Psychoanalytic Conceptions of the Mind in Relation to Personality Disorders of Drug Abusers

The purpose was to investigate whether signs of DMTm (Defense Mechanism Technique modified) could discriminate between the ten groups of DSM-III-R personality disorders (PDs) and DSM-III-R clusters among drug abusers. DMTm signs are interpreted as different kinds of defense and anxiety. The 65 subjects were recruited from Sabbatsberg Hospital, Sweden. Prominent affect defenses were projected introaggression in paranoid and schizotypal PDs, introaggression in borderlines, inhibition in avoidant PD and barrier/affect isolation in obsessive-compulsive PD. Prominent identity defenses were marked denial in narcissism, reversal II 1–2 in dependent PD and reversal IV in histrionics. Pa-tients with anti-social PD (ASPD, n = 53 out of 65) were analyzed separately. Results underlined psychoanalytic conceptions of the mind in relation to PDs of drug abusers