The Present study aimed at investigating (1) the extent to which ‘dependency structure’ as revealed by a questionnaire corresponds with what a self-reported personal history has to say, and (2) relying on the latter, the nature of the development of dependency from young childhood.
Method
Questionnaire. This consists of 24 statements describing concrete dependent behavior, from “I want to be with A all the time” (classed as ‘seeking physical proximity’) to “If I were to lose A, my life would be meaningless” (‘seeking psychic support’). Six possible objects of dependency, e. g., mother, father, love object or most intimate friend of the opposite sex, are chosen and Ss must make separate ratings for each of them on a 5-point scale. The dependency object with the highest total score is designated as the focus of dependency. This questionnaire had been used in the previous studies.
Personal history. Before and after writing the personal history, Ss were shown a list of 113 items which should be covered. These items are concerned with daily life, family relations, school and teacher, peer relations, etc. from brith to the present. Ss were asked to spend at least two hours writing. They are not allowed to refer to the list during, but were encouraged to add any descriptions the list reminded them of afterwards.
Ss. 104 female college sophtnores, who had been given the questionnaire three times, wrote the personal history. Out of them, 18 cases were selected whose focus of dependency had been clear and fairly stable.
Findings
1. Self-reported descriptions of interpersonal relations after college entrance generally correponded with dependency structures obtained by the questionnaire. Foci of dependency independently determined by the two measuring procedures were identical in 17 of thel8 selected.
2. Self-reported past interpersonal relations have many common features according to their focus of dependency. Though we have to be careful in interpreting this since the past in one's personal history is colored by the present, this finding suggests that dependency structures do not appear Suddenly but develop gradually and rather predictably even from young childhood. Divided into two types, family and non-family type, according to the focus of dependency, they show clear differences in selfreported interpersonal behavior. Ss belonging to the family type, including mother-focus-type and mother- father-focus-type, reported passive and negative tendencies in social behavior already in young childhood: they disliked going to kindergarten, had few friends, had difficulty in adjusting to shool, etc. These tendencies have continued to exit up to the present. On the contrary, non-family type Ss, mostly love object-type and intimate friend-type, reported active interpersonal behavior common to all stages of development; taking elementary shool age as an example, they were active and tended to be leaders had many friends, had at least one friend of the opposite sex, etc.
Discussion
The self-reported personal history with its minimal restrictions on mode of responding allow the respondent to express himself freely. Though the questionnaire leaves little freedom on the part of the respondent, since he is allowed to choose one of five answer alternative for the set of predeter mined statements, its close correspondence with the self-reported history, as seen in (1), renders it an independetly effective means of ‘reconstructing’ dependency structures. As both rely on introspection, neither can claim to offer an objectively valid picture of a person's dependency pattern.
The continuity describing under (2) may derive from common environmmental determinants working throughout growth, e. g., the presence of a grandmother living with the family, and/or the mediating function of dependency structure once formed.
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