Malingering as Role Taking 41

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THE “SICK BTT SLICIP SYNDROME AS A PERSONALITY COMPONENT OF PARENTS OF BATTERED CHILDREN

LOQAN WRIQHT

Children’s Hospdal of the University of Oklahoma Health Scienees Center

PROBLEM The battered child represents a very important developmental and social

as well as mental health problem and very appropriately has become the object of widespread interest by clinicians and researchers alike. Discovery of any existing personality profile, or description of any personality characteristics common t o battering parents, is a prerequisite to identifying and treating suspected or poten- tial child abusers. Researchers(1-4. 6 - 9 , 11, 12) have reported a variety of characteris- tics of battering parents. One is they are emotionally immature, poorly prepared for the problems of parenthood, and maintain unrealistic fantasies and expecta- tions for their child’s rate of development and his ability to take care of himself:

“Henry J., in speaking of his sixteen month old son, Johnny, said, “He knows what I mean and understands it when I say ‘come here.’ If he doesn’t come immediately, I go and give him a gentle tug on the ear to remind him of what he’s supposed to do. In the hospital it was found that Johnny’s ear was lac- erated and partially torn away from his head.@# P .

These parents also seem to see their children as agents for providing emotional support to mother rather than vice versa:

“I have never felt really loved all my life. When the baby was born, I thought he would love me; but when he cried all the time, it meant he didn’t love me, so I hit him. Kenny, age three weeks, was hospitalized with bilateral subdural hematomas. (6, llo)”

42 Journal of Clinical Psychology, January, 1976, Vol. 32, No. 1.

Many battering parents are found to have a history of deprivation of love and affection from their parents and often have been battered themselves. As a result, they are presumed to have many unmet dependency needs. Economic and social difficulties (such as having too many babies over a short period of time, inability to meet economic demands, or separation from supportive relatives) also are felt t o contribute to battering.

Wright (I3) has described a picture of battering parents as disturbed, but capable of presenting an outwardly convincing picture of being normal and highly unlikely to abuse their children. This cluster of traits was termed the “sick but slick syndrome.” Similarly, Smith, Honigsberger, and Smith‘lO) and Lund (8 )

have stressed the combined schizoid and psychopathic nature of disturbance in parents of battered children. Also, Steele(12), as well as I s a a c ~ ( ~ ) , has described child abusers as normal-appearing and overly conscientious parents.

The logistics of research on child abuse sometimes can be overwhelming, and Ss may have valid reasons to be evasive and uncooperative. These problems, combined with the primitive level of theory and research in this area, have pro- duced a body of literature comprised primarily of impressionistic articles rather than more vigorously conducted studies. With the exception of Melnick and Hur- ley(9) and Lurid@), the research cited above is based on clinical observations rather than quantifiable data that utilized control groups, etc. The purpose of the present study was to explore the personalities of battering parents by obtaining quantifiable data about them from standard personality measures. This was not an experimental study in the sense that an independent variable is manipulated, with the predicted effect on a dependent variable determined on an ad hoc basis. Rather, the investi- gation was an inductive search for any consistencies in the personalities of child abusers.

METHOD Ss were 13 parents convicted in court, but not incarcerated, for battering their

children (experimental groupj and 13 nonbattering, control parents of children hospitalized with infections, bone fractures, etc. in which the parents were not felt to be negligent. Each was selected because he represented a matched pairs partner for a given experimental S on the basis of age, sex, race, number of children, marital and educational status, family income and the fact that his child had been hospitalized. Each group consisted of 5 males and 8 females. Age differences be- tween the matched pairs did not exceed 1 year. Total family income differences between the matched pairs of each group were less than $1000 per year. Parents were matched on years of schooling to within 2 years, and differences in number of children did not exceed one. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) also was administered to both groups in an attempt to control for the effects of intelligence.

