Personality and defenses: A cross-cultural study of psychiatric patients and healthy individuals in Nicaragua and Sweden

This study examined cross-cultural variability in personality and defenses among Nicaraguan and Swedish healthy individuals, patients with borderline personality disorder and schizophrenic disorders by means of the projective perceptual Defense Mechanism Test. The over-all aim was to test the hypoth esis proposed by Anthony Marsella of 'severity related cross-cultural varia bility' suggesting that diferences in symptom profile or personality patter ns between cultures are most pronounced among healthy individuals and less so among individuals with severe mental disorders as they are perceived as more universal and less culturally determined. The over-all results showed that cross-cultural differences were in accordance with the proposed hypoth esis. In addition, there were significant intracultural differences between the different diagnostic groups in both countries. The conclusion is that the Defense Mechanism Test and Partial Least Squares analysis seem to be po werful methods for personality assessment and potentially for cross-cultura l research, and culture-specific norms in the Defense Mechanism Test must b e employed.