VALIDATION OF CRAMER DEFENSE-MECHANISM MANUAL FOR THE TAT

Twenty-nine successive admissions to an acute psychiatric ward of a VA hospital and 40 college undergraduates were given group administratio ns of six Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1943) cards. The wr itten responses were coded according to Cramer's defense mechanism man ual (1990), which codes three types of defense: Denial, Projection, an d Identification. Denial is supposed to be the most ''primitive,'' and Identification is supposed to be the least primitive of these. Each i s codable on seven levels, which also range from more primitive to mor e mature types of defense. The psychiatric patients both used more pri mitive types of defense (more Denial and Projection, less Identificati on) and within types, used a higher percentage of lower level (primiti ve) defenses. The results are viewed as providing validity for Cramer' s manual from a research team unaffiliated with her lab. Reliability i ssues are also discussed.