Group Therapy of Alcoholics with Concurrent Group Meetings of their Wives

Help for the Significant Others of Bulimics

“…Findings in this study were consistent with findings of studies reported in the alcohol literature that examined programs for the significant others of alcoholics (Cork, 1956;Gliedman et al, 1956;Igersheimer, 1959;McDowell, 1972;Smith, 1969).…”

“…Currently, no studies are reported in the literature that examine programs designed to assist the significant others of bulimics. Literature describing the needs of the significant others of bulimics (Boskind-White & White, 1983;Cauwels, 1983;Goff, 1984;Kinoy et al, 1984), models of teaching applicable to constructing a program for the significant others of bulimics (Joyce & Weil, 1978;Shaftel & Shaftel, 1976Sprinthall & Sprinthall, 1981), and programs for the significant others of alcoholics (Bromet & Moos, 1977;Cork, 1956;Gliedman, Rosenthal, Frank, & Nash, 1956;Igersheimer, 1959;Janzen, 1977;Kaufman & Pattison, 1981;MacDonald, 1958;Sands & Hanson, 1971;Satir, 1964) provided the theoretical base for developing this program. Meetings for it were scheduled for 1 '/2 hours, once a week for 5 weeks.…”

Observations Of Conjointly Hospitalized “Alcoholic Couples” During Sobriety And Intoxication: Implications For Theory and Therapy

“…The same two decades have also witnessed the emergence of family-treatment techniques and burgeoning research interest in family dynamics. Despite this temporal relationship, the alcoholism field and the family field have managed to limit their contact with each other to occasional expressions of mild curiosity (3,7,8,10,11,24).Two recent reviews, Ablon's review of family interaction research related to alcoholism (1) and Steinglass' review of family therapy and alcoholism (19), amply document both the paucity of our knowledge in this area and the apparent reluctance of family researchers and therapists to become engaged with alcoholism as a clinical problem. Although a number of potential explanations are offered for this disinterest on the part of family therapists (cultural prejudices about alcoholics, difficulties in distinguishing pathological drinking patterns from customary social drinking patterns, the tendency of family therapists to gravitate toward clinical conditions manifesting symptomatology in the childhood generation whereas alcoholism as a symptom usually exists in the parental generation, and discomfort about intoxicated behavior itself), both reviews urge family researchers and therapists to view alcoholism and the family as an area of legitimate and profitable concern.What we will be describing in this paper is a research study that was specifically geared to examine the relation between alcohol use and interactional behavior in intact, middle-class families in which one or both spouses was a chronic alcoholic.…”

Marital Stability among Wives of Alcoholics: An Evaluation of Three Explanations

“…Recent reviews have noted a similar lack of empirical support for disturbed personality predictions about other aspects of behaviour or wives of alcoholics [12,13]. Operationalizing the disturbed need construct is problematic since a number of different types of personality disturbance have been postulated in the literature to account for the presumed neurotic need for an alcoholic husband: overly strong dependency needs [19,41,42], need to dominate to overcome her sense of inadequency [17,20,43], sexual role insecurity [15,18,20,41,42,44], and masochism [16,20,45]. In addition, no class of specific behaviours by which to measure the disturbance has been identified other than the events for which the disturbed need is supposed to account, e.g.…”

“…The disturbed personality theory grew out of the clinical observations of psychoanalytically-trained workers who saw alcoholics and their wives in clinical settings [15][16][17][18][19][20]. These observers viewed the wives' emotional disturbance as an enduring personality characteristic that stems from early life experiences.…”