The Swedish Defence Mechanism Test (DMT) is good. I've done it, and as
Air Force Director of Training, some years back, I orchestrated a two
year trial of it. I believe it serves the purpose.
A drawback of the DMT is that it needs a trained psych to interpret
the results. That intends no offence to psychs. It's just that, in my
view, conclusions about such sensitive personal matters have more
impact if self-discovered. Also, with human judgement involved,
different people will interpret differently.
Another theme of mine is that I want pilots to be self-regulators. The
more practice they have at self-discovery, the better they'll be able
to do that.
My book is a test. It's a self-test, relying on benchmarking, obscure
didactic cunning (I can send you design stuff if you want) and some
practical exercises. The exercises trigger activation of the denial
response, but in situations not related to flying. (Some, you can do
sitting in your lounge room.) They thus enable detached observation of
the associated phenomena, such as degradation in mental capacity.
Obviously, a little professional dicipline is called for, to remain
open minded enough to let the experiences run.
Once you have checked out your responses, there are other exercises
that enable you to push to the limit, learning to exercise control
over the onset of the reflex. It's not easy, but what is about serious
flying?
The WOMBAT is another test. Being computer=based, and made in Canada,
it's probably easier to get hold of. Here's how it works:
High denial in the cockpit leads to poor performance (situational
awareness) under stress. As the WOMBAT measures your capacity for
situational awareness under stress, it also measures the extent to
which you have subordinated-to-control the denial reflex in flight.
I've done the WOMBAT. It works fine. Its beauty is the results can
(and, in my book, should) be confidential to the test subject. (The
scores are easily decoded.) I believe pilots should do it annually.
People who have been doing the exercises in my book experience greater
ease in performing a WOMBAT test (and a lot more in life, too).
Some afterthoughts. The DMT was not accepted by my Air Force. I think
that was due to its being pretty upfront in its supporting literature,
equating denial to self-esteem protection, and other stuff that real
men don't like to talk about, not when sober, at any rate. It also
didn't make any secret of the Freudian origin of the principal
concept. Curiously, nations such as Austria, Norway, Switzerland (and,
of course, Sweden) did not encounter this uneasiness. We did, in
Australia, as did the RAF. There's a lesson in here for 'culture in
the cockpit', though I'm so far only guessing at what it might be.
Hope this is of use.
Cheers
Doug