[Client-centered self-experience groups in male alcohol-dependent patients]

104 group sessions with 59 male alcoholics were classified under 9 themes. At the beginning of self-experience sessions, all patients looked back to their drinking history. 8 patients reported mere facts, whereas 51 patients expressed their emotional involvement. Drinking style and themes of self-experience could not be definitely correlated. There was a statistical tendency for alcoholics with loss of control (Gamma-alcoholics) to describe themselves as craving for adventure, as men who tend to live according to their momentary needs whenever possible. Alcoholics with inability to abstain (Delta-alcoholics) describe themselves more often than Gamma-alcoholics as passive hangers-on, as persons who tend to drink as others do, who do not worry much about their alcohol intake, who become aware, by somatic and social consequences, that they cannot go on living as before. These results were compared to results found in research literature. It is astonishing that so little work has been done to find out the themes presented by alcoholics in the course of self-experience.