All About Pachinko
Studying a Compulsive Gambler
To compulsive gamblers, play continues until all the winnings are gone.
In a sense, the compulsive gambler is also a compulsive loser.
Although pathological gamblers may initially make cautious bets, they inevitably begin risking much more than they can afford to lose.
Finally, in Edmund Bergler's interpretation, a noted psychoanalyst,the gambler experiences an intense thrill while gambling that involves a tension between pleasure (winning) and pain (losing).
Bergler believed that gambling that fit this model (illness model) was evidence of a 'dangerous neurosis'. The gambler was an objectively sick person but was subjectively unaware of being sick.
Although Bergler published this interpretation in 1957, twenty years passed before the 'illness model' became the dominant interpretation of compulsive gambling.
There have been a few efforts to empirically test some of the propositions and implications of the psychoanalytic interpretation of compulsive gambling.
In the 1920s, Hunter and Brunner administered the Colgate Personal Inventory of Psychoneurotic tendencies and the Colgate Personal Inventory of Introversion-Extroversion to a group of heavy gamblers and a control group of non-gambling students.
They found no significant differences that would indicate unique personality characteristics among the heavy gamblers.
They did find that on both tests the gamblers had a bimodal distribution (that is, scored high or low), while the non-gamblers had a distribution close to the normal curve.
Just what this difference tells us about the personalities of gamblers is unclear.
In a study of female poker players, McGlothlin predicted (based on psychoanalytic theory) that his subjects would be emotionally secure, have a strong belief in luck and superstition, and be risk takers.
His subjects completed the Bell Adjustment Inventory and their scores were compared with the scores of the population on which the test had been standardized.
The poker players turned out to be better adjusted than the standardized population. However, those poker players with the poorest adjustment were more likely to believe in luck and be superstitious, but they did not take more risks or lose more money than the better adjusted players.
Another test of psychoanalytic hypotheses by Morris found that, compared to non-gamblers, gamblers had a lower sense of self-responsibility and a greater discrepancy between their self-concept and happy than the non-gamblers and were actually more secure.
In another study, members of Gamblers Anonymous, a group of psychiatric hospital in-patients, and a group of 'normal' subjects were compared on a number of characteristics linked to psychoanalytic theory.
The gamblers were more hostile, aggressive, active, rebellious, 'magical' in their thinking, and socially alienated than the normal group.
When compared to the psychiatric patients, the gamblers were more active, expansive, and facile, but less anxious, worried, and depressed.