Each parent received a battery of personality tests between 2 and 6 months after the battering episode. The battery consisted of the Rorschach, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), and Rosenzweig Picture Frustration Study (PF). The 13 validity and clinical scales of the MMPI were selected to measure overall level of psychopathology as well as to indicate specifics with regard to affect, character and other symptoms. The Rosenzweig was employed because intropunitiveness, extrapunitiveness and impunitiveness seemed highly relevant to child abuse. Also, the group conformity rating supposedly is related to psycho- pathic tendencies. The Rorschach was used in order to balance the battery with a less structured, projective task. It was scored for overall psychopathology, negative affect, psychopathic deviancy and bizarre content. The latter rating was an attempt to assess “craziness” in an overt sense. All four variables on the Ror- schach were scored by an experienced clinician who was naive with regard to which group, experimental or control, given Ss belonged.

The “Sick but Slick” Syndrome 43

RESULTS Since ad hoc predictions were not made, two-tailed, match-pair t-tests were

performed on each of the study variables between experimental and control Ss. These results are shown in Table 1. Battering parents received scores significantly

TABLE 1. PERFORMANCE OF EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL PARENTS ON 25 STUDY VARIABLES

Measure XE XC df 1

Rorschach Level, Overall Pathology Negative Affect Psychopathic Deviancy Bizarre Content

Rosensweig Picture Frust,ration Group Conformity Rating Extrapunitive Intropunitive Impunitive

MMPI

F K Hs D HY

MF PD

P A

PT sc MA Sr

PPVT I&

28.0 30.0 30.5 24.0

64.3 31.3 35.6 32.0

54.7 61.0 56.2 56.5 61.5 60.2 67.6 52.2 60.2 61.3 64.2 57.9 55.2

97.0

27.7 28.5 26.9 29.6

57.3 43.5 25.0 31.4

46.7 54.7 49.5 54.9 53.2 57.3 57.5 54.9 55.8 52.5 56.9 59.1 53.7

111.2

12 12 12 12

12 12 12 12

12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12

12

.ll

.57 1.11 2.35*

2.41* 2.06 3.17**

.14

2.86* 1.52 2.37*

.38 1.74 .81

2.10 1.05 1.35 1.84 1.10

.23

.50

2.95*

* p < .05; **p < .01

lower than nonbattering parents on the Rorschach variable of bizarre content (t = 2.35, df = 12, p < .05). Battering parents obtained scores significantly higher than nonbattering parents on the Rosenzweig group conformity rating (t = 2.41, df = 12, p < .05), the Rosenzweig intropunitiveness scale ( t = 3.17, df = 12, p < .Ol), the MMPI lie scale (t = 2.86, df = 12, p < .05), and the MMPI K scale (t = 2.37, df = 12, p < .05). Thus, statistically significant differences were found for 5 of the 21 variables, while fewer than 2 would be expected by chance if the variables are assumed to be uncorrelated. The difference between experimental and control 8s on the psychopathic deviancy (PD) scale of the MMPI approached significance (t = 2.10,t .05 = 2.18); battering parents appeared more psychopathic. Battering parents also scored significantly lower than nonbatterers on the intel- ligence control measure (PPVT) (t = 2.95, df = 12, p < .05).

44 Journal of Clinical Psychology, January, 1976, Vol. 32, No. 1

DISCUSSION The fact that battering parents differed from their control Ss on I& is difficult

to explain. It seems unlikely that this could be accounted for by an emotional disturbance that affected cognitive functioning on a simple task such as the PPVT. On the other hand, the possibility that true differences in I& exist between two populations matched so closely on the number of years of education and income is hard to accept. One possible explanation is a characterological one, wherein the energies of psychopathic individuals tend to be vested in atypical or “divergent” thinking‘j) rather than in typical or “convergent” tasks such as measured by I& tests. Smith, et aE.(‘O) previously have reported battering parents to be both psy- chopathic and of low intelligence. In any event, this variable was not controlled successfully in the selection of the two study groups. The obtained differences on personality measures, however, do not seem attributable to I&.

