Psychological separation and adjustment to college.

We examined the relationship between psychological separation and adjustment to college in freshmen (N?=?130) and upperclassmen (N?=?123) samples. Psychological separation was measured with the Psychological Separation Inventory. Adjustment to college was assessed with the College Adjustment Inventory. Freshmen tended to show more psychological dependencies on mother and father, and poorer social and personal-emotional adjustment to college than did upperclassmen. A pervasive relationship was found between separation and adjustment, although separation did not predict adjustment across the board. Separation appears more strongly related to personal-emotional adjustment, particularly functional and emotional independence from mother and conflictual independence from father. Sex effects also emerged, with women showing more psychological dependencies than men. Finally, our results show that advances in separation across the four dimensions are not uniform. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)