No abstract

We proposed on the basis of a review of the ego identity and career development literatures that variability in career exploration and occupational commitment might be related to characteristic differences in the manner by which individuals explore and commit to their ego identity in late adolescence. To test propositions about the relations between career development and identity formation, measures of ego identity status, exploratory activity, and occupational commitment were administered to 99 college students. A canonical analysis was conducted, which yielded two significant canonical roots. The first root, which accounted for 35% of the variance between canonical composites, indicated that occupational commitment is inversely related to the moratorium status. The second root, which accounted for 11% of the variance, suggested that career exploration is positively associated with the moratorium and identity-achieved statuses and inversely related to the diffusion status. The results are related to future directions in theory, research, and practice.

Boundary disturbance and the developmental level of the Rorschach human representations of anorectic patients were studied. A group of 12 anorectics was compared with a control group in regard to their degree of boundary disturbance, the developmental level of their human responses, the degree to which they attribute affect to their percepts, and the nature and degree of drive-dominated ideation. The anorectic patients showed significantly more contamination responses, reflective of a breakdown in their self-other boundaries. The affect elaboration, human representations, and drive-dominated ideation measures failed to differentiate the two groups. These findings provide preliminary support for clinical observations from both individual and family perspectives that families of anorectics show greater boundary disturbance which appears to be internalized by these patients. Thus, much of their symptomatology might be understood as an attempt to gain autonomy through an overaccentuation of the boundary between themselves and others. The failure of the drive-dominated ideation measures to differentiate the two groups supports the deemphasis of the role of psychosexual factors.

This paper atempts a developmental understanding of the anaclitic depression which frequently underlies anorexia nervosa. Familial lapses in transactional boundaries are viewed as leading to a maternal overinvolvement or unavailability during the practicing subphase of the separation‐in‐dividuation process. The future anorectic is consequently arrested at a sensorimotor level of self and object representations with no ability to evoke a representation of the object in its absence. Such individuals remain vulnerable to separation experiences and the sense of depression, loss, and helplessness which accompany these experiences. Much anorectic symptomology can then be looked at as a defense against such experiences and the potential loss of self‐other boundaries which accompany them.