Characterization Of Object Relations And Stage Of Psychological Development In Different Gender Types Of Female College Students

Gender typing refers to the course of individuals to know their gender attributionand stability and to fit the gender roles standard based on society and other people’sexpectations. Traditional gender roles model divided people into male and femaleaccording to the physiological differences and considers that the high-masculine menand the high-feminine women are more affected. In1964Rossi proposed the conceptof “androgyny", and believed that individuals who are both masculine and feminineshould be most appropriate.1974, Bem divided individuals into four types: themasculine, the feminine, the androgynous and the undifferentiated.Psychologists at different schools of theories put forward views about the courseof gender typing from their perspectives respectively. However they all agreed thatthe gender type people formed in the early age would impact their furtherdevelopment of personality. Object relations theory described the development ofpersonality as characterization of subject-object relationships, which is to mean theindividuals understand and express their own internal object relations. In the fact ofthat people’s personality is formed by interaction with important others in real life, thecharacterization of object relations include both cognitive representation andpsychological experience. This study attempts to explore the representation level offemale college students in different gender types, to analyze the impact of gendertypes on development of individual personality.First, using college students’ gender role scale (CSRI) which made by QianMingyi and her colleagues divided341female college students into four gender types,and select10subjects from each type respectively, then they (40in total) were testedby Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Furthermore, the original materials of theirstories were rated according to the coding standard to investigate and explain thedifferences of complexity of object relations and self-identity among them.The results show that:(1) there are significant differences among the four gendertypes of the female college students in characterization of object relations;(2) there are significant differences between the masculine and feminine students. The femininestudents had better performance in complexity of representation of people, theunderstanding of social causality and a sense of trust, and the masculine students hadbetter performance in values and moral standards, autonomy, initiative;(3) theandrogynous students have better performance in characterization of object relationsand higher levels of psychological development;(4) the level of psychologicaldevelopment of undifferentiated female students is uncertain.