This study was not structured in such a manner as to make its results definitive. The sample is small, the number of comparisons relatively large and the number of significant findings somewhat meager. By design, the data are interpreted on a post hoc rather than an ad hoc basis. Such studies are not so much of value to test hypotheses, but rather to generate them. Hopefully, such new hypotheses serve a heuristic function and are tested in future investigations. More importantly, it is hoped that they may be tried and tested in the clinical work of practitioners,

Within the framework of this inductive search for relevant data on battering parents, the study data are internally consistent. Their most interesting characteris- tic is that experimental parents appear significantly less like batterers on test items that are logically derived (low bizarre content on the Rorschach, high intro- punitiveness and group conformity on the Rosenzweig). They appeared more psychopathic on the L, K and PD scales of the MMPI, whose items were derived empirically. In other words, the battering parents were able to appear significantly healthier on those instruments based on content or face validity, in which the social desirability of each item is more obvious. However, for items based on con- current or statistical validity, where the socially desirable response is more am- biguous, they appeared significantly more disturbed. This, combined with the fact that the nature of the revealed disturbance on the MMPI is a near-classic profile for psychopathy, suggests that battering parents do possess such tendencies, but will portray themselves inversely whenever possible. This latter tendency is apparently the manifestation of defense mechanisms such as compensation and/ or reaction formation.

These data support a “slick but sick” (particularly “slick”) component in the personality characteristics of parents of battered children. Yet the fact that these data do not portray battering parents as severely disturbed is more open to conjecture. Possibly Ss are a biased sample due to the fact that only convicted parents were studied. More obviously disturbed parents might have been dealt with differently by physicians, the police or the courts and thus prevented from entering the study. On the other hand, most earlier conclusions, that battered parents are highly disturbed, are based on the clinical impressions of experienced psychodiagnosticians. Possibly their intuition was biased by the fact that they knew the parents had battered their children. Or, possibly the clinicians are right, and such parents are disturbed, in spite of the fact they can successfully appear healthy on psychometric items that possess rather obvious social desirability.

The psychopathic character of battering parents, which is suggested here, irrespective of the severity of any accompanying disturbance, carries implications for those who deal with suspected child abusers. One is that we should be careful not to be lulled or conned into underestimating the potential of certain reasonable- appearing adults for disturbance and violence. The “sick but slick” syndrome also suggests potential deterrents to success with traditional psychotherapeutic inter- vention, namely denial and misrepresentation of self.

The “Sick but Slick” Syndrome 45

SUMMARY Thirteen parents convicted in court of battering their children and 13 matched

controls were administered a battery of personality tests, with significant dif- ferences obtained on 5 of 21 study variables. Battering parents appeared healthier on those instruments based on content validity, where the social desirability of the items is more obvious. They appeared more disturbed (i.e., psychopathic) on items based on concurrent or statistical validity. It was concluded that battering parents were psychopathically disturbed, but whenever possible presented a distorted picture of themselves as healthy and unlikely to abuse their children. This ten- dency has been labeled the “sick but slick syndrome.”

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Med. H . Austral., 1970, 1, 1282-1284. 4. COURT, J. and KERR, A. The battered child syndrome. 2. A preventable disease? Nursing

5. GUILFORD, J. Three faces of intellect. Amer. Psuchol., 1959, 14, 469-479. 6. HELFER, R. E. and KEMPE, C. H. The Batkred Child. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. 7. ISSACS, S. Neglect, cruelty and battering. Brit. med. J., 1922, S, 224-226. 8. LUND, S. N. Personality and personal history factors in child abusing parents. Paper presented

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A PERSONALITY NEEDS PROFILE OF SOME OUTSTANDING FEMALE ATHLETES

EVA BALAZS AND EILEEN NICKERSON

Boston University

PROBLEM As part of a clinical investigation entitled “A psycho-social study of out-

standing female athletes,” (l) the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS) was administered to 24 top female athletes who competed in the 1972 Olympic Games. The research was an ez-post-fact0 analysis to determine underlying causes, events and variables in the psychological and social driving forces behind out- standing achievement of a selected group of American sportswomen. In addition to the EPPS, indepth interviews of an open-ended nature were conducted with each athlete. The athletes also filled out a Personal Data Questionnaire (PDQ) composed by the researcher (l).

One of the questions posed was whether there was something about high- achieving sportswomen as a group that distinguished them from the average popu- lation. After a survey of the available standardized tests, the EPPS was selected as appropriate for this study. It permits individual and group assessment of such personality traits as achievement, autonomy, endurance, and dominance, and the