ASSESSING YOUR OWN PERSONALITY
A Sense of Personal Identity
Indicate how often each statement applies to you, using the following point
scale: 1 ¼Never applies to me, 2 ¼Only occasionally or seldom applies to
me, 3¼Fairly often applies to me, 4 ¼Very often applies to me.
1. I wonder what sort of person I really am.
2. People seem to change their opinion of me.
3. I feel certain about what I should do with my life.
4. I feel uncertain as to whether something is morally right or
wrong.
5. Most people seem to agree about what sort of person I am.
6. I feel my way of life suits me.
7. My worth is recognized by others.
8. I feel freer to be my real self when I am away from those who
know me very well.
9. I feel that what I am doing in life is not really worthwhile.
10. I feel I fit in well in the community in which I live.
11. I feel proud to be the sort of person I am.
12. People seem to see me very differently from the way I see
myself.
13. I feel left out.
14. People seem to disapprove of me.
15. I change my ideas about what I want from life.
16. I am unsure as to how people feel about me.
17. My feelings about myself change.
18. I feel I am putting on an act or doing something for effect.
19. I feel proud to be a member of the society in which I live.
To obtain your score, first reverse the values you assigned to items 1, 2, 4,
8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18. That is, for these items only, 1 ¼4,
2¼3, 3¼2, 4¼1. The values for the remaining items stay the same.
Then add the values for all 19 items. Ochse and Plug (1986) found averagescores for this scale of around 57 when they administered it to South Afri-
can citizens between the ages of 15 and 60. The standard deviation for this
score was around 7, indicating that the majority of people obtain scoresthat fall within 7 points of the average score. Scores considerably higher
than this average range indicate a particularly well-developed sense of
identity, whereas significantly lower scores suggest the test taker is stillprogressing.
Scale: Identity versus Identity Diffusion Scale
Source: Ochse and Plug (1986).110 CHAPTER 5 The Psychoanalyt ic Approach