ABSTRACT
Hitherto available studies on the percept-genetic defensive organization of Schizophrenia have not distinguished between acute and chronic stages of the disorder. The present research with the Defense Mechanism Test included 30 chronic inpatients with several years of hospitalization and with acceptable perceptual thresholds. Compared with 30 sex- and age-matched nonschizophrenic psychiatric control patients, schizophrenics resorted significantly more often to (a) regression, (b) disappearance of the peripheral figure, (c) introjection (wrong sex attribution to the hero), and (d) significantly less often to the most mature variants of repression. In a further comparison of a subgroup of 16 women schizophrenic patients and a matched group of melancholic inpatients, the findings on regression, introjection, and repression were replicated.
Subject(s)
Defense Mechanisms , Perceptual Defense , Personality Inventory , Schizophrenia/diagnosis , Schizophrenic Psychology , Adult , Aged , Attention , Chronic Disease , Depressive Disorder/diagnosis , Depressive Disorder/psychology , Discrimination Learning , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Projection , Regression, Psychology , Repression, Psychology , Visual PerceptionABSTRACT
The Defense Mechanism Test was administered to 20 subjects with a psychometric diagnosis of self-defeating personality disorder and to 40 controls with evidence of other personality disturbances. The groups did not differ on sex distribution, age, or education. The following two types of repression were significantly more characteristic of the self-defeating group, (1) the hero is seen as an inanimate or rigid being and (2) the hero is disguised or masked. Codings of introaggression and other major defensive variables did not discriminate between groups.
