The assessment of ego development in borderline personality disorders.

The purpose of the study was to assess levels of ego functioning in a cohort of patients who met the criteria for borderline personality disorder. The Sentence Completion Test (SCT) and the Descriptions of Significant Others (DSO) test were used to measure dimensions of ego maturity. The borderline patients' responses on the SCT were compared with the responses of an outpatient sample of psychiatric patients and with general population norms established for the test.

Object representations in descriptions of significant others: a methodological study.

The aim of this methodological study was to extend Blatt, Wein, Chevron, and Quinlan's (1979) coding system for assessing levels of mental representations of others. Blatt devised a system for scoring spontaneous descriptions of parental figures on a scale that spanned five levels of object differentiation. A single level score was assigned.