Ambivalence as an Aspect of Adolescent Personality Development

Abstract

This thesis arose from a desire to investigate the dynamics of adjustment and maladjustment and an attempt at their analysis. I made the decision to concentrate on puberty and the following five years as this is a period when the demand of the enviroment is for a rapid socialisation and thus we would expect a fairly clear picture of adjustment processes. It is also a time in which "the Id is active and the Ego enfeebled" (Freud A., The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, London, Hogarth Press 1937, p.152) and hence arose the surmise that I might be able to draw up hypotheses for some of the unconscious forces of adjustment. Starting out by testing two separate groups (15-18 years) with the Rorschach Projection Test, Murray's Thematic Apperception Test, and a questionnaire (see Appendix 1) which I designed to standardise the conversation to as great an extent as possible, I found that the Rorschach was not suited to the study and therefore concentrated more on the T.A.T. and on the questionnaire. The Rorschach led to a constrained clinical situation and I obtained a great deal more rapport with the other two instruments.