Imagining the child: Maternal representations of the child as a function of the quality of the mother's object relations.
Item
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Title
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Imagining the child: Maternal representations of the child as a function of the quality of the mother's object relations.
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Identifier
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AAI9946164
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identifier
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9946164
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Creator
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Gerber, Jennifer Dale.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Arietta Slade
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Date
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1999
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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 | Psychology, Social | Sociology, Individual and Family Studies | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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This study investigated the relationship between the developmental level and quality of a woman's object relations, and the quality of her prenatal and postnatal representations of her child. Subjects consisted of first-time mothers who completed the Rorschach Inkblot Test during the third trimester of pregnancy and one or both of the following interviews: The Pregnancy Interview (n = 34) (Slade, Grunebaum, Huganir & Reeves, 1987) administered in the third trimester, and The Parent Development Interview (n = 24) (Slade, Aber, Abrams & Director, 1987) given at ten months postpartum. Rorschach protocols were scored with two object relations measures: The Mutuality of Autonomy Scale (Urist, 1977) and the Developmental Analysis of the Concept of the Object Scale (Blatt, Brenneis, Schimek & Glick, 1976). It was hypothesized that women with higher levels of object relations would elaborate positive and affectively balanced prenatal and postnatal representations of their children while women with lower levels of object relations would be more likely to have neutral or negative representations of their children both prenatally and postnatally.;Given the number of correlations performed, few significant results were in evidence. However, when the planned and post hoc analyses were considered in their entirety, several significant correlations were present. Prenatally, a mother who had access to the range of object relational experiences of self and other, from empathic and mutual to aggressive and malevolent, may represent her child more coherently. Such a mother may offer a positive, rich and enlivened representation of her unborn child in which positive and negative affects are successfully integrated. Postnatally, mothers with a higher developmental level of object relations, including a more differentiated and less symbiotic world, appear to experience more joy and less anger in their relationships with their children. When child gender was considered in the post hoc analyses, a lower number of symbiotic representations was associated with greater joy for mothers of girls, and more optimal expression of anger for mothers of boys. Results of post hoc t-tests revealed that at ten months, mothers of boys appear to be significantly more angry than those of girls.
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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.
