Self-destructive alcoholic personality

Abstract

The article presents the findings of а study investigating a relationship between personality types developing under the influence of negative parental messages (injunctions) and different types of self-destructive behaviors in alcohol-dependent patients. The study was carried out in 2009—2012 in Ryazan in a sample of 190 outpatient male clients who received psychotherapy for alcohol-dependence. The authors assumed that the choice of self-destructive behaviors was linked to the alcohol-dependent patients’ personality organization and depended on а combination of different injunctions with the main self-destructive injunction — “Don’t be”. The authors describe parental injunctions, which contributed to the devel- opment of “the alcoholic personality”. The main contributing injunctions were “Don’t be” which formed the basis for self-destructiveness, and “Don’t think”, which reinforced alcohol abuse as a maladaptive coping strategy. The other injunctions, when combined with “Don’t be”, were mediating personality type de- velopment and the related groups of self-destructiveness. The authors identified statistically significant correlations between the most frequent personality types and specific groups of self-destructive behavior in alcohol-dependent patients: thus, borderline personality organization was linked to suicidal behavior, dissocial personality organization — to antisocial behaviors, and narcissistic — to self- destructiveness in the professional sphere.

Keywords

• psychotherapy
• alcohol dependence
• self-destructive behavior
• suicide