Percept-genetic codings of defense in chronic schizophrenia.

Hitherto available studies on the percept-genetic defensive organization of Schizophrenia have not distinguished between acute and chronic stages of the disorder. The present research with the Defense Mechanism Test included 30 chronic inpatients with several years of hospitalization and with acceptable perceptual thresholds. Compared with 30 sex- and age-matched nonschizophrenic psychiatric control patients, schizophrenics resorted significantly more often to (a) regression, (b) disappearance of the peripheral figure, (c) introjection (wrong sex attribution to the hero), and (d) significantly less often to the most mature variants of repression. In a further comparison of a subgroup of 16 women schizophrenic patients and a matched group of melancholic inpatients, the findings on regression, introjection, and repression were replicated.