Families Under the Influence: Changing Alcoholic Patterns

by Michael Elkin

Book Overview

Drunkenness is powerful behavior. In time, families and friends will react to it in predictable ways. Working from this premise, family therapist Michael Elkin shows how alcoholic families develop, how they train their members, and how a therapist can interrupt their lemminglike march to disaster. The book is written for people who work with alcoholics and their families. Its informal style and commonsense approach, however, make it enlightening reading...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393306704
• ISBN13: 9780393306705
• Release Date: May 1990
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

The most effectivet book in helping families of alcoholics so far

Since a friend sent me this book some ten years ago, I have considered myself very lucky to be in possession of such a fine book. For those who are interested in understanding the wide and wild effects of the world's commonest drug, alcohol, this is the book. it helped me understand how the power of drunkenness affects the individual and those around, and how they in turn react. I could not find a line that Michael Elkin wasted in this 300 page book. It helped me understand the disease of alcoholism better. Whatever your interest in the subject of alcohol, this book will take you further especially if you are interested in understanding how this clear substance called alcohol is capable of producing such extra-ordinary pleasure as well as such extra-ordinary pain. I would like to read every paper Michael Elkin has written on the subject of alcohol if I could find it. Any help?

Families Under the Influence

I am a librarian in a public library. I first examined your book when a patron requested information on alcoholism and I was checking publication dates of materials in our collection. I found this book to be an excellent diagnostic tool, as I was dealing with the same problem at home. The book clearly defines the characteristics of an addiction. It provides a lens through which to see what is actually going on in a family where addiction affects everyone, not just the drinker. Armed with the knowledge that we can only change ourselves, it provides the reader with concrete approaches to the problem. It describes attitudes and actions that inadvertently feed the addiction as well as those that serve to intervene in the control addiction has over the whole family. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who suspects that alcohol may be a problem in their home. In this case, knowledge is power.