Examination of the psychic functioning of armed security officers at airports with projective tests

Terror risk has been increasing over the past few decades. Due to the scarcity of financial and administrative resources of the states, maintaining private security professionals next to state security has gained much importance. Airports are considered as borders of countries. In Turkey, after the 2016 terrorist attack at Istanbul Atatürk Airport a new law was accepted allowing hiring of armed private security guards at the airports. It is vital for individuals who undertake such a risky responsibility to be physically and psychically healthy. In this study it was aimed to ascertain psychological dynamics of individual who work within one of the four major airports run by TAV Airports Holding. It was assessed if the participants have depressive character organizations. Besides, it was also aimed to classify the participants' psychic structures according to the psychoanalytic school. The work was carried out with 46 male armed private security guards that accepted to participating in the study out of 443 guards working at airports run by TAV Holding. Participants has been asked to fill a socio-demographic form and were presented Rorschach and TAT cards for tests. All Rorschach coding were converted to psycho-grams and then psycho-gram value averages were compared to Turkish adult norms. In addition to that, all Rorschach and TAT protocols were analyzed individually and results were merged in order to declare final opinion. Participants have no previous psychiatric diagnosis. Rorschach results were compared to the norm group results. Accordingly, average number of responses R, number of whole responses G, positive form responses F+, whole human responses H and human movement responses K were found less than those of norm groups. Average form responses F% and animal responses A% were found higher than norms. Additionally, C' responses that indicate sensitivity to black and grey colours, Bl responses that show sensitivity to white parts of the cards were higher than those of norm groups. In TAT cards3BM, 12BG and 13B responses indicate that participants have had difficulties coping with the depressive position revealed by these cards. According to the TRI calculation that gives clues about the psychic functioning of the individual, 35 % of the participants have given less than or equal to one K or C responses. This fact can be interpreted as to the dryness of psychic world of the participants. As per the study, it is posited that 37 out of 46 (%80) participants have depressive character qualities and 38 out of 46 (%83) have border personality functioning.