A Study of Professional Deformation and Psychological Defense of a Practitioner Psychologist's Personality at Various Stages of Professional Activity

The goal of the empirical part of this work is to study the use of psychological defenses by practitioner psychologists and development of job burnout in them. Giessen Psychosomatic Complaint Questionnaire, Cattell's Test, 16 Personality Factors Questionnaire (16 PFQ-187-A) by R.B. Cattell, S. Rosenzweig Picture Frustration Study, and V.V. Boiko's technique of diagnosing the dominant strategy of psychological defense in communication are used in the study. For our study, we have selected a battery of diagnostic techniques helping to identify the mechanisms used by practitioner psychologists; the extent of professional deformation of psychologists was studied taking into account the duration of professional activity. The interrelation between psychological defense mechanisms used by practitioner psychologists and the level of their professional deformation was detected. Using these diagnostic techniques, we studied the personality traits of practitioner psychologists at different stages of their activity and discovered the range of practicing psychologist's work experience located in the "risk zone" of the professional deformation development.