This study clarifies how conflicts among adolescents and their parents contribute to autonomy and attachment development. The first case study focuses on a male adolescent, and the second focuses on a mother who has a male adolescent. They were asked to describe conflicts and to report their counterparts’ recall of the conflicts. As the data were retrospective, participants were asked to mention their feelings about the conflicts at the moment that the conflicts occurred, by which participants’ prospective perspectives in process of their experiencing conflicts was constructed. The findings show, first, that conflicts caused crisis in both autonomy and attachment for adolescents and parents. Second, adolescents and parents developed autonomy and attachment through adolescents’ creating continuity of their parents by attributing their violations to their characteristics and parents’ creating continuity of their adolescents by confirming their unchanged characteristics. Further research needs to examine a range of generalizations from one case study for each adolescent and mother and from adolescents that were only male.

This study investigated a proposed structural model of the relationship between over-adaptation and depression in college students. This model assumed that: (1) self- and other-perception (self-insufficiency and cynicism) predict external over-adaptive behavior (self-inhibition and other-oriented behavior); and (2) over-adaptation predicts depression. A total of 260 Japanese college students (110 men and 150 women undergraduates) completed a questionnaire. The structural model was analysed through the structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicated that: (1) self-insufficiency predicted over-adaptive behavior positively (both men and women); (2) cynicism positively predicted self-insufficiency (both men and women) and self-inhibition (women only); and (3) depression was positively predicted directly by self-insufficiency (both male and female) and self-inhibition (male only). These results suggest that self-sufficiency and self-inhibition, i.e. psychological adaptation-relating variables, mainly affect depression. Finally, gender differences were discussed.

The purpose of this study was to develop a time continuity scale and examine its reliability and validity. A total of 335 undergraduates completed a questionnaire twice. The questionnaire consisted of a time continuity scale that contained items collected from participants’ descriptions in previous researches, and 2 other scales assessing time attitude and time orientation. Exploratory factor analysis identified 2 distinct factors, “continuity between past and present" and “continuity between present and future," as hypothesized on the basis of existing theories. These subscales had adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The construct validity of this scale was examined by calculating the correlations between its scores and scores on the 2 other scales.