Defending and coping in psychically disturbed adolescents. I. Theory, results of factor analysis

More recent contributions of a sociologically, development-psychologically or also characterologically orientated psychoanalysis stress the significance of defence and coping mechanisms for psychopathology in childhood and adolescence. Cognitive development psychology and interactional psychopathology point in a similar direction. An empirical analysis of 1008 child and adolescent psychiatric patients went into the question of the relative importance of these dimensions of defence and coping for the diagnosis of these patients. Alongside behaviour disorders and psychopathological symptoms also formal personality attributes, existential themes and existential techniques were recorded. The data was factor analytically reduced. Particularly informative in the existential techniques was a comparison between a factor of coping and several defence factors. The factor analysis of second order confirmed the expectation, according to which a close association of coping and expansion/restriction as a dimension of life world resulted on the one hand and a connection between psychopathology and defence dimensions on the other hand. As a total result, a confirmation of the significance of dimensions of defence and coping for a psychopathology in childhood and adolescence can be recognized. Self strength, lacking impulse control, evasive fear resistance, physical symptoms and signs, narcissistic resistance, fear of achievement, foregoing and misled autonomy present, on a factoral level, a crossing of psychopathology and dimensions of defence and coping and thus an enrichment of psychopathological diagnosis in childhood and adolescence.