SELF & IDENTITY. Perspectives across the lifespan. (International Library of Psychology)

217 Pages·1987·1.92 MB·English

by  Honess

Self and identity
Perspectives across the lifespan
International Library of Psychology
Self and identity
Perspectives across the lifespan
Edited by
Terry Honess
and
Krysia Yardley
Routledge & Kegan Paul
London and New York
First published in 1987 by
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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Published in the USA by
Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc.
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© Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd 1987
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the publisher
except for the quotation of brief passages
in criticism
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Self and identity
(International library of psychology)
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. Self. 2. Identity (Psychology) 3. Developmental
psychology. I. Honess, Terry. II. Yardley, Krysia.
III. Series.
BF697.S45 1987 155.2 87–4499
ISBN 0-7102-0829-4
British Library CIP Data also available
ISBN 0-203-48085-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-78909-1 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-7102-0829-4 (Print Edition)
For our parents,
Harry and Iris Honess,
and Marian and Babs Yardley
Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xii
1 Perspectives across the lifespan 1
Terry HonessKrysia Yardley
Part I: Primary relationships—the emergence of self 9
2 Mirroring and child development: Psychodynamic and psychological interpretations 10
Malcolm Pines
3 Empathic relating and the structure of the self: Parallels in mother-infant and patient-therapist 20
interaction
Gail M.Price
4 The evolution of the self: An integration of Winnicott’s and Kohut’s concepts 28
Irene H.Harwood
5 Mothers’ attributions to their young children 41
Ruth C.Wylie
Part II: Childhood—the conservation and evolution of self 49
6 Identity constancy in children: Developmental processes and implications 50
Frances E.Aboud and Diane N.Ruble
7 The conservation of selfhood: A developmental analysis of children’s changing conceptions of self- 57
continuity
Michael Chandler, Michael Boyes, Lorraine Ball and Suzanne Hala
8 The meaning and development of identity 65
Daniel Hart, Julie Maloney and William Damon
9 Developmental trends and gender differences in the subjective experience of self 72
William J.McGuire and Claire V.McGuire
10 The self as observer of the self: A developmental analysis of the subjective self 79
Barbara Hollands Peevers
Part III: Adolescence—the consolidation of self 86
11 The identity status approach to the study of ego identity development 87
James E.Marcia
12 Self-esteem in adolescence 93
Roberta G.Simmons
13 Depersonalisation: The loss of personal identity 104
Morris Rosenberg
14 Changing definitions of self for young women: The implications for rates of violence 111
Diane Mitsch Bush
vii
15 Personal projects and fuzzy selves: Aspects of self-identity in adolescence 123
Brian R.Little
16 Qualitative and case-study research with adolescents 132
Terry Honess and Anne Edwards
Part IV: Beyond adolescence—institutional demands and personal resolutions 140
17 Stability and change in the self-concept from adolescence to adulthood 141
Viktor Gecas and Jeylan T.Mortimer
18 Identity changes as outcomes of work-role transitions 152
Michael West, Nigel Nicholson and John Arnold
19 Identity and its development in adulthood 162
Sheila Rossan
20 Perceived change of self among adults: A conspectus 170
Amos Handel
21 The psychosemantic aspects of the self 179
Shulamith Kreitler and Hans Kreitler
22 ‘Now I know who I really am.’ Identity change and redefinitions of the self in adoption 190
Erica Haimes
Index 197
Notes on contributors
Frances E.Aboud is an Associate Professor in the Psychology department at McGill University, Montreal. Her research
interests focus on social and developmental issues that are relevant to self-concept and peer relations. A second area of
interest has been ethnic relations, specifically the development of prejudice and ethnic identity.
John Arnold graduated in Psychology from the University of Nottingham. Subsequently he worked in Health Service
Management before moving to the MRC/ESRC Social and Applied Psychology Unit, at the University of Sheffield, where
he undertook doctoral research on personal change and stability amongst university graduates during their early career
years. He is now Lecturer in Psychology at Plymouth Polytechnic. His research interests include the transition from
education to work, career choice and development, and self-concept change and stability during adulthood.
Diane Mitsch Bush is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University. She is continuing to examine how
adolescents develop beliefs about violence. Related articles published in 1985 examine how theory and ideology influence
violence against women. She is currently engaged in research on how paid maternal employment affects girls’ and boys’
gender-role orientations, occupational aspirations and family expectations. This research is an element of her research
programme on how the social organisation of gender, class and race reproduces or changes the content, processes and,
therefore, outcomes of socialisation.
Michael Chandler is a Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of British Columbia and has a history of
interest in the developmental study of social cognition. The empirical and conceptual work which underpins this chapter is
the result of an ongoing collaborative effort to inquire into the personal and social consequences of progressive cognitive
development. Michael Boyes, Lorraine Ball and Suzanne Hala are all graduate students at UBC and are engaged in thesis
research focused upon the study of identity formation in populations of normal and disordered adolescents.
William Damon is Dean of the Graduate School, Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts. His work is particularly
concerned with how social interaction encourages development of social and physical knowledge.
Anne Edwards is Principal Lecturer in Education at West Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education. Her work in the area of
identity construction includes a three-year study of the process in nursery school children and two years as research fellow
on an ESRC-funded project examining adolescent identity, directed by Dr Terry Honess in the Department of Psychology at
University College, Cardiff.
Viktor Gecas is Professor of Sociology and Rural Sociology at Washington State University. He received his Ph.D. in
Sociology from the University of Minnesota in 1969. He is currently a council member of the Social Psychology Section of
