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Abstract
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Neuringer (1964) presented fictional information to suicidal individuals about fictional friends and noted how the evaluation of these fictional friends changed as a result of the information. He found that suicidal patients and nonsuicidal psychosomatic patients reacted more extremely than did medical patients. In another study (1961) he found that suicidal individuals and nonsuicidal psychosomatic patients tended to think more dichotomously than nonsuicidal medical patients.
The present study looked at the responses to the RES Test (Kelly, 1955) of college students with a history of suicidal behavior and those without such a history to see if there was any evidence of extreme and dichotomous reactions.
The RES Test protocol consists of a grid with 22 crises along one axis and 22 individuals known to the subject along the other axis, one of the 22 individuals being the subject himself. The subject checks for each crisis the individuals to whom he could have turned for help had they been available. (For detailed instructions for the administration of the RES Test see Kelly [1955]).
Five measures are possible: (a) the number of checks given to the subject himself (out of 22 possible), (b) the number of checks given to the other 21 individuals on the grid for all 22 crises (out or 462), (c) the number of individuals (out of 21) turned to for at least one crisis, often called the dispersion of the grid, (d) the standard deviation for each subject of the number of individuals available for turning to for the 22 crises, and (e) the standard deviation of the number of crises for which the 21 individuals were checked as being resources. (These two latter measures are not significantly correlated (Lester, 1969)).
The present study looked for extreme responding on these five measures.
Language: en |