Some Psychological Characteristics of Children of Multiple Sclerotics

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Abstract
Individual Rorschach protocols of 60 children of multiple sclerosis patients were compared with those of 221 control children to determine the relative incidence of certain psychological characteristics, each defined in terms of a number of Rorschach indices. The children were of both sexes and ranged in age from 7 to 16 years. The affected parents were 20 men and 16 women who had had multiple sclerosis in moderate to severe degree from 3 to 17 years; the experimental children had been exposed to the parental illness for a mean of 7.2 years (SD 2.5). As had been hypothesized children of multiple sclerotics scored higher than controls in the following categories: Body concern (P<.01), dysphoria (P<.01) hostility (P<.01) constraint in interpersonal relations (P<.01), and dependency longings (F<.001); and they showed a higher incidence of a pattern of seemingly precocious, but bacically false, maturity (P<.01). Their scores for general (diffuse) anxiety were significantly higher than those of the controls between 7 and 12 years of age (P<.05) but when the adolescents were included the differences fell to nonsignificance (P<.10). Among 9- to 16-year-old children of multiple sclerotics, the false-materity pattern tended to be accompanied by enhanced dependency longings (P<.01) and to occur more often in girls than boys (P<.05). Age and sex differences in how these variables were manifested appear consistent with certain aspects of general psychologic and psychoanalytic theory.

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