Married couples aged 55-98 were surveyed regarding their perceptions of family-of-origin distress, their affective communication and problem solving communication skills, and their emotional intimacy. Two 2-way ANOVAs were performed with husbands' (model 1) and wives' (model 2) emotional intimacy scores as dependent measures and family-of-origin distress scores as the independent measures. Then both models were re-analyzed with affective communication and problem solving communication entered as co-variates. Results suggested that for both husbands and wives, emotional intimacy was affected by family-of-origin distress. Additionally, intimacy was affected by the distress in their spouses' family-of-origin in both models. Post-hoc analyses suggested that as long as at least one member of the couple reports low family-of-origin distress, intimacy does not suffer for either spouse. Taking communication variables into account rendered the effects of family-of-origin distress non-significant in both models. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for psychoanalytic, systemic, and developmental theory.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-5533 |
| Date | 01 January 1999 |
| Creators | Birch, Paul James |
| Publisher | BYU ScholarsArchive |
| Source Sets | Brigham Young University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/ |
Page generated in 0.6554 seconds