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Journal of Psychology and Cognition | Volume 4

May 13-14, 2019 | Prague, Czech Republic

Addiction Research and Therapy

International Conference on

J Psychol Cognition, Volume 4

Addiction and Personality

Sam Vaknin

Southern Federal University, Russia

voluminous literature notwithstanding, there is little

convincing empirical research about the correlation

between personality traits and addictive behaviors.

Substance abuse and dependence (alcoholism, drug

addiction) is only one form of recurrent and self-defeating

pattern of misconduct. People are addicted to all kinds

of things: gambling, shopping, the Internet, reckless and

life-endangering pursuits. Adrenaline junkies abound. The

connection between chronic anxiety, pathological narcissism,

depression, obsessive-compulsive traits and alcoholism

and drug abuse is well established and common in clinical

practice. But not all narcissists, compulsives, depressives, and

anxious people turn to the bottle or the needle. Frequent

claims of finding a gene complex responsible for alcoholism

have been consistently cast in doubt. In 1993, Berman and

Noble suggested that addictive and reckless behaviors are

mere emergent phenomena and may be linked to other,

more fundamental traits, such as novelty seeking or risk

taking. Psychopaths (patients with Antisocial Personality

Disorder) have both qualities in ample quantities. We

would expect them, therefore, to heavily abuse alcohol

and drugs. Indeed, as Lewis and Bucholz convincingly

demonstrated in 1991, they do. Still, only a negligible

minority of alcoholics and drug addicts are psychopaths.