A Comparative Study on the Usage of Ego Defense Mechanisms between College Girls and Working and Non-Working Women

Ego defense mechanisms play a very important role in our day to day life. They are necessary to protect one’s self esteem from conflicting situations. Girls and women nowadays face many frustrating situations around them everyday. They require ego defense mechanisms to protect their self integrity from these anxiety filled situations. Sigmund Freud gave a number of defense mechanisms, he structured the psyche into 3 parts: id, ego, superego. Ongoing work with defense mechanisms has led to the classification and measurement of various ego functions. There is no general agreement as to the number of defense mechanisms that should be distinguished. To conduct the survey Defense Mechanism Inventory (DMI) by Glesser and Ihelivich was used. The DMI is divided into cluster of mechanisms like Turning Against Object (TAO), Projection (PRO), Principalization (PRN), Turning Against Self (TAS) and Reversal (REV). The inventory consisted of 200 questions in total, which were respectively divided into 10 events. Each event consisted of 4 questions. A sample of 120 subjects were taken, out of which 60 were college going girls aged (19+) and 60 were working and non working women aged (31+).  The result reflected that the most frequently used defense mechanism amongst girls (19+) was Principalization which implied that girls tend to try and control their feelings of anxiety. While the most frequently used defense mechanism amongst women was Reversal which implied that women try to respond in a positive or neutral way to conflict arising situations. Since there was a very nominal difference between the results of girls and women, it was concluded that age does not play a major difference in determining the usage of defense mechanism amongst girls and women. By and large females continue to use the same style of defense mechanism when in need to protect one’s self esteem.