Psychic numbing in inner-city adolescents referred for special education assessment.
Item
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Title
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Psychic numbing in inner-city adolescents referred for special education assessment.
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Identifier
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AAI9605585
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identifier
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9605585
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Creator
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Dan, Peter Dennis.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Robert Jay Lifton
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Date
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1995
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Personality | Psychology, Social | Psychology, Clinical | Psychology, Developmental | Sociology, Individual and Family Studies | Education, Special
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Abstract
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Psychic numbing is a reaction to extreme life events and affects the capacity to symbolize and integrate experience, impairing the ability bring cognitive controls or defense mechanisms to bear on affective experience. The premise of the study is that inner city life conditions constitute an extreme life event and result in a form of numbing. The subjects are 90 adolescents who live in public housing projects and 26 who do not. Following an interview, each subject was assigned a numbing score, then administered the WISC III, Rorschach, and Human Figure Drawing tests. The subjects' social histories were scored for the severity of life events. A group of experts was asked to identify the variables associated with psychic numbing, creating a numbing profile. A significant relationship was found between the numbing score and the severity of life stressors. The variables selected by the experts were found to be significant predictors of the numbing score. The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of a psychology of evil.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
