Alcoholic and spouse concordance on attributions about relapse to drinking

The purpose of this paper is to report a descriptive study of the degree of concordance between male alcoholics' and their wives' perceptions of the alcoholics' relapse to drinking within two years of their participation in an outcome study of behavioral marital therapy for alcoholism. At the end of a two-year follow-up period, the 23 alcoholics who had relapsed and their wives were independently interviewed. The results showed that both the alcoholics and their spouses reported both intrapsychic and situational determinants of the relapses. Among types of determinants, the situational spouse was reported disproportunately more often by patients and disproportunately less often by spouses. Furthermore, the concordance between patient and spouse reports was low. Use of these findings for marital therapy in the treatment of alcohol abuse is discussed.