Persistence of Gambling in America

Most of the early gambling studies investigated the psychiatric aspects of participation; a trend that significantly influenced the course of gambling research in the United States.

The prevalence of psychiatric studies led to a research emphasis on the pathological characteristics of gambling. Using a clinical approach and generalizing from a limited sample of troubled gamblers, psychiatric researchers concentrated on the problematic dimensions of gambling.

Only recently have researchers begun to seriously question psychiatric explanations for gambling behavior. Familiarity with the major psychiatric studies is essential to understanding the course of gambling research.

The first known psychoanalytic study of gambling was conducted by H. Von Hattingberg in 1914. After studying one of his patients, Von Hattingberg generalized that psychosexual inadequacies are at the core of gambling behavior.

The contention that gambling has definite sexual referents was to become a theme of subsequent psychiatric research. In 1920, Ernst Simmel expanded upon Von Hattingberg's finding of sexual inadequacy, specifying that the lure of gambling could be located in a gambler's desire to achieve autoerotic gratification.

Simmel based his conclusions on observations of a young patient who had been sentenced to prison for stealing money to obtain gambling funds. Simmel contended that gambling is an expression of a narcissistic preoccupation with birth fantasies and the wish to inseminate oneself, bypassing both parents and thereby serving a bisexual aim.

He further observed that financial gain drives individuals to gamble was taken for granted in later psychiatric studies. In 1928, Sigmund Freud, at the urging of a colleague, analyzed the published writings and personal correspondence of the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, an acknowledged compulsive gambler. Freud concluded that for Dostoevsky gambling was a form of self-punishment that stemmed from oedipal conflict.

He argued that the Russian author's gambling addiction signified an adult manifestation of childhood masturbatory urges. The gambler's frantic gambling play, accompanied by hand movements, was essentially an autoerotic activity.

Freud theorized that Dostoevsky's fascination with masturbation stemmed from a desire to supplant his authoritarian father and possess his mother. This incestuous fantasy drove Dostoevsky to punish himself by losing all at the roulette wheel. Dostoevsky could temporarily assuage guilt for his oedipal urges.

Although Freud did not attempt to generalize beyond Dostoevsky, his students extended the concept that gambling is essentially masochistic, neurotic behavior to larger gambling populations.

In 1930, Robert LaForgue argued that gamblers find pleasure in the pain and losing and that psychic masochism is a prime ingredient in the decision to gamble regularly.

In 1935, E. Kris described a sequence of events that apparently made gamblers to behave from whimsical ascertainment, to burgeoning ego attachment to a ceremonial stance of rising losses, to a longing need for optimism, and finally--- to an alarming tension buildup. According to this scenario, gambling progresses from harmless recreation to a matter of life and death.

Theodor Reik, in 1940, also linked gambling to an obsessive concern with oedipal desires, but added that participation serves an oracular function as well.

Gamblers frequently test their fate to ascertain whether or not they will be punished for their oedipal lusts.

Winning is symbolic of forgiveness, whereas losing represents punishment.