Examination of boundary regulation can provide family therapists with a framework to describe both the functioning of family systems and personal systems (i.e., the intrapsychic functioning of individual family members), In the present study, late adolescents' perceptions of boundary regulation within their family systems (i.e., ratings of family health, communication, leadership, expressiveness, cohesion, and family conflict) were related to regulation of their personal boundaries (i.e., self-reported personal competence, distress, and patterns of defense mechanism use). In addition, personal system variables reliably discriminated between adolescents who described their families as psychologically healthy versus psychologically unhealthy.

This study investigated the relationship between mechanisms that regulate intrapsychic conflict and parallel techniques that may regulate interpersonal conflict. Possible connections between these two forms of defense were examined in a study of dyadic interaction. A coding scheme was developed to measure two types of interpersonal defenses. It was predicted that individuals low in intrapsychic defensive maturity (LDMs) would show a greater tendency to use affect-externalizing interpersonal defenses (i.e., hostility and blaming) whereas those high in intrapsychic defensive maturity (HDMs) would tend to use more affect-containing interpersonal defenses (i.e., rationalization and minimizing). Dyadic interactions of HDMs and LDMs were examined and results showed that as predicted, LDMs, as compared to HDMs, used more affect-externalizing than affect-containing defenses. This effect was qualified by the sex composition of the dyad such that LDMs used more externalizing defenses than HDMs in same-sex, but not in mixed-sex, dyads.