Compulsive Gambling

Psychodynamic theorists explain gambling with respect to its neurotic elements. The compulsive gambler, desperate for parental love, gambles in order to establish some form of relationship. Describing gambling as an expression of sexual, aggressive impulses toward one or both parents, some theorists including Freud (1928) emphasize the masturbatory character of play at the tables or the track. Trapped by an outmoded sense of omnipotence and selfdestructive motives, the gambler unconsciously seeks out the pains of losing, according to Bergler (1957). With its implicit thrills and humiliations, gambling is a way of adapting to powerful, but unacceptable urges (Fuller, 1974; Bergler, 1957).

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

Category: Psychology - C