Psychological defenses of Danish medical students

Patterns in the psychological defenses of medical students may have implications for the way they handle and respond to the pressures and developmental issues they encounter in medical school and beyond. Using the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ40) to assess psychological defenses, a sample of first-year Danish medical students was compared with a sample of students at a short-term boarding school for general education. The medical students scored significantly higher on items connected with pseudo-altruism, denial, and undoing. Trends in the data furthermore suggest a greater use of sublimation, rationalization, and dissociation among medical students. When defense mechanisms were labeled into mature, neurotic, and immature categories, there were no differences between the groups or in the total defense scores.