Assessment of adaptive functioning in children and its relation to parents’ defense mechanisms and coping strategies Cover Image

Диагносика на адаптивното функциониране на деца и връзката му със защитни механизми и копинг стратегии на родителите
Assessment of adaptive functioning in children and its relation to parents’ defense mechanisms and coping strategies

Author(s): Camellia Hancheva
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Psychoanalysis
Published by: Софийски университет »Св. Климент Охридски«
Keywords: assessment; adaptive functioning; children; parents; defense mechanisms; coping strategies

Summary/Abstract: Psychoanalytic ideas of development and adaptation are presented. The perspective of early child-parent relations as structuring blocks of personality is applied to reveal the role of early interactive experience on adaptive/maladaptive functioning. Data from the assessment of 134 children (age 6–15) made with apperception technique RATC are obtained. The Bulgarian version of two multidimensional instruments measuring defense mechanisms DSQ (Bond et. al., 1993) and coping strategies COPE (Carver et. al., 1989) of the parents are used. Questionnaires were administrated to 46 fathers and 71 mothers. Results show reliability close to the original versions, and correlations of the scales prove hypotheses of constructs and their interdependence. Data obtained by correlation and regression analyses support the idea of the indirect influence of parents’ adaptive functioning on their children. Two models, based on the representations of either objects and/or relations and the process of identification are suggested to reveal different paths of influence. First explaining similarities in adaptive strategies through identification of the child with the idealized aspect of the parents; second is applying the idea of development of complementary role position in highly affectively charged situations as an emotional regulation mechanism in children.