Representation of Family Functioning In Marital Relations Using the “Associative Rhombus” Technique (Students Case Study)

The article presents the description of the “Associative rhombus” technique, which was developed by I. V. Dobriakov to identify unconscious and hidden experiences associated with different aspects of life, as well as the results of its approbation on the youth sample in order to analyze the representations of family functions in marital relations. The technique “Associative rhombus is based on the principles of K. Jung's associative experiment. It is an associative procedure, which combines the principles of directed and chain variants of the associative experiment. The results of the technique approbation show its potential for identification of representations about family functions realized in marital relations (evidence from student youth). 175 unmarried students of higher educational institutions of St. Petersburg aged 18-23 years (93 females and 82 males) took part in the testing of the technique. The concepts of “husband” and “wife” were used as associative stimulus. As a result, 3005 semantic units were obtained, which were subjected to deductive content analysis for their correlation with the main functions of the family (household, social control, spiritual and cultural communication, affiliation, sexual-erotic, reproductive, parental). The analysis shows that the associations proposed by respondents for characterizing marital roles reflect all functional aspects of family relations. The emotional affiliation function of marital relationships was most frequently mentioned (64.10%). The second most frequent associations were connected with household aspect of marital relations. Then, in descending order, there were the parental function and the function of social control. The function of spiritual communication and sexual-erotic function had the lowest frequency. A comparison of the associations proposed by men and women revealed potential “stress points” in the relationship between spouses at the early stages of marriage, including the degree of emotional involvement of partners in marital relations, as well as the distribution of influence and boundaries of spouses’ responsibility in family relations. The percentage of associations assigned to certain functions of family relations probably reflects the specifics of youth, but it is important to note that during associating with the “Associative rhombus” technique respondents are able to express their ideas about every functions of the family. On the basis of these results, the potential of the “Associative rhombus” technique for solving various problems in the field of premarital and family counseling is characterized.

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