Assessing students' plans for college

Based on a contemporary cognitive-psychoanalytic theory (control-mastery theory; J. Weiss, H. Sampson & Mount Zion Psychotherapy Research Group, 1986), this study proposed that college students have plans for college that consist of conscious and unconscious goals and obstructions to be overcome in meeting those goals. The construct of unconscious guilt was used to mediate the dual goals of autonomy and attachment. The idiographic plan-formulation method was adapted to derive plans for 12 sophomore women. Acceptable interjudge reliabilities and criterion validity were demonstrated and several themes in the goals and obstructions were illustrated. Students worried mure about mothers than about fathers, particularly when they perceived the mother as weak or needy. The potential of the method for generating inferences about unconscious process For normative development is discussed.