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Definition
Defense styles are empirically validated clusters of psychological defense mechanisms, measured with the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ). The DSQ is a paper-pen, self-report questionnaire, with two versions containing either 88 or 40 items. Each item is a statement that the subject scores according to the degree of agreement to its content on a Likert-type interval scale, with scores ranging from one (total disagreement) to nine (full agreement).
Introduction
The concept of character defenses hails from the early days of psychoanalysis; according to Anna Freud, they form “the ways and means by which the ego wards off displeasure and anxiety, and exercises control over impulsive behavior, affects and instinctive urges” (Freud 2011). Although defenses have been defined and differentiated for some time, their unconscious nature made their empirical measurement difficult. To this end, the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ) was developed to assess defense styles...
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References
Bond, M. (1992). An empirical study of defensive styles: The Defense Style Questionnaire. In Ego mechanisms of defense: A guide for clinicians and researchers (pp. 127–158). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
Bond, M. (2004). Empirical studies of defense style: Relationships with psychopathology and change. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 12(5), 263–278.
Bond, M., Gardner, S. T., Christian, J., & Sigal, J. J. (1983). Empirical study of self-rated defense styles. Archives of General Psychiatry, 40(3), 333.
Bond, M., Christopher, J., Gautier, M., Goldenberg, M., Oppenheimer, J., & Simand, J. (1989). Validating the self-report of defense styles. Journal of Personality Disorders, 3(2), 101–112.
Chabrol, H., Rousseau, A., Rodgers, R., Callahan, S., Pirlot, G., & Sztulman, H. (2005). A study of the face validity of the 40 item version of the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ-40). The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 193(11), 756–758.
Freud, A. (2011). The ego and the mechanisms of defence. London: Karnac Books.
Thygesen, K. L., Drapeau, M., Trijsburg, R. W., Lecours, S., & De Roten, Y. (2008). Assessing defense styles: Factor structure and psychometric properties of the new Defense Style Questionnaire 60 (DSQ-60). International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy, 8(2), 171–181.
Vaillant, G. E., Bond, M., & Vaillant, C. O. (1986). An empirically validated hierarchy of defense mechanisms. Archives of General Psychiatry, 43(8), 786–794.
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Floros, G.D. (2017). Defense Style Questionnaire. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_22-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_22-1
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