The alcoholic, whether male or female, suffers from a variety of personality traits that act to predispose him or her to the disease. These personality traits include low self-concept, anxiety, sexual dysfunctions, underachievement, feelings of social isolation, Inability to love him or herself or to receive love from others, hypersensitivity, impulsivity, dependence, fear of failure, feelings of guilt, self-pity, and suicidal impulses. Moreover, the alcoholic uses alcohol to blunt his or her anxiety and attempt to control what he or she perceives as painful reality (Corey, 1991). Schaef (1986) adds that alcoholics tend to be co-dependent, whether or not they are male or female. To these, Blanton (1988) and Lawson, Ellis and Rivers (1984) report that female alcoholics tend to manifest difficulties within the home, given the socialization process that produces shame for women in admitting to this disease, while male alcoholics do so in the work-place and in a variety of social settings, particularly those involving other men who drink. Relative to the alcoholic marriage, Steinglass (Rothberg, 1986) reports that it is sustained by "wet" and "dry" cycles, which produce shifts in power positions. This predisposition with power is evidenced in both the alcoholic and his or her mate.
There are a variety of games that alcoholics play consequent to their disease, which are augmented by important family members (i.e., typically the spouses) (Corey, 1991; Rothberg, 1986; Schaef, 1986). For the purposes of this paper, those games to be considered include: intrapersonal "fusion," whereby the alcoholic and his or her mate contingently interacts and reacts (Hollander, 1983); the obsessive need to control the environments (Schaef, 1968); a dominant-submissive pattern of transactions (Rothberg, 1986); cyclical interactions based upon "wet" and -"dry" periods that influence power distribution (Rothberg, 1986); and faulty communication patte...