Book: Review/Commentary: The Treatment of Drinking Problems: A Guide for the Helping Professions

Abstract

The Treatment of Drinking Problems: A Guide for the Helping Professions, by Griffith Edwards, E. Jane Marshall and Christopher C. Cook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), third edition, 368 pp., $85 cloth, $39.95 paper). I. REVIEWED BY William L. White A 1982 text by Griffith Edwards on the treatment of drinking problems was widely hailed and utilized. It went through a second edition (1987) and was eventually published in six languages. A new and significantly expanded edition of this text, titled The Treatment of Drinking Problems: A Guide for the Helping Professions, has been issued, with two coauthors, E. Jane Marshall and Christopher C. Cook. The critical praise heaped on the first two editions needs only be embellished for this latest edition. The Treatment of Drinking Problems is precisely what its title implies: a sweeping synthesis of the research and clinical literature on alcoholism and a highly useful manual for clinical practice. If anything, the authors are too humble in their statement of intent. Claimed to have been written for clinical practitioners, the book's utility easily extends to anyone who professionally encounters the personal and social consequences of excessive drinking. There are many quickly evident strengths to this book. First are its scope and objectivity. Edwards and his colleagues have presented a comprehensive survey of what we know about alcoholism and its treatment and have included balanced portrayals of some of the most controversial issues in alcoholism studies. Following a profusion of literature on addiction (much of questionable scientific merit), bringing into existence such a credible synthesis is no small feat. The text also rates high marks as a training manual. It is filled with prescriptive approaches to assessment and intervention that will be of great benefit to many helping professionals. The intent of this book is more one of helping alcoholics and their families than staking out ideological turf within the alcohol studies community. When the last page of The Treatment of Drinking Problems is turned, one is left with the clear impression that we are not only learning a great deal more about the potentially diverse and complex nature of alcohol problems but are also making significant strides in treating them. Having briefly added my own accolades to the praise that this book will surely receive as a training tool for professional helpers, it seems that this text might serve yet another purpose. The timing of this new edition offers something of a unique opportunity. Presenting itself as a comprehensive text on the treatment of alcoholism, and coming as it does at the end of the 20th century, this book affords a perfect vehicle to explore what we have learned about alcoholism and its treatment in this century. To conduct such a review requires that we define a baseline of knowledge by locating a comparable text written at the end of the l9th century. There are a number of late-19th-century texts that could serve this purpose, including Dr. Joseph Parrish's Alcoholic Inebriety (1883), Dr. T.L. Wright's Inebriism (1885), Dr. Norman Kerr's Inebriety (1894), or Dr. Charles Palmer's Inebriety: Its Source, Prevention and Cure (1898). The text I have chosen for this exercise is The Disease of Inebriety from Alcohol, Opium, and Other Narcotic Drugs (1893), compiled by Dr. T.D. Crothers. This choice is based on Crothers's international status as a late19th century addiction expert (a status comparable to that of Edwards today), the fact that Crothers's text was published by the American Association for the Study and Cure of Inebriety (an association analogous to today's American Society of Addiction Medicine), and that the text reflected the mainstream ideas of the association's central organ, The Journal of Inebriety. So, what does a comparison of these two widely acclaimed texts, written nearly 100 years apart, tell us about how the perception and treatment of alcohol-related problems have changed in the 20th century? …