Quantification of Human Defence Mechanisms

The Quantification of Human Defence is to be welcomed both for its scientific merit, and as an example of international collaboration and cooperation between psychologists, psychiatrists and clinicians from many countries. The problems surrounding the analysis and assessment of psychological coping are complex, particularly with responses such as defence where many processes are not immediately accessible to conscious awareness. It is widely recognised that without reliable and quantifiable measures, little progress can be made towards understanding the role of psychological defence in human experience. The multifacet nature of defence, and the relevance of experimental and clinical psychology, psychometrics, psychodynamics, psychiatry and psychophysiology, renders it particularly resistant to investigation by a single research group. It was with these issues in mind that an interdisciplinary collaborative initiative was formulated through the Concerted Action on Quantification of Parameters for the Study of Breakdown in Human Adaptation. The Concerted Action, which is part of the Commission of the European Community's Medical and Health Research Programme, was set up in 1983 with the aim of stimulating international collaborative research into problems of quantification of stress and adaptation. More than 70 university departments and research institutions from the European Community and other European countries have participated in the programme, tackling a wide variety of topics ranging from basic biological regulatory processes to measurements in psychosocial epidemiology.

Preface.- I: The Problem Area.- Defence, defence and defence: How do we measure defence?.- The relationship between objective measures of defences.- II: Interview and Questionnaire Methods.- Interview techniques and assessment of defence mechanisms.- The Dutch and the Norwegian translations of the Plutchik questionnaire for psychological defence.- III: The Defence Mechanism Test: Method.- Notes on the development of the DMT.- An evaluative study of the Defence Mechanism Test.- Construct validity of the DMT.- G-analysis of the DMT.- Hard and soft models for the assessment of personality organization by DMT.- The DMT method in Europe: State of the art.- IV: Validation of DMT.- The use of the Defence Mechanism Test (DMT) in Norway for selection and stress research.- DMT defences in neurotic and somatically ill patients.- The relation between defence and overt aggression.- Application of the DMT for assessing serious drinking and driving offenders.- V: DMT and Biological Parameters.- Defence and activation theory: An example of reinterpretation and reductionism in explaining the process of psychological defence.- The relationship between psychological defence, cortisol, immunoglobulins, and complements.- Defensiveness and cardiovascular reactions.- Lateralization of defence mechanisms related to creative functioning.- VI: Relationships Between DMT and Other Methods.- Perceptual defence: The use of digitized pictures.- The Defence Mechanism Test and questionnaire methods for measurement of psychological defences.