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Essay on Alcoholism and Culture
By using cultural histories, we wish to show the reader the range of alcohol use and non-use in various ethnic and religious groups. From this perusal, it will be obvious that how, where, when, why, with whom, and how much we drink are factors that cannot be fixed as individually significant in alcoholism. Because many of the so-called signs of alcoholism are part of the acceptable drinking patterns of some cultures, an examination of these patterns is useful in understanding how alcohol is fitted into a system of maintaining psychological and social equilibrium.
The attitudes of the American society into which the child has been born will affect his personality development. Prior to birth, guarded by uterine tissue, the fetus does not come into direct contact with another being. With the dilation of the cervix, social interaction begins. A nurse inserts a few drops of stinging fluid into the infant's eyes because medicine has taught that this may prevent gonorrheal infection. This is a social effect. Whether the baby is lined up in a large, brightly lit, dormitory style nursery, or is put by the bedside of its mother, will be influenced by social factors. Whether circumcised or not, bound tightly or loosely in swaddling clothes, fed by bottle or breast, will be determined by social and cultural attitudes.
Before proceeding to individual attitudes of the alcoholic, let us review personality development in general. Fundamentally, our concept is one that involves unconscious modalities and influences; it adheres to the theories of infantile sexuality and oral, anal, and genital stages of development. These stages of personality development are the framework within which the evolving personality responds emotionally to early stimuli, thus creating and reinforcing patterns of behavior at a psychological and physiological level. (Bruchac, J. 67) We accept that these patterns of response as they develop become the baseline from which the an American views himself, and from which he eventually views the world......
