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A Systematic Inquiry into Recollections of Childhood Experience and their Relationship to Adult Defence Mechanisms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Elisabeth Tauschke ,
Harold Merskey  and
Edward Helmes
Elisabeth Tauschke
Affiliation:
London Psychiatric Hospital
Harold Merskey*
Affiliation:
London Psychiatric Hospital University of Western Ontario
Edward Helmes
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Western Ontario
*
∗ Department of Research, London Psychiatric Hospital, 850 Highbury Avenue, PO Box 2532, Terminal ‘A‘, London, Ontario N6A 4H1, Canada
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Extract

The relationships between childhood experience, measured by the PBI, and adult defence mechanisms, evaluated through the DMI, were examined in 114 subjects. There were modest but significant correlations between the primitive defences of ‘turning against others' and ‘projection’ on the one hand, and a lack of parental care, as experienced by the subjects, on the other. ‘Principalisation’ (e.g. intellectualisation, isolation and rationalisation) and ‘reversal’ (e.g. negation, reaction formation, denial and repression) were positively associated with parental care. These findings account for only a small portion of the variance but show that, as with certain personality traits, actual or perceived childhood experience contributes in a recognisable fashion to the patterns of adult defences and behaviour.

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Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 157 , Issue 3 , September 1990 , pp. 392 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1990 

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