Chapter Seven: Alcohol and the Family

1. Chapter Seven: Alcohol and the Family

2. points for consideration • The family disease • Early research • Family system approach • Children in the family • children in the home • adult children • Facts versus beliefs

3. family: early research • classic monograph 1954 • Alcoholism and the Family • parallels work by EM Jellinek on natural history of alcoholism • survey of “AA Auxiliary” (Alanon) • introduced view of alcoholism as “family disease”

4. “Alcoholism and the Family” • Seminal study by Joan Jackson • Seen as defining family’s efforts to live with alcoholic • Six stages

5. Jackson’s 6 stages 1. Denial • both partners “explain away” problems 2. Attempts to eliminate problem • partner recognizes drinking is abnormal • partner tries to intervene

6. Jackson’s 6 stages (cont) 3. Disorganization and chaos • family structure broken down • family goes from crisis to crisis 4. Reorganization despite problem • partner’s coping improves • energy not spent to have spouse shape up

7. Jackson’s 6 stages (cont) 5. Efforts to escape • possible separation or divorce • live around the alcoholic 6. Family reorganization • new stability established • true whether treatment and abstinence or continued drinking.

8. Caveats on Jackson paradigm • A product of its era • Assumes husband is alcoholic • Now recognize differences depending on when alcoholism emerges

9. Vernon Johnson paradigm • Offered family means to promote treatment • “Hitting bottom” then seen as needed to promote treatment • Draws upon family system theory • Assumes alcoholic has inadequate sense of events

10. Johnson’s view of family • Family members also affected • Co-dependency = dysfunctions from living with alcohol dependence; • Enabling = behaviors that unwittingly allow continuation of drinking

11. Family system approach • Underlies much of thinking • Efforts by members to maintain equilibrium • Alcoholic family = escalating system • Common strategies of family members • keeping out of way • care-giving, counseling, efforts to control • resignation

12. Children in alcoholic family • Object of attention in late 1980s • Approaches set-forth, not-science based • Children in the home • Adult children of alcoholics

13. Current thinking • Family members strive to maintain equilibrium • Alcoholic family = escalating system • Common strategies of family members • keeping out of way • care-giving, counseling, efforts to control • resignation