Comparison of defense styles & defense mechanisms of patients with obssesive-compulsive disorder & normal people

Introduction: It has been suggested that the defense mechanisms are in charge of caring the ego in response to the different kind of anxiety forms. Since in psychoanalytic approach each psychological disorder has uncoping defense mechanisms, this study was aimed to determine and compare the style of the defense mechanisms in both obsessive-compulsive disorder and healthy people..Method: people with OCD, fulfilling DSM-IV criteria for OCD and healthy people, each group comprising ۳۰ subjects were evaluated on Defensive style Questionnaire (DSQ-۴۰) .Result: In comparison, OCD subjects differed significantly from normal group. OCD people exhibited more on the neurotic and immature style. In details, they used the acting out, reaction formation and undoing styles than to normal group..Conclusion: The results of our study suggest that these findings are comparable with other (foreign) studies however studying on defense mechanisms needs further investigations.

Keywords:

Obsessive-compulsive disorder , defense mechanism , defensive style