A study on cognitive constructs of adolescent clients with family conflicts on themselves and their family members

This study aims at investigating how six adolescent clients who are conflicting with their families represent the family, family member and themselves in their own cognition. This has been done through 'Repertory Idiogrid Technique' which is a semi-structured interview technique. The study has been designed as a qualitative multiple-case analysis which prioritizes the internal validity. The data has been collected through face-to-face interview method and each interview has lasted averagely one hour. The element as a research object which is one of two basic elements in the 'Repertory Idiogrid Technique' was created by the researcher. According to this, the elements are current self, ideal self, normative self, family, good family, mother, good mother, father, good father, sibling, good sibling. Through a triple comparison method, developed within the framework of 'Repertory Idiogrid Technique', the differences among the elements have been obtained from the participants as personal structure. Ultimately, each element is graded in terms of the individual structures uncovered. The self-identity graph of each participant was obtained from the 'Repertory Idiogrid Technique' via the Idiogrid data analysis program developed specifically for this technique. The self-identity graph is composed of two axes and four quarter sections. All elements take a position on the self-identity graph in terms of distance to current and ideal-self elements. The self-identity graph, consisting of four quarter sections which are acceptance, idealization, conflict and ambivalent domain, was examined separately for each participant. Findings show that adolescent clients position their siblings and mothers as the most distant from them. Again, they have positioned their father relatively away from them. Another finding is related to the self-values of adolescent clients. The self-value can be calculated from the distance coefficient between the ideal self and the current self. The self-value of the participants shows a balanced distribution. Accordingly, it was seen that the number of participants with high, medium and low-level self-values was two. Finally, it was found that the participants position the elements related to the family and family members away from the ideal images of these elements. In conclusion, it can be said that the findings obtained from the 'Repertory Idiogrid Technique' coincide with the observations during the consultation. Keywords; Adolescent, personal consultation, individual recognition, Repertory Idiogrid Technique, self-identity graph