Emotionality, Repression-Sensitization, and Maladjustment

¹ Assistant Psychologist, Leicester Area Psychological Service, Department of Psychology, The Towers Hospital, Humberstone, Leicester

In view of the evidence that repression-sensitization is essentially normally distributed in the present neurotic sample, and that low scorers differ from high scorers only with respect to certain symptoms rather than degree of neurotic illness in general it seems justifiable to conclude that emotionality, as measured by questionnaires, cannot be equated with "general maladjustment" or "neuroticism". To a large extent, low scores on scales measuring this dimension appear to reflect lack of insight and uncritical self-acceptance rather than stability, and such scores in psychiatric patients are most likely an indication of dissociation-conversion reactions or primary (sociopathic) psychopathy. There seems no reason to suppose that adjustment itself can be estimated from an individual's position on the so-called "neuroticism" dimension; other variables are undoubtedly involved.