THE RELATIONSHIP OF GOD IMAGE TO LEVEL OF OBJECT RELATIONS DEVELOPMENT

This study empirically tested the relationship of God image to level o f object relations development in a Christian sample. Ninety-two under graduate students from a religiously homogeneous population were teste d with three measures of God image and three measures of object relati ons development. It was hypothesized that level of object relations de velopment would show a significant positive correlation with images of God as loving and benevolent and a significant negative correlation w ith images of God as wrathful, controlling, and irrelevant. Scores on each of the God image instruments were correlated with scores on each of the measures of object relations development. The objective measure of object relations, the Ego Function Assessment Questionnaire-Revise d (EFAQ-R), correlated significantly with all three measures of God im age in the directions hypothesized. The two projective measures of obj ect relations, the Rorschach and the Comprehensive Object Relations Pr ofile (CORP), showed only a few significant correlations with God imag e scales. The strongest finding of this study was the consistent, posi tive correlation of multiple measures of loving God images with level of object relations development on the EFAQ-R.