Late adolescents' identity formation: individuation from the family of origin.

This study explored the relationships between late adolescents' self-reported ego identity and individuation from their family of origin. Individuation was defined as adolescents' subjective perceptions of how psychologically enmeshed they were in the transactional processes of fusion and triangulation within their family of origin. The results indicated a significant relationship between adolescents' perceived involvement in their family's patterns of fusion and triangulation and the total score, and three of the five subscale scores, from the identity measure. The implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.