Alcoholism and systems theory: building a better mousetrap

A considerable body of research evidence has accumulated in the alcoholism field with respect to when persons who overly rely on alcohol modify their behavior and seek alternate ways of dealing with life. It is the purpose of this paper to identify a number of these factors and relate them to a theoretical perspective that, while not new, is of relatively recent vintage for alcoholism specialists. That perspective is General Behavior Systems Theory (GBST), and it will be contended that its basic postulates comprise a framework that is especially congruent with the findings related to when alcohol-dependent persons change. As such, it provides a set of ideas which offer more fruitful guidelines for assessment and intervention than those resulting from exclusive reliance on other extant models (see Siegler et al., 1968; Miller and Barlow, 1973), in particular, the traditional and predominant illness conception.