Psychopathology and Defensive Style of Alcoholics as a Function of Congruence-Incongruence between Psychological Differentiation and Locus of Control

Abstract

Sumnasy.-Witkin's psychological differentiation construct and ~o~t e r ' s locus of control construct were studied independently and in interaction to assess their ability to predict psychopathology and defensive style in a sample of 160 adult, male alcoholics. As predicted, locus of control was significantly correlated with both psychopathology and defensive style and field articulation was significantly correlated with defensive style. However, the congruent and incongruent construct was not significantly related to either psychopathology or defensive style.Rotter's (13) locus of control construct and Witkin's (16) psychological differentiation construct have both been studied in relationship to defensive and psychopathological behaviors. External locus of control has been found to be associated with greater psychopathology ( 5 ) , a relationship that holds true for alcoholic populations (4). Internal and external male alcoholics also differ significantly in their defensive styles as measured by the Defense Mechanism Inventory ( 3 ) , internals tending to use avoidance-oriented and externals using approach-oriented defenses ( 11 ) . Several of the above researchers have concluded that internals have more functional defenses as measured by the L, P, and K scales of the MMPI ( 10). Psychological differentiation has also been related to defensive and psychopathological behaviors. Relative to this study, alcoholics tend to appear as more field-dependent ( 7 ) . Among normals and alcoholics, field-independent persons tend to use more sophisticated and fielddependent persons more primitive defenses ( 2 , 6).Locus of control and psychological differentiation are uncorrelated (8, 13) which suggests they could be used in combination to bolster predictive power (9). Several studies employing both constructs in interaction to form four groups suggested congruent groups (field-independent/internal locus of control; field-dependent/external locus of control) were better adjusted than incongruent groups (8,15). The purpose of this study was to replicate and extend previous findings by relating locus of control and psychological differentiation to measures of psychopathology and defensiveness in male alcoholic subjects. W e anticipate that ( a ) external alcoholics will evidence more psychopathology than internals, ( b ) internal alcoholics will use more avoidance-oriented and more functional defenses, ( c ) field-dependent alcoholics will evidence less sophisticated defenses

Psychological differentiation: Current status.

“…Ln one approach, clinical assessments of defenses were made. The clinical techniques used have included (he Rorschach (e.g., Hertini, 1962;Levine & Spivak, 1964;Morrison & ('enters, 1069;Schimek, 1968); an interview (Witkin et al, 1954(Witkin et al, , 1972 or therapy interactions (Safer, 1975); a battery of psychological tests and behavioral observations (Gardner & Moriarty, 1968); Blacky Pictures and the Sentence Completion Test (Lutzky & Schmeidler, 1963;Silverstone, 1966); and the Defense Mechanism Inventory, developed by Gleser and Ihilevich (1969) (e.g., Bogo, Winget, & Gleser, 1970;Donovan, Hague, & O'Leary, 1975;Erickson, Smyth, Donovan, & O'Leary, 1976;Williamson, 1977). In another kind of study, repressers and isolators were identified through performance on a metacontrast situation (Almgren, 1971 ;Nilsson & Almgren, 1970).…”