GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO PART I1

E. David Burk

When we met on Tuesday, April 27, 197 1, for the conference and discussion groups regarding the problem of nurture and alcoholism, most of the participants had little familiarity with the work of the others who were to be present. As the two days of papers and discussion went on, the camaraderie developed during the discussion led to an intense look at the papers and some very critical comments from both scientific and humanistic perspectives. The present collection of papers will not convey to the reader the interest and energy of these discussions. This is for a simple reason. In the pages that follow, the reader will find a combination of papers that represent different phases in the development of ideas and of research. The papers represent research reports, preliminary sketches on ongoing research, methodological comments and criticisms, and speculative comments about the nature-nurture question as it applies to alcoholism. The heterogeneity of the papers represents a great success of the conference; that is, many different disciplines and points of view were represented and were given an opportunity for exposition. On the other hand, the comments that came in the discussions of those papers demonstrate the difficulties in research in the problem of nurture as it applies to alcoholism. There is little in behavioral science at the present time that has the strong appeal of the hard data found in physical science and the biological sciences. The pitfalls of research and methodology are quite apparent and were cause for open comment and recognition by all participants. Neverthe- less, the papers represent current, dedicated work in difficult areas, part of a larger movement toward the establishment of a real behavioral science with reli- able data that can be reduplicated in further studies.

Many of the comments at the conference were critical without providing an easy solution for the methodological problem involved. Behavioral scientists seem to be marking time, waiting for the day when geneticists and physiologists or others in related disciplines can provide the “nurturant group” with an identifiable high-risk group that will help us identify the persons either predisposed to alco- holism or endowing their offspring with this potential. A dependable identification would help in improving specificity in terms of research design and methodology.

Certain key unanswered questions were made apparent in the deliberations, such as, “Is there discontinuity between the alcoholic and the person who does not drink, or who drinks socially?” During the conference, it was apparent that we need convergence techniques to solve some of our methodological and research problems. Priorities are hard to establish. There were attempts to make the im- portant links between the problems of child rearing, psychological events, and the conglomerate of social and cultural influences. Many common areas of interest that gradually emerged during the conference, could be described as being factors related to acute uses of alcohol (whether behavioral or biochemical), the use of animal models that might be useful in elucidating the “nuture problem,” and solving the problems of research in the face of heterogeneity or personality factors.

The problem of definition of alcoholism, per se, was raised, and of course, again and again, that of the desire to find subpopulations that might be identifiable or some intraspecies variations in terms of any kind of preference for alcohol. During the conference, there was an expressed desire for more control over our

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cases so that we could know about the subsequent outcomes of various child- rearing techniques and genetic endowments. On the other hand, what was also recognized was the desirability and need for our current social freedoms and of our human social dignity.

In the nurture discussion groups, the specialties of developmental, experimen- tal, and clinical psychology were represented as well as both adult and child psychiatry and pediatrics. The range of papers discussed birth, intrauterine growth, birth order, infantile amnesia, adolescence, adoption, social learning, and various considerations about methodology. Some of the various themes that began to emerge were concepts of masculinity, dependency conflict, and human vulner- ability. Many commentators reminded the listeners to make a clear distinction between etiology and epidemiology. A need was expressed for behavioral scien- tists to map out the “learning environment” of the child and of the adolescent. Rigidity was contrasted with flexibility of development; at times one could see the infant as a template for critical early events, and yet the human organism shows amazing p1.asticity. Longitudinal study was felt both important and difficult.

Prospective studies (like McCord‘s) might well use suspected high-risk popu- lations to determine their proneness to a given outcome. Critical life events may be a predictor of later significant human behavior. An example is the study of Dr. Jessor. The organization of the chapters has been made under rather general headings, and the reader will note a progression from the fetus in utero to influ- ences of progressively later times of life.