Chapter 27.Family Therapy
Sections
Excerpt
In a paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol in 1953, Thelma Whalen claimed to have identified four specific patterns of behavior in wives of alcoholic men that she hypothesized might be causative in the onset and/or perpetuation of their husbands’ abusive drinking. The concept Whalen advanced was that the deep-seated intrapsychic conflicts these women were experiencing were being resolved via their marriage to alcoholic men. Pejorative names were given to these wifely patterns, such as “Suffering Susan,” a name meant to describe a woman who was satisfying a need for self-punishment, or “Punitive Polly,” a name coined to connote a woman who would seek out a man she could dominate to satisfy her own intrapsychic needs.
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