Loevinger's stages of ego development

Jane Loevinger's stages of ego development 'conceptualize a theory of ego development that was based on Erikson's psychosocial model', as well as on the works of Harry Stack Sullivan, and in which 'the ego was theorized to mature and evolve through stages across the lifespan as a result of a dynamic interaction between the inner self and the outer environment'. Her theory is significant in contributing to the delineation of ego development, which goes beyond fragmentation of trait psychology and looks at personalities as meaningful wholes.

Loevinger conceived of an ego development system that would closely resemble moral development but be both broader in scope and utilize empirical methods of study. Loevinger started by creating an objective test of mothers' attitudes to problems in family life, which she called the Family Problems Scale. This first test did not yield the expected results, but Loevinger noted a strong similarity between authoritarian family ideology and the concept of authoritarian personality being developed at UC Berkeley in the early 1960s. Loevinger noticed that the women who scored at the most extreme ends of the authoritarian scale also tended to be the most immature. These women would tend to agree with such statements as "[a] mother should be her daughter's best friend" while at the same time endorsing punitive behavior. Additionally, Loevinger observed that a liberal, non-authoritarian personality was not the opposite of a high authoritarian personality. Rather, anomie, a disorganized and detached social style was the opposite of the high authoritarian, evidencing a curvilinear relationship.

Loevinger theorized that this was because the Authoritarian Family Ideology' scale was not measuring just authoritarianism but some broader concept which weighed heavily upon all the other constructs she measured. By combining this theoretical framework with Sullivan and Grant's interpersonal maturity continuum, she created the concept of ego development. From this new concept, Loevinger then developed the Washington University Sentence Completion Test, which remains the primary method of determining ego development on Loevinger's scale.

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