Perceptions of Intrapsychic and Extrapsychic Functioning as Bases of Adolescent Ego Identity Statuses

Abstract

A total of 178 subjects participated in a study designed to assess whether adolescent perceptions of intrapsychic and extrapsychic functioning could be used to discriminate between pure identity statuses. Intrapsychic functioning was dimensionalized to include the degree of self-conscious reasoning, and the quality of the separation-individuation process of adolescence. Extrapsychic functioning was dimensionalized in terms of family coping, family cohesion, and openness of parent-adolescent communication patterns. The stepwise discriminant analysis yielded two discriminant functions which indicated that the adolescent's perceptions of intrapsychic and extrapsychic functioning significantly discriminated between the identity statuses. The classification results reveal that identity achieved and diffused adolescents were most accurately identified based on the discriminant functions. The discussion addresses the relevance of these findings to the model of adolescent psychosocial development advanced by Grotevant and Cooper.