Articulating subtype differences in self and relational experience among alcoholic men using structural analysis of social behavior.

Abstract

L. Benjamin's (1984) structural analysis of social behavior (SASB) system was used as the organizing framework within which to characterize the phenomenology of self and other relationship experience among subtypes of alcoholic men. Within the context of a community-based study of psychopathology, groups of antisocial alcoholic (A AL), nonantisocial alcoholic (NAAL), and nonalcoholic (control) men completed ratings of their introject (self-concept) and spousal experience. Group differences in demography and psychopathology provided strong support for subtype variations among alcoholic men that could not be attributed to global differences in adaptive functioning. SASB data showed consistency in circumplex ordering across the groups in ratings of self-experien ce and in ratings of the spousal relationship. AAL men were the most self-neglecting, blaming, and least trusting, and control men were the most relationally connected, with NAAL men falling in between. Despite the importance of the subtyping distinction, in some areas, alcoholism, regardless of subtype, was the core differentiating factor. In this article, we make use of Benjamin's (1984, 1993) structural analysis of social behavior (SASB) methods and technology to characterize the phenomenology of self and other intimate relationship experiences among alcoholic men.1 Of special interest is the sensitivity of this method to articulate experiential variations within the alcoholic diagnostic entity, given the substantial literature that now supports the existence of at least two symptomatically and etiologically distinct types of alcoholism (Babor& Lauerman, 1986; Zucker, Fitzgerald, & Moses, 1995). Before turning to the empirical work, we briefly summarize the literature on phenomenology among alcoholic individuals focusing on self-concept research, the relationship of self-experience to interpersonal experience, and the subtype literature that forms the background for the study.