Influence of Deafness on the Structure of Personality

Abstract

The IES test scores of hearing and deaf Ss were compared to test Freud's ideas about the role played by the introjections of parental prohibitions on the superego formation and to investigate the influence of the contacts with reality in the development of the ego. Of 36 comparisons made between the scores of the deaf and the hearing, 15 statistically significant differences agreeing with the hypotheses were obtained, while 8 differences were also statistically significant but in a direction opposite to expectation. The ratio of score differences in accordance with the hypotheses which were significant at .001 level of confidence to the score differences significant at .001 level of confidence but which were in a direction contrary to hypotheses, was 8:3. The reasons for the appearance of those differences which were not in accordance with our expectations have also been given.