AMONG ALCOHOLICS AND PSYCHOPATHS

by Lida Prypchan

“Since you do not know what tomorrow will bring, try to be happy today.  Take a pitcher of wine, sit in the moonlight and drink it, reflecting that maybe tomorrow will be better.”  (Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat)

There are two dominant psychological types of alcoholic.  There is the sensitive type, who feels inferior and insufficient and has difficulty with interpersonal contact, who is timid and although in great need of affection and friendship, lacks the ability to obtain them.  People like this find that alcohol gives them self-confidence – makes them euphoric, but leaves them depressed – because as long as they are floating in alcohol their troubles vanish, but when they come to the dregs they return to reality.  The other type is the antithesis of the former, but becomes just as much of an alcoholic though by different means and for other reasons.  The extrovert is genial and talkative, very sociable, likeable and active, always euphoric and eventually experiencing a certain decline in inhibitions and self-criticism.  He begins by becoming a habitual excessive drinker convinced that “it doesn’t hurt me” because of his particular blindness towards his own weakness of character.  Given his low tolerance for unpleasant experiences and for failures (which are frequent because of his inability to make long-term plans and his propensity for “living in the present moment”), he usually first becomes a habitual drinker, then an alcoholic.  Although these two types appear opposites, they share characteristics such as immaturity, insecurity, dependency and intolerance of frustration.

Their environment, physical predisposition, and heredity (the predisposition to establish a habit easily is inherited) interact in the problem.  The increase in female alcoholism is alarming.  It is more varied and bears more of a social stigma, frequently originating in some neurosis or depression.

The common trait of all personalities which are predisposed to alcoholism is a lack of harmony and balance between the instinctive emotional and volitional psychic strata.  This is also a trait of psychopaths, for a number of them are alcoholics.  The alcoholic conduct of psychopaths is often related to socio-cultural factors.  In under-developed countries inebriation is infrequent, except in the case of periodical celebrations of an orgiastic nature, reminiscent of the Bacchanalia celebrated in Greece in honor of the god Bacchus.

The consequences of alcoholism are very serious: repercussions at home and at work which can lead to family break-up and real social dislocation; a considerable higher mortality rate due to visceral complications, depressions, suicides and accidents, psychic complications and crime (blows and injuries, child abuse, rapes, homicides).

What is evident is that both alcoholism and psychopathy are moral problems, social fossils.  Both display a desperate search for pleasure and an inability to allow life to proceed with its natural rhythms and changes.