David A. Rodgers

Factors underlying differences in alcohol preference among inbred strains of mice.

&NA; A conceptual framework is presented that relates behavior pathology, behavior genetics, and the concept of mechanism‐specific behavior to the study of alcohol preference of inbred mice as an approach to the understanding of human alcoholism. The programmatic work on alcohol preference of mice is reviewed. Genetic, enzymatic, nutritional, experiential, and stimulus variables are considered. Under appropriate circumstances, voluntary ingestion of sweetened alcohol by appropriate strains is shown to raise rate of mortality and to induce liver pathology similar to that found in some types or stages of human alcoholism.

Prevailing cultural attitudes about vasectomy: a possible explanation of postoperative psychological response.

&NA; Informational feedback from social encounters has been hypothesized to influence self‐concept and personality functioning. Recent experimental and other research studies demonstrate this effect, and therefore suggest that prevalent cultural attitudes about couples who elect vasectomy for contraception, if predominantly derogatory, could initiate or reinforce adverse personality changes. Two cultural subgroups, thought to represent common cultural attitudes, ascribed fewer favorable characteristics to couples using vasectomy than to couples relying on ovulation suppression. These findings are discussed in relation to previously reported evidence of negative personality changes following vasectomy.

Sociopsychological characteristics of patients obtaining vasectomies from urologists.

This article is part of a longitudinal evaluation of effects of vasectomy on behavior and personality. 48 subjects who obtained vasectomies from a urologist in the San Diego area during a 9 month interval in 1961 were the subjects of this study. Model age was 28 years; they had been married for a modal 4 years, and had a modal number of 3 children. They had tried other contraceptives and were dissatisfied with them for various reasons. The respondents filled out a special questionnaire and a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). The questionnaire was on the reasons for wanting the operation, use of other contraceptives, attitudes, etc. The results indicated that for the majority the stated reasons for not wanting additional children were socioeconomic. 1/3 of the men were college graduates who regarded themselves as in good or excellent health, and who were overwhelmingly Protestant. 14 of the 48 respondents stated that the operation was advised by a physician. The men were not overanxious and did not show an extreme tendency for pathology of any sort. The conclusion drawn from this sample is that the subjects were motivated primarily by rational considerations and were relatively free of unconscious neurotic concern about the consequences of the operation.

Psychometric differentiation of biogenic and psychogenic impotence

In a sequential clinical sample of 64 subjects exclusively diagnosed as either biogenically or functionally impotent, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and California Psychological Inventory (CPI) standard scales and the Beutler, et al., MMPI signs were all found to be ineffective in realiably classifying patients into the correct diagnostic groupings. Specific item analysis of the MMPI and CPI did identify a significant number of significantly differentiating individual items. Most of these items were shown to be reliably characterizable as indicating either performance anxiety or somatic complaint. Using these classifications of the items, the performance anxiety items were shown, consistent with theory, to be clearly associated with the functional impotence group. The somatic complaint items were shown to be clearly associated with the biogenic impotence group, presumably reflecting the symptoms of physiopathology, such as diabetes, underlying the biogenic condition.

Noncompliance in younger adults on hemodialysis.

Abstract Study of noncompliance with maintenance hemodialysis by 111 patients revealed that 88% of the younger patients (ages 19 to 34) were noncompliant, as compared with 41% of the others (ages 35 to 79). Furthermore, the mean noncompliance score in the younger group was higher (23% vs 15%). Interviews and ratings showed that the younger patients had more difficulty with restrictions and less tolerance for frustration. Their problems of compliance may be intensified by the combination of the need to cope with chronic disease and the developmental pressures of early adult years. Timely psychiatric intervention should be undertaken to aid in better adjustment to a life-threatening illness.

Changes in sexual behavior consequent to use of noncoital procedures of contraception.

&NA; Interview and questionnaire information was obtained about sexual behavior of 36 couples before the husband had had an elective vasectomy operation for contraceptive purposes, and from 22 couples before the wife began using ovulation‐suppressing medication for contraceptive purposes. Further questionnaire and interview data were systematically obtained during the 4 years following initiation of these procedures. Frequency of intercourse increased slightly, from a mildly depressed rate initially to approximately the cultural average reported in previous studies. Noncoital methods of stimulation to orgasm increased appreciably, indicating that such procedures are used primarily for sexual pleasure rather than for contraceptive avoidance of coition. Sexual problems such as impotence, frigidity, or premature ejaculation were not markedly affected by the procedures. Effective contraception did not result in a marked increase in reported extramarital activity.

Unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy: An examination of psychopathology and psychosocial behavior

To investigate the hypothesis that patients with intractable left or right temporal lobe seizures manifest different interictal emotional presentations, the responses of 20 patients with left and 20 with right temporal lobe foci to a combined version of the California Psychological Inventory and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (CPI-MMPI) were analyzed. The CPI-MMPI was administered as part of a routine presurgical neuropsychological examination. Laterality of seizure focus was ascertained on the basis of EEG studies and was confirmed by the fact that all patients included in the study were seizure-free at the time of their 6-month follow-up postsurgical examinations. Two-tailed t tests revealed that the two groups (matched with regard to gender and age) were not significantly different (i.e., p > 0.01) with regard to any of the 36 CPI-MMPI scales. Item analysis using serial Chi-square analyses revealed that the left and right groups differed significantly ( p

Social role theory the marital relationship and use of ovulation suppressors.

