Defense Mechanisms in the Specialty Choice of Medical Students

Jung, Han Yong; Han, Sun Ho; Choi, Eui Jung; Kim, Dong Wook

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
To determine differences of common personality profiles and coping mechanisms of medical students who prefer specific specialties (medicine and surgery), the authors evaluated the defense mechanisms of the medical students by using Ewha Defense Mechanisms Test.
METHODS
The authors compared the defense mechanisms between two groups (medicine selection group and surgery selection group) who are in the senior year of the Soonchunhyang University School of Medicine.
RESULTS
There were no significant differences in mean scores of the each defense mechanism and 4 groups of defense mechanisms divided by maturity level between the groups of students who selected medicine and surgery. But, frequency of major defense mechanisms were as follows; For the surgery selection group, the passive-aggression in the Immature defense mechanism and show-off in the Neurotic defense mechanism were significantly higher than in the medicine selection group. Contrarily, in the medicine selection group, humor in the mature defense mechanism as the major defense mechanism was significantly higher than in the surgery selection group.
CONCLUSION
After analysis of the differences of frequency of major defense mechanisms between the two groups, there were no significant differences between the two groups in personality. However, the students of the medicine selection group used humor of the mature defense mechanism as a major defense mechanism in higher frequency than the surgery selection group. In situations of complications, anxiety and suffering, the use of the humor defense mechanism gave the students strength to endure these situations. Among these students, there is a high probability that many of them possess strong ego strength. Contrarily, the students of the surgery selection group did not express aggression directly, rather, they expressed these feelings indirectly through passive opposition. There was a high frequency of passive-aggression defense mechanism in dealing with feelings of aggression. Also, in the neurotic defense mechanism, compared to ability, excessive goals were set as was the resulting behavior. Especially, behavior was extremely sensitive to how others would evaluate those actions resulting in using show-off mechanism as a major defense mechanism in higher frequency by the surgery selection group. The results seem to be useful in understanding the student's optimal character for specific specialities that were selected by evaluating the differences of the common characteristics and coping mechanisms of each specialty group.