Conflict,Functional Disruption,and Defense-Effectiveness

The concepts of conflict and defense are clarified, and a model of defense-effectiveness is reconstructed from psychoanalytic usage. Defenses are effective if underlying conflicts are kept from becoming overtly disruptive. Thematic and associative indices of drive-conflict are compared with questionnaire measures of drive-related functional disruption. Three drives are sampled: aggression, dependency, and achievement. Only the first two yield positive findings. Although the aim of the study, internal consistency, is achieved, an hypothesis for external validation is also proposed.