MECHANISMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PROTECTION AS MEANS TO OVERCOME PENINENTAL STRESS BY ADOLESCENTS WHO SERVE SENTENCES IN DETENTION CENTRES

Abstract

Problem formulation. Due to the problem of the role and place of psychological protection mechanisms as a way to overcome stress, the question remains as to how the initial or final stage of the youth’s stay in detention centres imprints on the manifestation of mechanisms of psychological protection and on the nature of the interconnections of ways to overcome penitentiary stress with forms of penitentiary stress. The purpose of the study is to identify the specifics of the impact of the first and last six months of serving a prison sentence on the manifestations of mechanisms of psychological protection as ways of overcoming penitentiary stress of the youth who are in detention centres. Research methods. Method of conversation and testing. Sample description. 50 young people serving the sentence for the first time in a correctional colony took part in the research. Results of the research. Summing up the research it is possible to state both similar tendencies and differences. Whether it comes to a stage of adaptation or the last six months of imprisonment, the most active ways of overcoming the penitentiary stress in young men are the mechanisms of psychological protection: compensation, negation and projection, although there are certain manifestations of all others. Consequently, the preservation of the positive assessment of oneself happens due to the attribution of real or diffused alternative successes to yourself in other spheres; the refusal to admit the existence of certain facts, the transformation of reality in order to adapt it to its behavior; an unconscious process in which a person attributes their feelings, desires and abilities to others, because they understand that they are socially inappropriate. The relationship between the indicators of mechanisms of psychological protection is also the same – close interweaving of most of them among themselves and the absence of any connection to the return to children’s forms of behavior, "falling into childhood" with other mechanisms of psychological protection. The beginning or almost completion of imprisonment provokes certain differences in manifestations of the mechanisms of psychological protection of personality from the consequences of penitentiary stress. During the first six months of serving sentences, boys often turn to childlike forms of behavior, as a means of eliminating the threat to physical and psychological well-being, in order to overcome penitentiary stress. In the last six months of serving sentences, boys often deny and compensate. These means contribute to displacement of depressing thoughts out of the mind, which are associated with staying behind bars. So, that makes it possible to compensate them for the protection of their «self» from anxiety, suffering, «inferiority complex». Only among boys who still need to adapt to their new role in detention centres, there is a direct relationship of the ways to overcome penitentiary stress through rationalization, projection, hypercompensation, compensation, denial of forms of penitentiary stress: memory impairment and concentration of attention, problems with sleeping. «Childish» reactions or forms of behavior, or the replacement of a goal that is inaccessible to another that is possible to achieve, conflicts with optimism as a form of penitentiary stress.