Children of Alcoholism

September 15, 1987
Wood is concerned with the trauma experienced by children raised in an alcoholic home and the impact of this early trauma on their psychological development and adult adjustment. As she notes, children of alcoholics often adopt the same self-destructive patterns of alcoholism as their parents. Consequently they suffer from feelings of emptiness, futility, and hopelessness. Wood writes within a psychodynamic framework that attempts to address these problems by dredging up events from the past. Other factors under serious consideration by the medical community todayincluding genetic predisposition and biological basesare ignored. The overall appeal of her work is thus limited to those of a similar theoretical persuasion. Barbara J. Powell, Kansas City Veteran's Administration Medical Ctr., Mo.

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