Families Under the Influence: Changing Alcoholic Patterns

by Michael Elkin

“Michael Elkin’s lucid, compassionate book shows professionals something new: how to work successfully with alcoholics and their families. Its wisdom is for all our families.” ―Sara Blackburn, coauthor of Family Secrets Drunkenness is powerful behavior. In time, families and friends will react to it in predictable ways. Working from this premise, family therapist Michael Elkin shows how alcoholic families develop, how they train their members, and how a therapist can interrupt their lemminglike march to disaster. The book is written for people who work with alcoholics and their families. Its informal style and commonsense approach, however, make it enlightening reading for anyone interested in America’s number-one health problem.

228 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1984

Reviews

[Ladonda · Rating 2 out of 5]

At the time I attempted to read this book the information in it was about 40 years old. At this late date, much of the research in it is dated and no longer applicable. It’s written from the standpoint of analyzing families were the man is the alcoholic and the family functions along old-school, traditional roles with the woman not working outside the home and the man being the primary breadwinner. At this point in the world that is such a small percentage of households, it makes it hard to relate to the analytical approach of this book. This is not a book for the average lay person. It is geared more towards therapists and mental health providers. As an average lat person, who is not a therapist, I found this book very hard to read, very boring, and ended up putting it down after the first hundred pages.

[Randall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an older book from the halcyon days of family therapy, before "family therapy" was appropriated by the CD treatment and mental health industries. It still offers a family view of addiction and treatment that sadly is rarely heard about any more, despite being extremely effective. One of many older books well-worth a read to see what all the excitement was about back in the days of family therapy and substance abuse treatment.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important resource to help understand what families with alcoholics struggle through. Shocking, realistic and thorough.