Psychological and Social Variables and Personality Patterns of Drug Abusers

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Abstract
The purpose of the research was to describe drug abusers in social and psychological terms and to discover empirical personality types among them. A random sample of 201 male voluntary admissions to a state hospital detoxification ward was studied using a structured interview and personality inventories. The six personality dimensions which served as the structural basis for a computerized derivation of patterns or types were (1) tension; (2) motoric; (3) ideational; (4) sensory expressive orientation; (5) socialization; and (6) vocabulary intelligence. Computer program OTYPE produced 10 types. Significant relationships between each of these types and a large number of social and psychological variables were found to far exceed chance expectations, and these served as definitional characteristics of the types. The findings have implications for further study, particularly in relation to therapeutic outcome.