Wanda Zagórska

Depression and Personal Integration – the post-Eriksonian Approach

The present article deals with the problem of accumulation of psychosocial resources which adults who currently undergo the depression episodes have at their disposal. Such resources as trust, autonomy, initiative, sense of industry, sense of identity, intimacy, generativity and ontic integrity are all considered as manifestations of personal integrity. The theoretical purpose of this article is to identify the resources which become weakened during an ongoing depression episode. Some hypotheses referring to intergroup differences have been formulated as far as the intensification of psychosocial resources is concerned. The research included 60 people, aged between 25 and 66, and within this group 30 subjects were undergoing the depression episode (F32.1, F32.2, F33.1, F33.2). In the research, the Questionnaire of Personal Integration by Zagórska, Migut and Jelińska (2014) was used. The Questionnaire in question is an operationalization of the authorial conception of personal integration falling within the ambit of post-Eriksonian approach. Ontic integrity (Cronbach’s α < .7) was excluded from the analysis. The presence of a depressive episode or the lack of it explained 50 percent of the dispersion of the analyzed structure of traits. The variables with the most considerable input to the differentiation of the result profiles in two groups were trust, as the axial role in the model, and generativity. The variables defining the similarities of the groups in question were the sense of identity and intimacy. The variables such as autonomy, initiative and sense of industry had little impact on differences between the groups. Defining the fields of individual restrictions and strengths might be helpful in the prophylaxis and therapy of depression.

I am not a child anymore. Quasi-rituals of leaving childhood in teenagers’ narrations. Anthropological psychology approach

Referring to both the psychological concepts of human development (Erikson, 1997; Labouvie-Vief, 1990) and its anthropological ones (Eliade, 1990; van Gennep, 2006; Turner, 2010), and embedding them in the psychology of myth (Pankalla, Klaus, 2010; Zagórska, 2007), the authors conducted an empirical exploration aimed at finding out whether the adolescents’ behaviours which serve to leave childhood bear the markings of contemporary rites of passage (in their initial phase). However, because these behaviours are highly degraded, residual, they were defined as quasi-rituals of leaving childhood, and in a broader sense – quasi-mythical behaviours (mythos-type behaviours). Analyzing the narratives of 40 teenagers aged 13–16, of both sexes, from a few lower secondary schools in a small and a big city and using the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a number of this kind of behaviours were identified. It was found that teenagers – in the absence of socially sanctioned rites of passage and clear criteria of being adult – imitate some adult behaviours, often negative ones, hoping thereby to obtain the status of an adult. Quasi-rituals of leaving childhood are for adolescents a concrete expression of the activity of separating themselves from being perceived as children, but also from any attempts on the part of adults at imposing tasks of adulthood on them. The mythical overtones of such activities stem from the teenagers’ belief in the uniqueness of the adult phase of life, to which they ascribe divine qualities.
 

Family rituals. Conceptions, research and psychological functions

The article concerns issues relating to family rituals, discussing them both from the theoretical findings, results of research and psychological functions, as well as therapeutic applications. After discussing the modern range of the concept of ritual, more than 60-year history of psychological research on family rituals in the world, mostly in the US, and the status of such research in Poland are presented. The existing definitions, classifications and attempts of operationalization of family rituals as well as research methods, including the structure of rituals and experiences gained from participation are discussed. In the final part the authors deal with psychological functions of family rituals.

Sprawozdanie z XXIV Ogólnopolskiej  Konferencji Psychologii Rozwojowej  Rozwój autonomii i podmiotowości człowieka w dobie globalizacji, 1–3 czerwca 2015, Warszawa

Jeffrey J. Arnett’s Concept of Emerging Adulthood as an Extended Liminal Phase of the Rite of Passage

The article includes a comparison of the developmental stage spreading between adolescence and early adulthood recently called after Jeffrey J. Arnette (2004, 2007) the emerging adulthood, to the liminal phase of the rite of passage first enunciated by Arnold van Gennep (1909/2006) and Victor Turner (2005). According to the formulated thesis it is stated that the stage of emerging adulthood, treated in contemporary western psychology as a new developmental stage, characteristic for hi-tech societies, is a far and residual equivalent of the liminal (marginal) phase of the rite of passage, in its extended form. Both the society of participants of this ritual in its liminal phase, called by Turner communitas, and the society of young people entering adulthood, are characterised mainly by the feeling of “being in-between”. Both those social groups have left behind the previous stage, yet not reached the new one. After presenting the concept of the rite of passage consisting of three phases, together with the idea of liminality linked to it, the contemporary phenomenon of extending the psychosocial moratorium and the concept of Arnette’s emerging adulthood, there is an analysis of the similarities and differences between the liminal phase and the stage of emerging adulthood. The latter of the phenomena is closely linked to the specificity of western culture (such as degradation and disappearance of rites of passage in their traditional forms, orientation towards consumption and hedonism), and seems to have its source in the psychic qualities of young people such as i.e. the lack of readiness to take up the responsibility for others and to take care of them.