Object Relations and Defense Mechanisms in Social Anxiety

The purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of object relations and defense mechanisms in predicting social anxiety. The sample of 558 students were selected from the University of Tehran by convenience sampling method. The participants completed Bell Object Relations Inventory (BORI; Bell, Becker & Billington, 1986), Defense Styles Questionnaire (DSQ; Andrews, Singh & Bond, 1993) and Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN; Connor, et.al, 2000). The results indicated that social anxiety is significantly correlated with object relation dimensions (i.e., egocentricity, alienation, insecure attachment and social incompetence) and mature defense styles (suppression and humor). The correlations between social anxiety and all immature defense styles were significant except the correlation with denial. The results of step by step regression indicated that social incompetence, insecure attachment, autistic fantasy, dissociation and passive aggressive were the most important predictors of social anxiety. The findings empirically supported psychodynamic explanations about psychopathology, and also indicated the roles of object relations and immature defenses in social anxiety