THERE is a sizable literature on alcoholism and on families in crisis. However, there have been few publications dealing with families who are attempting to make an adjustment to the crisis of alcoholism. Individual members of the families of alcoholics have been studied. Psychologists and social workers have evaluated the personalities of wives of alcoholics. While these studies offer descriptions of some of the characteristic behaviors involved in the crisis, they tend to conceptualize this behavior as arising from the pre-crisis personality pathology of the wives, and to focus on those personality attributes and behaviors which appear to prolong and intensify the crisis (1-4). Comments have been published on some effects of the alcoholic father on the personality development of children (1, 5). Sociological studies of families in crisis (6) have concentrated on crises of a rather differ-