An Alaskan Athabascan Technique For Overcoming Alcohol Abuse

Abstract

It is proposed that the basic tactics used by members of a distinct ethnic group to overcome alcohol abuse will be in part determined by culturally accepted methods of social control. These methods themselves will be based in large part upon the modal psychodynamic organizations of members of that group. In the case presented the Athabascans of interior Alaska tend to overcome alcohol abuse by adhering to fundamentalist Christianity which reflects their need for an external superego; that in the past took the form of a nearly absolute chieftainship.