Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
AYNA KLINIK PSIKOLOJI DERGISI-AYNA CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY JOURNAL, cilt.11, sa.1, ss.138-162, 2024 (ESCI)
According to self-discrepancy theory, differences between people's actual, ideal, and ought selves make them vulnerable to psychological distress. From a psychoanalytic perspective, being away from the desired state of self poses a threat to the maintenance of ego integrity, and thus has been associated with the experience of a variety of psychological problems, including depressive symptoms and anxiety. To maintain ego integrity and cope with these uncomfortable psychological states, people resort to different defense styles. At this point, defense styles (i.e., mature, neurotic, and immature) are thought to be important mediators in explaining the relationship between selfdiscrepancies (i.e., ideal, ought, and undesirable) and psychological distress (i.e., depression and anxiety). Therefore, this study aims to examine the mediating effect of defense styles on the relationship between self-discrepancies and psychological distress. Data were collected from 565 participants, 361 of whom were women, aged between 18 and 64 years. The participants completed and Trait form of Trait-State Anxiety Inventory. To test the proposed hypothesis, six separate mediation analyses were conducted using the Hayes Process Macro method. The results revealed that both mature and immature defenses mediated the association between all self-discrepancies between self-discrepancies and psychological distress relationships.