Running head: Life within Astrid Magnussen
Butler 1
Life within Astrid Magnussen
Shayla Butler
Renton Technical College
Professor Kate Guts, MA, LMHCA
Astrid Magnussen is a 16 year old, single, white teenage girl with blonde hair and brown
eyes. She weighs approximately 115 pounds and stands about 5’ 4” tall. Upon meeting
Magnussen, she is well dressed and shows signs of good hygiene. I plan on diagnosing
Astrid with psychiatric disorders, and looking for defense mechanisms she used. I will
follow up with an appropriate psychiatric treatment method to get her back on the right
track to a healthy teenage girl.
Magnussen is a self taught artist. She doesn’t have many friends because she has bounced
around between foster homes and group homes. Her family only consists of a mother that
was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend. Throughout Astrid’s life she has had two
relationships with the opposite sex. One was an affair with her foster mother’s boyfriend
and the other was a teenage boy from the group home. Therefore, Astrid has come to see
me because she need help finding herself.
Defense Mechanisms are when your ego protects itself by distorting reality and
self-deception to reduce anxiety (Huffman, K, 2012, p464). Magnussen preformed signs of
denial and splitting during her visit.
Refusal to admit the truth of a statement or charge is denial (dictionary p280). When this is
