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Based in large measure on a New School for Social Research dissertation and on postdoctoral work in psychology at New York
University, this monograph falls into two parts: 1, a description and assessment of ego boundaries in terms of permeability and impermeability by means of a Rorschach scoring system devised for the purpose, and 2, an examination of the relation between ego boundary attributes and the boundary properties of a person's intrapsychic tension systems, a gestaltist concept of Kurt Lewin. Permeability is defined as a relative openness between ego and nonego and an expansiveness toward the world; impermeability is defined as a relative closedness between ego and nonego and a degree of seclusiveness from the world. (These characteristics, later in the study, were found to have no bearing on a person's mental well-being.)
A population of twenty-five married couples was divided on the basis of Rorschach ratings into predominantly open or closed, corresponding to more permeable and to more impermeable boundaries. The monograph then examines whether a person's inner tension-system boundaries possess the same net permeability or impermeability as his outer ego boundaries. The subject is given a task, interrupted midway, then given a substitute task which he completes. If the ego boundaries are predominantly permeable the substitute task should discharge the tension of the interrupted task; if the boundaries are predominantly impermeable the residual tension of the first task would remain unreleased by the substitute and the subject would resume the interrupted activity. The result of these experiments was that impermeability and permeability of ego boundaries were consistent with impermeability and permeability of tension-system boundaries but that 'central motivational factors' were significant and that they interacted with the boundary qualities in question in some unclear manner.
Central motivational factors are seen as adding to boundary qualities