Person perception in children with conduct disorders

In his object-relations theory, O. Kernberg discerns different levels of personality organization. From a structural point of view these are described with respect to the object-relations. So, according to Kernberg, the antisocial personality is more primitively organized (so-called borderline) than most patients with neurotic disorders, as manifested by his object-relations. We hypothesize that this also applies to children with conduct disorders in comparison with emotionally disturbed children. In this explorative study, we investigated whether suppositions concerning the object/self representations (i.e. the internal object-relations) of children with conduct disorders can be tested using a research method from empirical psychology. We chose the method of the free (written) description of persons, which in the psychology of social cognitions is used to study person perception. The results indicate that person perception (i.e. the conscious part of the object/self representations) in children with conduct disorders differs characteristically from that in a normal age- and intelligence-matched control group.