Roles of Power, Sex, and Inadequate Attractiveness in Paranoid Women

Abstract

6 TAT cards, Leary Interpersonal Check Lists, and questionnaires about sexual attitudes were administered to 10 each of paranoid schizophrenic, nonparanoid schizophrenic, and nonschizophrenic females. The subjects did not differ significantly on preoccupations with power, homosexuality, or sex-role confusion, except that paranoids attributed significantly greater power to themselves and schizophrenics attributed significantly greater power to men. The paranoid phenomenon in females then does not represent a “mirror image” of the paranoid phenomenon involving power conflict in males noted earlier. Rather, in females the paranoid phenomenon may result from some other factor such as a feeling of deficiency in feminine attractiveness, i.e., the hypothesis of sex-role adequacy by Wolowitz.