Do alcoholics as a class
differ from other people?
Answer
Some years ago the doctors
began to look at Alcoholics Anonymous and they
got about thirty of us together and they said to
themselves "Well, now that these fellows are in
A.A., and they won't lie so badly, and maybe for
the first time we'll get a good look at what the
interior of a drunk is like." So a number of us
were examined at great length by psychiatrists,
and all sorts of tests taken, and the object of
this particular inquiry was to see whether
alcoholics as a class differed from other
people, and if they did, just why and how much.
A number of us were invited to
attend the conclave, and a number of learned
papers were read, and finally one of these
physicians (a very noted one - the meeting took
place at the New York Academy of Medicine) began
to sum up what he thought the conclusion which
they had arrived at was this: that the alcoholic
is emotionally on the childish side. That the
alcoholic is a person who is more sensitive
emotionally than the average person. And then,
they ascribed another quality to us - they used
the word "grandiosity," they were grandiose
(meaning by that that as a type we were what you
might call "All or Nothing people.") Someone
once described it by saying all alcoholics
hanker for the moon when perhaps the stars would
have done just as well. As a class, we're like
that, said the doctors. (Memphis, Tenn.,
Sept.18-20, 1947)
