Resilience in sexually abused girls: The role of defenses in behavioral adjustment.

The present study explores the role of defenses in the behavioral adjustment in sexually abused girls by comparing sexually abused and non abused girls as well as by examining similarities and differences in abused girls doing well and not doing well in school. Ten sexually abused girls, fifteen girls from divorced parents, and eleven girls from intact families, between 8 and 13 years old, were compared on measures of defense and coping at home and at school. Sexually abused girls had more difficulty adjusting to the social and academic demands of the classroom. For sexually abused girls, the use of splitting, devaluation, and omnipotence was linked to lower levels of competence and more behavior pro-blems at home and at school. Sexually abused girls as well as girls from intact families who were coping rela-tively well tended to use a pattern of defense charac-terized by high levels of regression and dissociation, low levels of splitting, devaluation and omnipotence, and high levels of humor and pseudomaturity. The results suggest that there may be a particular defense pattern associated with good coping for both abused and non abused girls. The findings indicate that the study of defenses may add to our understanding of resilience in sexually abused children.