The Addiction-Prone Personality

The production of this book represents a culmination for me of some 25 years of interest in the field of personality and substance use and abuse. In choosing the field of substanceuse and abuse for the focus of our research, all of the investi- tors collaborating in this research have been sustained by the awareness that the work we are doing has an important purpose. Substance abuse continues to have enormous impacts on individuals and families,and prevention and treatment - proaches developed to date have not always been as successful as we would hope to see. New advances in our fundamental understanding of the causal mec- nisms involved in the development ofaddiction may be necessary to advance our success in developing new forms of prevention and treatment for alcohol and drug abuse. The work in this book builds on the work of numerous previous investi- tors who have been drawn to investigate this topic. As you will notice in the extensive reference list, there have been hundreds of articles published on this topic. Although each of these references has added a small piece to our und- standing of the relationship between personality and alcohol abuse, the majority of these studies have been done on clinical samples and often involved no control groups or poorly matched control groups. Several important previous longitu- nal investigations have been conducted,but these investigations have usually not included general population samples or comprehensivepersonality test batteries.

Texte du rabat

This book investigates whether or not there is a causal link between personality traits and the development of alcohol abuse. Findings suggest that there is such a link: people who are inclined toward sensation-seeking are likely to consume more alcohol, and those who show high levels of psychotic and/or antisocial behavior are more inclined to have alcohol problems. The authors successfully develop and validate a measure of the Addiction-Prone Personality.

Résumé
`It is an excellent and comprehensive book what it is- an empirical study on the etiology of alcohol/drug abuse and personality.'
Journal of Hospital Librarianship, 1:4 (2001)
`...this work gives much more attention to alcohol abuse. The "prealcoholic personality" is covered in detail, as is the personality of the alcohol user and the person who is clinically dependent on alcohol......readers who are involved in personality research would benefit a great deal from the comprehensive assessment of a vast body of research data that the authors present in this book.'
Psychiatric Services, 52:12 (2001)

Contenu
Personality and Alcohol Abuse.- The Winnipeg Health and Drinking Survey.- Methodology.- Prevalence.- Personality and Alcohol Abuse Results.- The Clinical Study.- Methodology of the Clinical Study.- Personality and Addiction in Clinical and General Population Samples.- Personality and Treatment Outcome.- Subgroups of Alcoholics.- Types of Alcoholics in the General Population and Clinical Samples.- The Prealcoholic Personality.- The Prealcoholic Personality in the General Population and Clinical Samples.- The Development of the Prealcoholic/Addiction Prone Personality.- Conclusions.- Integration and Conclusions.