Open AccessEgo Development, Psychopathology, and Parenting Problems in Substance‐Abusing Mothers
Author(s) -
Suchman Nancy,
McMahon Thomas,
DeCoste Cindy,
Castiglioni Nicole,
Luthar Suniya
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
american journal of orthopsychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.959
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1939-0025
pISSN - 0002-9432
DOI - 10.1037/0002-9432.78.1.20
Subject(s) - psychology , psychopathology , loevinger's stages of ego development , developmental psychology , sentence completion tests , psychological intervention , intervention (counseling) , attribution , id, ego and super ego , clinical psychology , psychiatry , social psychology
The authors examined maternal ego development in relation to psychopathology and parenting problems in a sample of substance abusing mothers. Given predilections at higher levels of ego development for introspection and guilt, the authors expected mothers at higher levels to report more psychopathology. Given predilections at lower levels of ego development for dichotomous perceptions and limited conceptions of causation, the authors expected mothers at low levels to report more problematic parenting behaviors. Intelligence was expected to correlate but not overlap with ego development. Subjects were 182 mothers who expressed interest in a randomized clinical trial for a new parenting intervention. Measures included the Washington University Sentence Completion Task—Short Form, the Parental Acceptance‐Rejection Questionnaire, the Brief Symptom Inventory and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test. Results of correlation and multivariate analyses of variance confirmed predictions. Implications for future development of interventions for substance abusing mothers are discussed.