MORAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE INCEST TABOO.
Item
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Title
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MORAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE INCEST TABOO.
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Identifier
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AAI8401948
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identifier
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8401948
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Creator
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MULLIKEN, NADINE CASTRO.
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Contributor
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Louis Gertsman
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Date
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1983
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Clinical
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Abstract
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On the basis of the animal studies, there seems to be strong evidence that incest avoidance either has some innate core, or at least is mediated by developmental experiences apart from, and much earlier than the Oedipus complex.;A paradigm was devised to test the hypothesis that incest avoidance is not directly related to the Oedipus complex, as the classical psychoanalytic position contends, when it states that the development of conscience as an interpersonal regulator of human behaviour is a direct consequence of the incest taboo. On the contrary, the hypothesis stated here that levels of moral development would correlate negatively with levels of aversion to incest. It was predicted that the more primitive an individual's level of moral development, the greater his aversion would be, when presented with incest themes.;An experiment was conducted using male college students. They were given the Loevinger Sentence Completion test to which were added half as many stems purported to address incestuous themes. Though it is called an Ego Development test, Jane Loevinger's test covers a wide range of social and interpersonal attitudes. Thus it was chosen as the most appropriate instrument to measure moral development inasmuch as the latter is the mechanism which regulates interpersonal behaviour.;Results indicated that the lower his level on the Loevinger scale, the higher an individual would score on the incest aversion scale. In other words, it was shown that incest taboo may predate--developmentally speaking--the Oedipal phase and that it may be harsher at the earlier stages of development.;The results were discussed in terms of implications for classical analytic theory and ego psychology since one of the possible explanations for the phenomenon observed in this work is the object relation and ego psychology assumption that, side by side with a need for fusion with the mother, at an early level of psychosexual development, there exists an original dread of the mother as the engulfing other.;It is that dread of the mother which may be serving as a trigger to the incest taboo rather than the later threat of castration by the father in the individuals who do not reach the Oedipal level of psychosexual development.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Clinical Psychology
