Personalities of women reporting incestuous abuse during childhood.
Previous studies of adult females reporting incestuous sexual abuse in childhood, using the Apperceptive Personality Test and Draw-a-Person Questionnaire, indicated abusees attributed more negative traits to their characters than did controls. No differences were found by type of abuse or relation to the abuser. In these studies abusees and controls were obtained from different sources, although matched on several characteristics. The present study compared 79 incestuous abusees to 79 matched controls all drawn from the same subject pool. Multivariate analysis of variance identified significant differences between the groups. In contrast with earlier studies questionnaire scores distinguished rape victims from those abused without rape and distinguished those abused by older relatives from those abused by peers in two additional multivariate analyses of variance.
Karp
S A
SA
Department of Psychology, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
Holmstrom
R W
RW
Silber
D E
DE
Stock
L J
LJ
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007179:Incest / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D010553:Personality Development; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011386:Projective Techniques; D011902:Rape / Q000523:psychology