The Alcoholic's Wife and Her Conflicting Roles

Abstract

This follow-up study is concerned with the prognosis of roles and symptom-formation in a group of twelve wives of alcoholics 2 1/2–3 years after their first admittance to our psychiatric department. Our first study offered evidence for an understanding of these women's role transition from “rescuer”, “dummy” or “alcoholic” to “patient” as a result of an alteration in their present relationships and/or internal psychological situation in the direction of an intolerable role, that of the “persecutor”. The follow-up study further confirms these findings. Women in the “rescuer”-role were asymptomatic. Women with symptoms (in the “patient” or the “persecutor” role) still seemed to be caught in a human role web where they had no opportunity to return into the “rescuer” role. This seemed to be due partly to their husbands' worsening behaviour, and partly to a “wife-rescuer” still operating, trying to force the wives into a “persecutor” role vis-à-vis their husbands.