Clinical Psychology; Social Psychology

Abstract

This study explored the relationship between internalized object representations and interpersonal affective style (AS). Subjects were drawn from a sample of families participating in the Yale Psychiatric Institute Family Study (Diamond & Doane, 1994). The present study examined only the parents in these families (N = 70). At the time of their child's psychiatric admission, these subjects were administered the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and participated in a family interaction task in order to assess their affective style (AS; Doane et al., 1981). TATs were scored utilizing Westen's (1985, revised 1989) Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS). It was hypothesized that subjects who have internalized poor object relations would manifest a negative affective style in their interactional behaviors. It was also posited that treatment outcome for patients in families with lower levels of object relations would be worse than those from families with higher object relations. None of the planned tests for the hypotheses yielded significant results.

Post-hoc analyses of the data, which separated the subjects by child's diagnostic classification, did find significant relationships. Higher overall level of object relations was associated with less negative affective style, and there were significant correlations between a number of object relations and AS subscales. However, in the nonschizophrenia group, significance was found only at baseline, whereas in the schizophrenia group, significance emerged only when analyzing the 3-month data. These results are discussed in terms of underlying family dynamics.

The counterintuitive findings of this study speak to the complexity one's internal world, and, perhaps, to the inability of a single measure to fully capture the nature of one's object representations. This study raises important questions as to the impact of environmental factors on object relations functioning, the stability of internalized object representations, as well as to the association of AS and object relations dimensions to specific psychopathology. Areas of future exploration suggested by the results include the use of the TAT in object relations assessment, the validity of the SCORS, and the relationship between attachment, object relations, psychopathology, and the expression of negative affect.

Comments

Digital reproduction from the UMI microform.

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