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PROBLEMRecent investigators have demonstrated a positive relationship between perceived locus of control(9) (IE) and defensive style as measured by the RepressionSensitization Scale @)(R-S). The results indicate that external Ss, those who perceive themselves as having little control over life events, respond to threatening stimuli with sensitizing, approach-oriented defenses such as intellectualization. Conversely, internal Ss tend to employ defenses at the repressive extreme, such as denial, avoidance, and repression, to minimize the anxiety associated with threatening 12).More recent investigators have questioned the psychological meaning of the repression-sensitization construct. Golin, Herron, Lakota, and Reineck ( 4 ) found a high, positive relationship between scores on the R-S scale and the Taylor'") Manifest Anxiety Scale (r = 3 7 ) and concluded that the two scales are practically identical in meaning. Sullivan and Roberts ( l o ) found that the relationship between the two scales remained high and significant ( r = .79) even when the 29 items common to both were excluded. Gleser and I h i l i~e c h (~) concluded that the R-S scale may measure anxiety more accurately than defensive style. Further, Ihilivech and Gleser t6) indicate that the R-S scale does not differentiate adequately among the specific defenses that individuals employ.If repression-sensitization and anxiety are viewed as constructs that have similar psychological meaning, then the relationship between I E and R-S scales might be explained better in terms of a relationship between locus of control and anxiety. A number of investigators have found that external Ss tend to have higher scores on self-report measures of anxiety than do internal Ss ('9 8 , 13).The present study investigated the relationship between locus of control and defensive style as assessed by the Defense Mechanism Inventory (3) (DMI). The defense scales of the DMI have been shown to have minimal correlations with measures of anxiety(3). It was hypothesized that internal Ss would employ those defense mechanisms that are avoidance-oriented, namely principalization, turning against self, and reversal. External Xs were hypothesized to employ approachoriented defenses such as turning against an object and projection. METHOD Subjects. The Ss were 105 male alcoholic veteran inpatients who had volunteered to participate in a larger research project. The Ss were tested approximately 1% weeks after their admission to the alcoholism treatment, unit. None of the Ss was diagnosed as having significant psychiatric disorders, nor did any exhibit physical or cognitive residuals of acute intoxication a t the time of testing.Materials. Rotter's (9) locus of control scale (IE) , a forced-choice questionnaire with 23 scoreable items, was used as the measure of perceived control over life events; the scale is scored in the external direction.Defensive style was assessed by the DMI. Responses are categorized into five defense clusters: turning against an object (TAO), projection (PRO), prin...

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PROBLEM Alcoholics, as a clinical population, have been found in previous research to be markedly field-dependent when compared with nonalcoholic normal and hospitalized psychiatric control groups (12, I s ) . Further evidence tends to substantiate the presence of cognitive and personality correlates of limited perceptual diff erentiation in alcoholics. Karp, Poster, and Goodman'll) found alcoholic women to have a less sophisticated body concept, as assessed by figure-drawing tests, than nonalcoholic controls. Fitzhugh, Fitzhugh, and Reitan (r, 4, and Jones and Parsons@) have found alcoholics to be less cognitively complex as indicated by poorer performances on abstracting tasks than nonalcoholics. Alcoholics also have been shown to employ more primitive, nondiff erentiated defense mechanisms, such as repression, denial, and turning hostility inward, than did normal controls ( I ) .A number of more recent investigations have questioned the homogeneity of the alcoholic population along the dimension of perceptual differentiation. Goldstein and Chotlos (7 ) found considerable variability as well as bimodal distributions in measures of perceptual field-dependence within an alcoholic sample. Fuller, Lunney, and Naylor (5) identified three distinct subtypes of alcoholics based upon their position along a continuum from intact to deteriorated perception similar to that of field dependence-independence. Reilly and Sugerman (I5) found alcoholics to vary widely in their level of cognitive complexity in terms of a sentence completion task. Results of their investigation indicated that alcoholics who were functioning at lower levels of cognitive complexity were more field-dependent and had less differentiated body concepts than those who were functioning a t higher levels of cognitive complexity. Although these findings are in disagreement with the initial conceptualization of a homogeneous, markedly field-dependent alcoholic population (17), they tend to indicate that cognitive and personality traits vary predictably as a function of the level of perceptual differentiation within the population.It was assumed that defense mechanisms, like other personality traits, should vary within an alcoholic population in a manner consistent with predictions from differentiation theory. Previous research that employed the Defense Mechanisms Inventory (2, 6 , 8 ) found that college students and psychiatric patients who scored higher on scales of the more highly developed defenses, such as turning against an object or projection, were significantly more field-independent than Ss who utilized the defenses of reversal and turning hostility inward. It was hypothesized that similar relationships between perceptual style and defenses would characterize field-independent and field-dependent alcoholic Ss. METHODSubjects. The Ss were 75 male veteran alcoholic inpatients with a mean age of 47.7 (SD = 8.7) and a mean educational level of 11.9 years (SD = 2.9). All the Ss, who had volunteered to participate in the research, were tested routinely i...