the ASA; and Chair of the Theory and Research Section of the National Council on Family Relations. Most of his research
and writing have focused on the topics of socialisation, self-concept development and family relations. Currently, he is
working on a book on the social psychology of the self-concept and conducting research on the relevance of self-concept for
work-related injury and rehabilitation.
Erica Haimes is a Lecturer in Sociology at Stirling University. She was educated at the University of Durham and has since
undertaken research into unemployment, adoption and health care. Her current research is an investigation of the social
construction of families through policy making on artificial reproduction. She is co-author with Noel Timms of Adoption
Identity and Social Policy (Aldershot: Gower, 1985).
Amos Handel is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Haifa, Israel. At present, he is
primarily interested in two topics: personal documents, especially autobiographies as a source of information about
development and change of self-concept during the lifespan; and developmental changes in parental aspirations and
concerns.
Daniel Hart is a member of the Psychology Department of Rutgers, The State University, Camden, New Jersey. His
research interests focus on the development of the sense of self from infancy through adolescence, and how the sense of
self is implicated in day-to-day life.
ix
Irene H.Harwood practises individual, couple and group analytic psychotherapy in Los Angeles, California, in the USA.
She also conducts cross-cultural psychotherapy in Spanish and Russian. Dr Harwood serves as a consultant to various
community agencies in addition to teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the Postgraduate Center of
the Wright Institute, Los Angeles.
Terry Honess is a lecturer in Social Psychology at University College, Cardiff, where his prime interests are in the
longitudinal study of adolescent identity and in research methods and theory appropriate for eliciting and interpreting
qualitative interview material. His interest in both developmental and social psychology stems partly from his doctoral
work at the University of Exeter on children’s personal constructions of their social worlds. His journal publications reflect
his earlier ‘personal constructs’ work, but primarily his concern with ‘self’ and ‘identity’. He is currently an Associate
Editor of the British Journal of Psychology.
Shulamith and Hans Kreitler are a husband-and-wife team, both professors of psychology at Tel Aviv University, Israel.
They have developed the cognitive orientation theory that deals with the motivational impact of cognitive contents and the
system of meaning for the assessment of meanings and cognitive contents. They have published many articles and six
books about cognition (Cognitive Orientation and Behavior, Springer, 1976), psychopathology (The World-view of
Schizophrenics, Reinhardt, 1965), art (Psychology of the Arts, Duke University Press, 1972), personality (The Cognitive
Foundations of Personality) and symbols (The Psychology of Symbols).
Brian R.Little is Associate Professor and the Head of the Social Ecology Laboratory in the Department of Psychology,
Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Julie Maloney began her work on identity when she was a student at Bath University. She continues to be interested in
personal identity, but now works for a London publishing firm.
James E.Marcia is a Professor of Psychology at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, and a clinical psychologist in
private practice. His research interests are in the construct validity of ego psychoanalytic theory; his clinical interests are
individual psychodynamic psychotherapy.
William J. and Claire V.McGuire have collaborated on numerous articles and chapters that describe their research on the
content of the phenomenal sense of self. William McGuire has also published extensively on attitude change research and
on other conceptual and methodological topics in social psychology and personality. The programme of research they
describe here was conducted while they were at Columbia University in New York, at the University of California, San
Diego, and during their current appointments at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Jeylan T.Mortimer is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, where she has taught since 1973. She is
currently serving on the editorial boards of Work and Occupations and Contemporary Sociology. She is also a Council
Member of the Social Psychology Section of the ASA, and a member of the Sociology Panel of the National Science
Foundation. Her major research interest is the social psychology of work. She has recently completed a book: J.T.Mortimer,
J.Lorence and D.Kumka, Work, Family, and Personality: Transition to Adulthood (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, forthcoming).
She is currently planning a study of adolescent workers.
Nigel Nicholson is a Senior Research Fellow at the MRC/ESRC Social and Applied Psychology Unit, University of
Sheffield. He is the author of books on organisational psychology, absence from work, trade unions, strikes and labour
relations. His current research interests are in career development, work-role transitions and innovation at work. He was co-
recipient with Gary Johns of the 1983 Academy of Management’s New Concept Award for their paper, ‘The meanings of
absence: New strategies for theory and research’. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wales, Cardiff.
Barbara Hollands Peevers was awarded the Bachelor of Arts degree, with distinction, by Stanford University in 1953, and
received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1970. She has conducted extensive
research on the types of concepts used to understand other persons and the self, and the development of the use of those
concepts. The kinds of gender-role models provided by television characters is another of her research interests, and, in
addition, she has directed several survey research projects on various topics. She is currently Professor of Sociology at
California State University, Chico.
Malcolm Pines is Consultant Psychotherapist in the Adult Department of the Tavistock Clinic in London. He is a member
of the British PsychoAnalytical Society and a founder member of the Institute of Group Analysis. His interest in mirroring
and child development was stimulated by the use of the concept of mirroring by S.H.Foulkes in group analytic
psychotherapy. He has written on this and on the relationship of child development to the psychotherapeutic situation in
other publications. He is a past president of the International Association of Group Psychotherapy and previously held
consultant posts at Cassel Hospital, St George’s Hospital and in the psychotherapeutic department of the Maudsley
Hospital.