Anxiety, repression and varieties of anti-social behavior in psychopaths.

Abstract

Summary To determine if psychopaths with low anxiety are afflicted with a variety of neurosis, groups of psychopaths reporting low and high anxiety were examined with a variety of projective techniques. The use of repressive defenses, accuracy of cognition, and existence of areas of intrapsychic conflict were compared. Variance analyses indicated that the low anxious psychopaths represented a mixture of psychopathic types with a wide range of use of repressive mechanisms. Analysis of uncommon themes on the TAT produced a list of apparent appropriateness for both types of subjects.