The child's demystification of psychological defense mechanisms: A structural and developmental analysis

Explored possible relationships between the cognitive developmental level of preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational children and their success in interpreting each of 8 commonly described mechanisms of psychological defense. Ss were 30 children in kindergarten-Grade 6. Based on a formal analysis of the logical transformations inherent in various defensive strategies, 3 distinct families of defense were identified, each characterized by complex modes of restructuring the appearance of more candid forms of affect expression. The transformations characteristic of these alternative modes of defense were hypothesized to mirror a counterpart set of cognitive operations including the ability to take the inverse or reciprocal of various elements of thought, or to combine such 1st-order operations into 2nd-order operations upon operations. Results indicate that preoperational children, lacking the requisite cognitive skills, fail to understand defensive transformations of any sort; that concrete operational Ss commonly understand defenses involving inverse and reciprocal operations; and that only formal operational Ss are able to decode defenses involving 2nd-order transformations involving operations upon operations. (16 ref)