PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF DEFENSIVENESS OF PARENTS RAISING CHILDREN WITH DOWN’S SYNDROME

One of the important signs of psychological reality in families raising children with Down's syndrome is the use of various psychological defense mechanisms by parents, which greatly simplifies the experiencing of difficult life situations. The study is aimed at investigating the peculiarities of parents' defensiveness as a significant component of their psychological reality. The survey involved 120 people (80 mothers and 40 fathers) raising children with Down's syndrome. The following research tools were used in the experiment: Life Style Index by P. Plutchik and G. Kellerman aimed to examine the defensiveness of the surveyed, and the test ―Interaction between parent and their child‖ by I. Markovska was applied to assess the interaction between the surveyed and their children. Among eight defensiveness mechanisms, the severity of the four following ones significantly distinguishes mothers and fathers: repression, regression, intellectualization, and reaction formation. The greatest differences have been found in the use of regression: mothers often use this mechanism, whereas fathers are more likely to rationalize and schematize anxious feelings and thoughts using intellectualization. Mothers also tend to transform negative feelings into opposite ones (reaction formation). If socio-normative level of defensiveness intensiveness is conditioned by socio-cultural peculiarities of the society, the research results are considered to be alarming, because it means that the social conditions of the Ukrainian society do not contribute to the formation of harmonious relations between parents and their abnormal children. Along with this, the defensiveness of not only parents but also other family members should be taken into account and investigated. Keywords