Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry
Volume 25, Issue 6 , Pages 826-835, November 1986

Self‐Concept in Adolescent Anorexics

Dr. Swift is Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine. Ms. Bushnell is Project Coordinator in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin. At the time of this research, Dr. Hanson wax a Research Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin; she is currently Psychologist Intern, Division of Corrections, Bureau of Clinical Services, State of Wisconsin. Mr. Logemann is a medical student at the University of Wisconsin

Received 17 May 1984; received in revised form 15 May 1985; accepted 25 June 1985.

Article Outline

Two measures of self-concept, the Offer Self-image Questionnaire (OSIQ) and the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB)-Introject, were administered to 30 hospitalized female adolescent anorexics. The OSIQ responses yielded a “mixed pattern” of self-concept as compared to normal subjects with good adjustment in some areas (e.g., morals, impulse control, educational goals) and very poor adjustment in others (e.g., emotional tone, body and self-image, sexual attitudes). This unusual OSIQ pattern appears to be unique to anorexics. The SASB-Introject found the anorexics to be self-restraining and self-attacking. However, what separated the anorexics from a normal reference group was not the level of self-restraint (both groups were high in this respect) but the intense intrapunitiveness of the anorexics. Comparing the two measures, good adjustment on the OSIQ scales was highly correlated with low self-attack on the SASB-Introject. Clinical and research implications of these findings are discussed.

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 Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, Toronto, October 1984.The investigation was supported by monies from the Research and Development Fund of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison.The authors wish to acknowledge Drs. Lorna S. Benjamin and Marjorie H. Klein for assistance in the development of this project, and Dr. Regina Casper and Ms. Marilyn Ritholz for reviewing earlier versions of this manuscript. Drs. Daniel Offer and Eric Ostrov were gracious in their willingness to share data and to consult at critical junctures in the work. Appreciation is also owed to Sister Kathleen O'Connell, Principal of Edgewood High School, Madison, Wisconsin, for allowing us to collect normative data from her students.

PII: S0002-7138(09)60202-8

doi:10.1016/S0002-7138(09)60202-8

Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry
Volume 25, Issue 6 , Pages 826-835, November 1986

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