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Welcome! » Faculty & Staff » Jenny Macfie


Jenny Macfie

Research Interests

Child development, attachment, self development, borderline personality disorder

Research statement

Dr. Macfie works within a developmental psychopathology framework at the intersection of clinical and developmental psychology. She is interested in the development of adult psychopathology that has strong conceptual links to early childhood development. Specifically she focuses on the developmental tasks of attachment, self development and self regulation. She is currently studying development in children (age 4-6 and 14-17) whose mothers have borderline personality disorder (BPD). Methodology includes adult attachment interviews (AAI), filmed mother-child and mother-adolescent interactions and preschoolers’ story-telling. See the web page for the Child and Adolescent Development Lab for more details on research projects: http://web.utk.edu/~macfie

Honors

  • 1999-2002 National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Research Service Award
  • 1999 Lisa Flanagan Grossman Memorial Award

Grants

  • 2006-2008 National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) 1 R03 MH077841, "Identifying risk and psychopathology in children aged 4-6 whose mothers have borderline personality disorder." $100,000.
  • 2005-2007 National Institutes for Health (NIH) Clinical Research Loan Repayment Award, "Child development in children whose mothers have borderline personality disorder."
  • 2004 Professional Development Award, University of Tennessee
  • 2005 Scholarly Activities Research Incentive Funding, University of Tennessee
  • 2004 Mental Health Development Fund, University of Tennessee

Selected Publications

Macfie, J., Houts, R. M., McElwain, N. L., & Cox, M. J. (2005). The effect of father-toddler and mother-toddler role reversal on the development of behavior problems in kindergarten. Social Development, 14, 514-531.

Macfie, J., McElwain, N. L., Houts, R. M., & Cox, M. J. (2005). Intergenerational transmission of role reversal between parent and child: Dyadic and family system internal working models. Attachment and Human Development, 7, 51-65.

Macfie, J., Cicchetti, D., & Toth, S. L. (2001). The development of dissociation in maltreated preschool-aged children. Development and Psychopathology, 13, 233-253.

Macfie, J., Toth, S. L., Rogosch, F. A., Robinson, J., Emde, R. N., & Cicchetti, D. (1999). Effect of maltreatment on preschoolers’ narrative representations of responses to relieve distress and of role reversal. Developmental Psychology, 35, 461-465.

Jenny Macfie

Jenny Macfie

Associate Professor

Email: macfie@utk.edu
Web site: http://web.utk.edu/~macfie/

Key words: Developmental psychopathology, self development, role reversal, dissociation, borderline personality disorder