Objective:
@EN The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between selfdiscrepancy and psychopathology in patients with neurotic symptoms in order to explore the clinical applicability of Higgins'(1987) self-discrepancy, theory.
@ES Methods:
@EN Subjects were 71(male: 45, female:26) patients with dysthymic disorder, anxiety disorder, somatoform disorder, adjustment disorder, or eating disorder diagnosed with DSM-IV.
After all the subjects' different self-cocepts were measured with the Selves questionnaire, their different kinds of self-discrepancy scores were scored according to the method of Higgins(1987), and their various psychiatric symptom
dimensions(psychopathology) were measured with BAI, BDI, and SCL-90-R.
@ES Results:
@EN 1) All of the interscorer agreements for four different kinds of self-discrepancies were very high, the intercorrelations among these were all significant.
2) Total self-discrepancy was significantly associated with most of psychiatric symptom dimensions, and thus this result supports the generality hypothesis abut the relationship between total self-discrepancy and psychopathology.
3) In simple correlation analyses, whereas overall actual-ideal discrepancy was not significantly related to anxiety, it was significantly related to interpersonal anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptom dimension as well as depression. These
patterns
of correlations were also identified in both actul-ideal/own discrepancy and actual-ideal/other discrepancy, but partial correlations between all of the actual-ideal self-discrepancies and psychopathology were not significant. Therefore, these
results
partly support the specificity hypothesis about the relationship between actual-ideal discrepancy and depression.
4) In partial correlation analyses, actual-ought/own discrepancy was significantly associated with both general and interpersonal anxiety, but was not associated with depression. However, both overall actual-ought discrepancy and
actual-ought/other
discrepancy were significantly associated with most of psychiatric symptom dimensions except phobic anxiety. Thus, these results provide mixed support for the specificity hypothesis about the relationship between actual-ought discrepancy and
anxiety.
@ES Conclusion:
@EN The results of this study provide general support for self-discrepancy theory, and provide suggestions for its clinical applicability in understanding and treating patients with neurotic symptoms.
|