Abstract

One of the most important constructs of the psychoanalysis is that of the defense mechanism. Although other aspects of psychoanalytic theory have been challenged, and sometimes greatly modified, the mechanisms have been widely accepted even in circles outside the psychoanalysis. Also their relevance to development, personality, adaptation, clinical assessment and psychotherapy has been recognized. In the last thirty years many empirical researches have been done on the mechanisms which considerably increased our knowledge concerning them. The present article discusses the results of a research on the developoment of the defense mechanisms among 223 canditates to the religious life, philosophy and theology students, members of the Salesian Congregation in Poland, aged 19-32.’ On the basis of the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ) construed by M. Bond and his collaborators from the Department of Psychiatry of the Sir Mortimer B. Davis - Jewish General Hospital in Montreal (Canada) a new questionnaire in Polish was elaborated for the measurement of the defense mechanisms. The questionnaire, called Kwestionariusz Mechanizmów Obronnych (KMO), possesses 13 scales that measure the defense mechanisms (immature ones: acting out, passive aggression, spliting, denial, projection; neurotic ones: omnipotence-devaluation, reaction formation,
isolation-intellectualization; mature ones: affiliation, altruism, anticipation, humor, sublimation) and a scale of control.The KMO was administrated to the 223 subjects of the research. At the beginning of the research a hypothesis was formulated according to which the oldest subjects would use more frequently the mature mechanisms and, conversly, less frequently the immature and the neurotic mechanisms in respect to the youngest subjects. To verify the hipothesis on the results of the administration of the KMO to the subjects the variance analysis was made with the age as an indipendent variable, divided into three levels of age (19-22, 23-26, 27-32), and with the scales of defense mechanisms as dipendent variables. Subsequently levels of statistical significance between the means of groups of age were tested. The hypothesis was substantially confirmed: the significant differences between the means of groups of age were found for 6 defenses measured by the KMO. For spliting, reaction formation, isolation-intellectualization, affiliation and sublimation the differences were going in the direction provided by the hypothesis. For the altruism the direction was contrary, but this fact could be explained by the specific type of subjects chosen for the research. The changes in the use of defenses reflect, with great probalility, the maturation processes of the subjects and indicates that the formation to the religious life doesn’t hinder or damage the psychological maturation of the candidates, at least in the aspect of the defense mechanisms.