Jane Loevinger Weissman (February 6, 1918 – January 4, 2008) was an American
developmental psychologist
Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult developmen ...
who developed a
theory of personality which emphasized the gradual internalization of social rules and the maturing conscience for the origin of personal decisions. She also contributed to the theory of measurements by introducing the coefficient of test
homogeneity
Homogeneity and heterogeneity are concepts often used in the sciences and statistics relating to the Uniformity (chemistry), uniformity of a Chemical substance, substance or organism. A material or image that is homogeneous is uniform in compos ...
. In the tradition of developmental stage models, Loevinger integrated several "frameworks of
meaning-making
In psychology, meaning-making is the process of how people construe, understand, or make sense of life events, relationships, and the self.
The term is widely used in constructivist approaches to counseling psychology and psychotherapy, especia ...
" into a model of humans' constructive potentials that she called
ego development (or in German, ''
Ich-Entwicklung''). The essence of the ego is the striving to master, to integrate, and make sense of experience. She also is credited with the creation of an assessment test, the
Washington University Sentence Completion Test.
Early life
Jane Loevinger was the third of five children born to Gustavus Loevinger and Millie Strause, and was born into a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
American family.
Jewish Women's Archives: "Psychology in the United States"
by Rhoda K. Unger] retrieved March 21, 2022
Education and accomplishments
As a child, Loevinger showed proficiency among her classmates, often achieving far above the rest. She went to the University of Minnesota in hopes of pursuing Psychology, where she was told that this major was too mathematical for her. Despite the odds, Loevinger declared her major as Psychology and managed to graduate magna cum laude at the young age of 19 years old. She then went on to earn her master of science degree in psychometrics at the age of 21. Still intrigued with the world of psychology, Loevinger went on to enroll in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a research assistant for Erik Erikson.
In 1943, Loevinger married Samuel Isaac Weissman (June 25, 1912 – June 12, 2007), a scientist who contributed to the Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
. They had a son and a daughter. Samuel Weissman worked on the weapon design of the atomic bomb in New Mexico, while Loevinger stayed at Berkeley to finish her dissertation. The family then moved to St. Louis where Jane taught part-time at the Washington University in St. Louis.
After growing frustrated with her time teaching and facing the societal pressures of being a working mother, Loevinger decided to begin her own research, specifically about women and mothers. During this time, Loevinger and her research team developed a number of studies and finding, including the renowned Washington University Sentence Completion Test.
See also
* Psychological testing
Psychological testing is the administration of psychological tests. Psychological tests are administered by trained evaluators. A person's responses are evaluated according to carefully prescribed guidelines. Scores are thought to reflect individ ...
* Loevinger's stages of ego development Loevinger's stages of ego development are proposed by developmental psychologist Jane Loevinger (1918-2008) and conceptualize a theory based on Erik Erikson's psychosocial model and the works of Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) in which "the ego wa ...
Notes
References
* Loevinger, J. (1948). "The technic of homogeneous tests compared with some aspects of scale analysis and factor analysis". ''Psychological Bulletin, 45'', 507-529.
* Loevinger, J. (1970). ''Measuring Ego Development''. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
* Loevinger, J. (1976). ''Ego Development''. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
* Loevinger, J. (1987). ''Paradigms of Personality''. New York: Freeman.
* Hy, L. X. & Loevinger, J. (1996). ''Measuring Ego Development'', 2nd Ed. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
* Cook-Greuter, Susanne R. (2010): Postautonomous Ego Development: A Study of Its Nature and Measurement, (Diss.) Harvard
External links
Loevinger’s Developmental Model of Personality
{{DEFAULTSORT:Loevinger, Jane
American people of German-Jewish descent
American women psychologists
20th-century American psychologists
1918 births
2008 deaths
University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts alumni
People from Saint Paul, Minnesota
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Washington University in St. Louis faculty