Abstract

HENRIQUES-CALADO, Joana; DUARTE-SILVA, Maria Eugénia  and  BARRETO-RAMOS, Alvarina. Explorando a psicogénese da demência na sua relação com a esquizofrenia: Proposta psicodinâmica dum continuum estrutural. Aná. Psicológica [online]. 2011, vol.29, n.2, pp.231-246. ISSN 0870-8231.

The aim of this research is to explore the possible association and continuum between a specific psychic structure of personality and the diagnoses of schizophrenia and dementia. The sample consisted of 58 female participants, 30 participants diagnosed with schizophrenia (M=68.83 years of age, SD=8.13) and 28 participants diagnosed with dementia (M=83.36 years of age, SD=7.51). The projective test TAT (Murray, 1973; Shentoub, 1999), the Manual for the Measurement of Symbiosis in Human Relationship (Summers, 1978) and the scales of the Ego Function Assessment (Bellak, 1989) were used for the psychological assessment. The fragmentation anguish and the fusional object relation were associated with schizophrenia and the abandonic anguish and the anaclitic object relation were associated with dementia. It was assumed that specific psychic structures of personality were associated with the different diagnoses, the psychotic structure connected with schizophrenia and the borderline structure with dementia. The discussion points out significant issues of this study. Some suggestions for further research are proposed.

Keywords : Dementia; Dynamic psychology; Personality; Psychopathology; Schizophrenia.

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