Measurement of identification between mothers and their adolescent children

Abstract

In this study the identification between adolescent children and their mothers was measured. Following Lazowick (1954) two measures of identification for each mother-child pair were obtained from a Semantic Differential and where possible identification was also rated by a psychiatrist. The subjects, who ranged in age from 14 to 19 years, were divided into two groups, matched for age and verbal intelligence. The control group was composed of adolescents randomly chosen from a local comprehensive school and the patient group came from the Young People’s Unit of a psychiatric hospital. The mothers of both these groups also participated in the study. In addition to the Semantic Differential all subjects completed the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale and the Mill Hill Vocabulary Scale.

Previous research had suggested that patient groups and groups scoring highly on measures of anxiety or abnormal personality would show defective identification with their mother when compared with normal groups. In this study these findings were generally not confirmed. Although some minor differences were found between the patient and control groups, no differences were found between groups composed of extreme scorers on the Manifest Anxiety Scale.

Different types of reasons for this failure to confirm hypotheses derived from previous studies were discussed.

The psychiatrists’ rating of identification was not found to correlate with identification measures obtained from the Semantic? Differential. In view of this the question of the validity of such measures of identification was considered.