Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-2002

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

Leonard Handler

Committee Members

Lawrence James, Lance Lawrence, Robert Wahler

Abstract

Despite recent efforts to gauge the effectiveness and therapeutic processes of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), few studies have investigated the personality functioning V of AA participants. This is surprising, as the AA literature explicitly states that recovery from alcoholism entails addressing personality dynamics thought to be related to addiction. The view that AA ameliorates problematic personality characteristics dovetails with psychodynamic theoretical formulations of both alcoholism and the therapeutic processes of AA. In the present study, AA participants were administered the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III, the Defensive Style Questionnaire-40, and the TATscored according to the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scales (SCORS)-as measures of personality functioning. It was hypothesized that there would be a correlation between AA involvement and personality functioning, with greater AA involvement associated with less severe character pathology as manifested on these instruments. The findings indicate a discordance between the self-report and projective measures. The selfreports follow the predicted pattern, with greater AA involvement associated with less personality pathology. However, no association was found between AA involvement and the SCORS. These findings are discussed in terms of behavioral versus characterological change in AA, and self-report measures of personality traits versus projective measures of motivation.

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