Compulsive Gambling

According to the psychodynamic model, gambling always expresses misdirected sexual and aggressive impulses. Rather than mainly reflecting social factors or behavioral conditioning, gambling is a manifestation of internal conflicts, Freudians believe. Bergler (1957), for example, insists that all compulsive gamblers are driven by a virtually uncontrollable masochism of which they are essentially unaware. Freud himself, along with many of his disciples have connected gambling with masturbation, and have perceived gambling as arising from repressed homosexual, analsadistic impulses. Such differences in analysis are, of course, important. The divergence in etiological description determines, in large measure, whether gambling is classed as an addiction, like alcoholism, or as a

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s "psychic masochism" that thrives, in effect, on losing. The gambler's masochistic motives, juxtaposed to his or her infantile feeling of omnipotence, ultimately sabotage his or her efforts to control fate by winning at the tables or at the track. Thus, the gambler suffers from a specific kind of neurosis such that he or she is incapable of resisting the urge to wager. Bergler (1957) presents six "descriptive characteristics" that compulsive gamblers have in common. First, gamblers habitually take chances, and are virtually unable to resist any and every opportunity to bet. "The quantitative factor is indispensible" in designating the true gambler for the same reason that designating everyone who takes an occasional drink as an alcoholic would be of little use to those interested in treatment. Second, the gambler's interest in the game "precludes all other interests." The gambler expends as much time and energy as possible on gambling; when not actually playing, he or she is preoccupied with the game, computing odds, making predictions, and fantasizing about playing the odds. Third, the gambler is eternally optimistic, never learning from defeat. No matter how much money the gambler loses, he or she remains convinc
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Approximate Word count = 3205
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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