Children's defensive responses and emotional upset following a disaster: a projective assessment.
Projective stories were used to assess the defense mechanisms of 27 preadolescent boys who were victims of a lightning strike in which one boy died. Denial, projection, and identification, in combination, were found to be inversely related to clinical upset, as was the age and sex-appropriate individual defense of projection. In addition, low-defensive boys' self-reports of fears agreed more often with their parents' reports of sleep and somatic disturbances than did high-defensive boys' self-reports. The findings provide support for the validity of the Defense Mechanism Manual (Cramer, 1982) and raise the issue of defense mechanisms as moderator variables in self-report questionnaires.
Dollinger
S J
SJ
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Cramer
P
P
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D004556:Electric Injuries / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D015168:Lightning Injuries / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D011386:Projective Techniques; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011594:Psychometrics; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*