In an attempt to reformulate a social role theory factors determining whether or not a couple would continue oral contraceptive use were studied intensively in 39 couples followed for 4 years. The family is interpreted as a social institution that allows sexual gratification with limited biological reproduction. Choice of contraception is thought to reflect basic husband-wife dynamics. 15 couples continuing pill use over the study period were compared to 9 couples discontinuing during this time without the intention of pregnancy. Although most women in the study experienced side-effects severity of physiological discomfort due to the pill was not an important determinant in continuation of oral contraceptive use. Personality variables (i.e. characteristics of wives and of husbands) were found to be effective predictors of pill continuation. The best single differentiator of who will continue the pill was a composite measure which took systematic account of the relative social role dominance of husband or wife the relative gain to be expected from contraception and specific past social role behavior. Traditional social role theory that people behave according to the dictates of specific role demands is not supported by the study. Instead results strongly supported the inference: (1) that social role demands constitute bounding conditions which social role occupants cannot violate without risking loss of their role status and the privileges that are inherent in that status; (2) that specific role behavior is determined more by the individual motivations and characteristics of the role occupants than by the role demands per se; and (3) that individual behavior is acceptable within a given social role until it is systematically demonstrated to violate the bounding conditions for role occupancy.

Vasectomy, ovulation suppressors, and sexual behavior∗

41 couples who decided to use vasectomy as a contraceptive means (V group) and 23 couples who decided to use contraceptive pills (P group) were extensively interviewed and completed questionnaires about their sexual behavior before and after adopting these contraceptive means. Participants were predominantly middle and upper-middle class young to middle-aged white Americans. Wives and husbands were interviewed separately. The V group was somewhat older (p less than .05 for ages of husbands ages of wives and years married) and had more children (p less than .01). Noncoital contraception tended to reduce the inverse relation between age and frequency of intercourse especially in the V group. The data infer that effective contraception can result in more frequent sexual experiences in couples markedly fearful of pregnancy but the data show no dramatic increase in coitus frequency. The P groups data indicates noncoital contraception brings with it no inevitable dissatisfaction with rate of intercourse. The V group experienced the greatest reaction to change of contraceptive procedure though these favorable and unfavorable changes could have resulted from differences in personality from the P group. In both P and V groups noncoital orgastic techniques were reported at least as frequently after the new procedure as before. Both of the methods could have contributed to increased incidences of male impotence but the number of respondents was too small for even tentative conclusions. The methods seemed to have no effect on female frigidity. Extramarital sexual activity showed no increase with either method.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF ALCOHOLISM

By now it should be clear that nature and nurture are always interzcting factors in any biological phenomenon and are not exclusive alternative explanations. There are undoubtedly genetic factors in human alcoholism, and the alcohol geneticists are making progress in determining what components are subject to genetic influence and how these components contribute to the end state of alcoholism. For example, the eloquent work of Schlesinger,’ of Schlesinger and colleaguess and of Sheppard and associateslO is highly suggestive of a mechanism earlier hypothesized by Forsander’ and, to some extent, by Zav’yalovll that argues for genetic overdetermination of aversion to, rather than affinity for, excessive alcohol use. Specifically, Schlesinger and colleagues have demonstrated probably noxious levels of acetaldehyde following an alcohol load in low-alcohol-preferring strains of mice, an acetaldehyde level that does not apparently occur in highalcohol-preferring strains of mice. Speculating about the human estate, and with support in Zav’yalov’s finding that a series of Russian alcoholics reported infrequent or minimal experience with hangover distress following a high alcohol load, Forsander suggests that many people find a heavy alcohol load sufficiently subjectively distressing that they avoid repeated heavy use of alcohol. The remainder of the population, who can tolerate a relatively high alcohol load without undue subjective distress, would constitute the genetically high-risk subjects for development of alcoholism. Whether such subjects who are not “genetically protected” will indeed develop alcoholism will depend more on psychological than on genetic factors, I suggest; and it is an elucidation of these psychological factors that is the concern of the present paper. Whatever “irrisistable urges” lie behind alcoholism, an indispensible feature of this condition is the voluntary seeking out and consumption of alcohol by the alcoholic. This is a motivated act that persists in spite of numerous obstacles, and in fact it is the resourcefulness and the persistence of the alcoholic in obtaining and consuming alcohol in spite of problems that constitutes the impressive characteristic of this condition. For example, threats of physical ill health, loss of job, loss of marriage, loss of wealth, and loss of public reputation do not seem to be sufficiently aversive stimuli to prevent alcohol ingestion. This has led to the disease concept of alcoholism as an irresistible craving that is supposedly an aberration from normal motivational states. I suggest we need not invoke this concept of abnormality to understand the alcoholic’s drinking behavior. From a motivational point of view, drinking on the part of the alcoholic can be divided into two separate types. One that is reasonably understandable is the drinking that follows development of physiologic dependence. As Isbell and associates2 and Johnson,3 among many others, discuss, the withdrawal syndrome following prolonged heavy alcohol ingestion can be severe and frightening. Continued ingestion of alcohol can, at least for a time, abort or block the development of the withdrawal symptoms. Such control of a subjectively severely distressing withdrawal condition would seem to be motivation enough for further alcohol ingestion in the advanced alcoholic, without the invocation of any unusual mechanism of irresistible craving. Development of physiologic dependence requires heavy alcoholic ingestion