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2 Issues Criminology 111 (1966)
Gambling, Drugs, and Alcohol: A Note on Functional Equivalents

handle is hein.journals/iscrim2 and id is 123 raw text is: Gambling, Drugs, and Alcohol: A Note on Functional Equivalents By Judith Adler* Donald Horton in his paper, The Functions of Alcohol in Primitive Societies, suggests that the strength of the drinking response in any society tends to vary directly with the level of anxiety in that society.' Charles Snyder, using rates of alcoholism as an indicator of anomie, and finding that alcoholism among Jews is negligible, goes on to suggest that Jews are not anomic.2 He never examines the possibility that although alcohol- ism may be almost non-existent among the Jews, he can make no infer- ences about a lack of anomie, which may in fact be expressed through a channel which is functionally equivalent to alcoholism - gambling. Both Snyder and Horton exemplify the kind of simplistic thinking of which scholars in the field of culture and personality must be wary. A relationship is inferred between a pattern of behavior and certain psycho- logical characteristics, i.e., alcoholism and anxiety, alcoholism and anomie. Thereafter, a specific cause-and-effect relationship between the behavior and the underlying psychological need is implied, so that the presence or absence of one is taken to signify the presence or absence of the other. Snyder, at the beginning of his paper, simply mentions in passing and then drops without reason Bales' notion of one set of factors which must be taken into account in any explanation of alcoholic rates, alternative fac- tors, that is, culturally defined possibilities of adopting behavior patterns other than excessive drinking which are none the less functional equiva- lents from the standpoint of channeling and relieving acute psychic ten- tions. Snyder states Bales' formulation and then disregards it. Yet the idea of functional equivalents, that personality needs may be expressed by dif- ferent kinds of behavior which are culturally determined - and its corol- lary, that one kind of behavior may potentially express different needs - is primary to an understanding of culture and personality studies. I hypothesize that alcoholism, gambling and drug taking are possible illustrations of this notion of functional equivalents. The literature one reads which tries to explain these forms of behavior by reference to un- derlying personality needs and motivations is reminiscent of the fortune *Miss ADLER received her B.A. from the University of California, Davis, in September, 1965. She is presently working towards her M.A. in Sociology at Bran- deis University, Waltham, Massachusetts. 1 Horton, Donald, Functions of Alcohol in Primitive Societies, 4 Quarterly Journal of Studies in Alcohol, 199-320, (1943). 2 Snyder, Charles, Inebriety, Alcoholism, and Anomie, in Marshall Clinard (ed.) Anomie and Deviant Behavior, Free Press of Glencoe, 1964. 111

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