Relationships among Personality,Defense, and Academic Failure

A group of 29 academic failure Ss was compared with one of 27 academically successful Ss in order to test out psychoanalytic hypotheses about the relationships among defense, pregenital conflict and school failure. The Blacky Pictures, scored in terms of 30 factors, and the Defense Preference Inventory (D.P.I.) formed the basis of group comparisons. There were significant differences on seven Blacky factors and on a D.P.I. comparison. The results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that reliance on defensive processes that are considered to be inimical to intellectual functioning is related to poor academic work, but they did not provide direct evidence that conflict associated with pregenital experience is universally characteristic of failing students.