The Ego in Crisis: Adolescent Pregnancy

Abstract

The present work, whose objective is to analyse the ego functions in a group of pregnant adolescents, develops from the thesis of the degree in Psychology entitled “Vicissitudes of the Ego in Pregnant Adolescents: Analysis of its functioning”. The changes undergone in the adolescence are so continuous that lead to think that an ego subjugated to a permanent crisis must adopt specific characteristics as a mediating and organizing moment of the personality. The adolescent ego must face mourning experiences and the resolution of these will allow an autonomous and nature way out of this stage and, therefore, the achievement of a personal identity. Precocious motherhood may become a factor that rushes the taking on of adult roles, without having achieved an elaboration of these factors, so that it is possible to find flaws in the structuring and or working of the ego, since pregnancy also implies situations of loss in relation to the body, to external objects (family) and to internal objects (identifications). The accidental non-probabilistic sample is made up of 14 pregnant adolescents younger than 20 years old, from the city of San Luis, Argentina. The functions of the ego (adjustment to reality, sense of reality, control of impulses and defenses) will be analysed starting from the data obtained in the Rorschach psychodiagnosis.