Personality, personality disorders, and defense mechanisms

The prototype approach was used to assess the presence of personality featu res associated with borderline, narcissistic, histrionic, and psychopathic personality syndromes in a sample of 91 young adults from the Block and Blo ck (1980) longitudinal study. These personality prototypes were found to be related to the use of denial and projection, and especially to the immatur e manifestations of those defenses, in ways consistent with theory.