This study seeks to explore how narcissistic attention seeking behaviors in faceto-face conversation contribute to marital quality and partner’s mental health over the transition to parenthood. Narcissism, considered a personality disorder, is defined as an all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity in fantasy or behavior. Central features of narcissism include a need for admiration and a lack of empathy. The concept of narcissism has been extended beyond mental illness and is now considered a personality trait (Raskin & Terry, 1988). It follows then that narcissistic tendencies might affect one’s communication style. This research elaborates the concept of narcissism, and discusses the ways that narcissistic patterns in interpersonal relationships have been studied. Finally, drawing upon social exchange theory, it finds that conversational narcissism characterizes 78 percent of marriages, frequently renders spouses invisible, and predicts maladaptive dialogue and divorce at seven years. / text

M.A. (Clinical Psychology) / The institution of marriage rests upon shared expectations of appropriate marital behaviour including those of sexual fidelity and lifetime partnership. Therefore, a wife whose husband has been convicted of rape, experiences a violation in her marriage. The experience of the marital relationship of convicted rapists is not a well-documented phenomenon, particularly from the offenders’ wives’ perspectives. A qualitative, phenomenological approach was adopted to explore the experience and the meanings that participants attributed to the phenomenon of the marital relationship with a convicted rapist. Descriptions of such experiences were sourced from open-ended interviews conducted with three participants. Participant interviews were transcribed and analysed using an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Despite the distinctiveness of the participants’ individual experiences, the researcher identified five superordinate themes common across the three participants’ descriptions. These themes are encapsulated as follows: (a) Wives’ positive experiences of their marital relationship; (b) Wives’ negative experiences of their marital relationship; (c) Wives’ ambivalent experiences in their marital relationship; (d) Wives’ emotional experiences as a consequence of their former husbands’ convictions for rape; and (e) Wives’ experiences of stigmatisation. The findings have potential implications for future research.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas State University Libraries / Department: Human Development and Family Studies.

There is no abstract available for this thesis. / Department of Communication Studies

Research on the ordination of women has focused on the effect in the church and on aspects of the personality of the women choosing the priesthood but not on effects on the families of ordained women. Using personal interviews, the Dyadic Adjustment Scale and the Bem Sex Role Inventory, spouses in 12 families which contain ordained women from Episcopalian, Methodist, Unity and The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints churches were analyzed to determine the effects of ordination on the families. Couples containing an ordained female were found to have slightly higher marital adjustment and significantly higher levels of androgyny than a standardized sample. Androgyny and marital adjustment were significantly correlated. The more androgenous, the greater the marital adjustment.