The Theory of Ego Development and the Measure

Abstract

In the 25 or 30 years since she first announced in print her theory of ego development (Loevinger, 1966) and published her first scoring manual (Loevinger & Wessler, 1970; Loevinger, Wessler, & Redmore, 1970), Loevinger has secured for herself an important place in the field of personality. Many would identify as her most valuable contribution the conception of ego development and the delineation of the stages, which helped us to go beyond the fragmentation of trait psychology and to look at personalities as meaningful wholes. Many others would count as her major achievement the construction of the ego development measure, one of the most sophisticated tools that has ever been built for the assessment of personality. As for Loevinger herself, when she has an opportunity to evaluate her work (e.g., Loevinger, 1978), she focuses on an aspect that many of us would surely have disregarded, an aspect that is both more general than ego development and that reaches deeper into the philosophical roots of personality psychology as an empirical discipline. She presents her whole work as a demonstration that theory and measurement cannot be separated from each other, but must form an integral unity and must constantly feed on each other. Her unique contribution, then, consists of the articulation of a method for pursuing that goal, a general strategy for measuring personality that affords the continuous revision and development of the theory on which the measure depends. A similar case is made in the target article, through a review of the steps that led Loevinger to her final method and a comparison of the properties of this method with those of alternative strategies in personality development. This is a masterly and important article.