Image and Action: On the Link Between Subjective Representation and Interpersonal Relations

A tenet widely accepted in psychoanalytic thought is that the relative maturity of subjective representations of significant others indicates the relative maturity of actual behavior with others. To test this, 120 normal seventh-grade boys and girls at one New York City school were studied, using two measures of interpersonal maturity. One was the Object Representation Scale for Dreams (Krohn, 1972), a device for rating maturity level in dreams. The other was the Interpersonal Maturity Nominating Technique (Losardo, 1983), a sociometric assessment of observed level of social participation, as judged by the peer group, using maturity criteria of Mahler, Pine, and Bergman (1975). The data confirmed an association between the two measures. The data also were used to test whether the more mature group had reached a level of heterophilic intimacy expected by classical theory but not by interactional theory. Results favored the latter theory.