Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Fischer, Thomas Aquinas

Titel

An investigation of the relationship between object relational patterns and death attitudes

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

1991

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In this study the relationship between the psychoanalytic concept of object relations and attitudes and anxieties towards death was investigated, with the hypothesis that individuals with more positive (loving) and differentiated object relational patternings would exhibit lower levels of death anxiety and negative evaluation of death. The 130 subjects in the study were recruited from evening adult education courses at a Long Island university. They consisted of 71 females and 59 males and ranged in age from 19 to 72 and with a mean age 35.7. Subject's object relational patterns were operationalized through the use of the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB), (Benjamin, 1974) and these findings were compared with subject scores on the Templer Death Anxiety Scale (1971) and the subscale Neg Eval (of the Dickstein Death Concern Scale, 1972), supported in the findings of Durlak and Kasimatis (1988-89). Significant relationships between the SASB Rating for object relations of Introject and Neg Eval in the direction of the stated hypotheses were found (p $<$.02). Findings on the SASB Ratings for object relations with father also were significant, but in a different direction than was expected. Here subjects who had more negative (hateful) and differentiated patterns of object relatedness exhibited lower levels of death anxiety (p $<$.01) and less negative attitudes towards death (p $<$.02). Other significant findings included belief in afterlife, with subjects who did not believe strongly in an afterlife having significantly lower levels of death anxiety (p $<$.01) and less negative attitudes towards death (p $<$.05). The theoretical psychoanalytic constructs of object relations and their operationalization through the use of SASB were discussed, as well as the relationship between various aspects of these constructs and an individual's attitudes and anxieties towards death.