The Mind of the Gambler Exposed

NEW YORK, February 11 (UPI) -- Mikal Aasved, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota/Duluth, has compiled what purports to be the first exhaustive summary of all the research ever done on the mind of the compulsive gambler.

I've read it. I'm scared.

It's called "The Psychodynamics and Psychology of Gambling: The Gambler's Mind, Volume 1" (Charles C. Thomas, $57.95, 255 pp.), and, yes, he promises even more voluminous textbooks in the future. In this book are so many theories of why we gamble, how we gamble, and especially how we LIE TO OURSELVES while gambling, that it's virtually impossible to read without eventually coming up with a description of your own wagering habits. It's practically a how-to book for casino executives, slot machine manufacturers, and games inventors as to the particular psychological weak points that can be exploited in order to make the social gambler into a steady gambler and the steady gambler into a degenerate.

That's not its purpose, of course. Aasved works at the Center for Addiction Studies, and we have to assume that they're ultimately interested in curing obsessions, not prolonging them, but what's spooky about the book is that there are so many different approaches--from the fields of psychoanalysis, personality theory, behaviorial science and cognitive studies (i.e., irrational thinking)--that it pretty much reveals that no matter what kind of gambler you are, at whatever level, there's eventually gonna be some "hook" in your makeup that causes you to wig out in the casino.

Of course, I'm exaggerating. These are academic studies conducted by people who are exposed mostly to hardcore compulsive gamblers who end up in treatment programs. For a while they even tried to equate addictive gambling with alcoholism (the Freudians had a field day), but in recent years these theories have fallen by the wayside. As one researcher pointed out, gamblers coming down off their habit don't huddle in the corner, get the shakes, or wail from the pain of withdrawal. In many ways gambling is harder to treat because you can't identify the precise mechanism that controls it in the first place.

Hence we have the following explanations for gambling degeneracy:

1) It's a quest for parental love.

2) It's a person stuck in the anal retentive stage of childhood.

3) It's a masochistic need for punishment.

4) It's a sadistic need to punish others.

5) It's a regression to childhood, in which the gambler tries to escape into a world of make-believe.

6) It's latent sadistic homosexual love.

7) It's a fixation at the phallic stage of development (this is Freud himself), and is a substitute for masturbation and a punishment for Oedipal guilt.

8) It's the worship of an oracle (Fate).

9) It's an attempt to gain control over your parents.

10) It's an unconscious substitute for sex.

11) It's a shamanic ritual.

12) It's an emotional defense mechanism.

13) It's an escape from the reality of everyday life, where a person has no control, to a make-believe world offering the illusion of control.

14) It's the result of an inferiority complex worked out in a vain attempt to gain power.

15) It's arrested personality development in a person who never got enough parental support.

16) It's a learned behavior that is reinforced by a variable-ratio reward schedule, both monetary and emotional.

17) It's an involuntary Pavlovian response to a stimulus (spinning reels, shuffling cards, the lights of the casino).

18) It's an escape from depression.

19) It's a stimulant.

20) It's a tranquilizer.

21) It's the result of unrealistic thoughts and irrational beliefs.

22) It's a conditioned reponse to stimuli designed by the casinos and game manufacturers themselves.

Okay, I'm already exhausted. This is not nearly all the explanations offered in the book, each backed up with a summary of the field research that led to the hypothesis, but it gives you an idea of what we're dealing with here.

While reading it, though, I couldn't help asking the question, "What exactly do they mean by gambler?" A professional poker player, for example, is essentially a predatory investor. If he studies hard enough, and chooses his games wisely enough, he can make a living that is no more dangerous than that of a Wall Street day trader. A professional sports bettor's life is only slightly more risky.

A slot-machine addict, or a perennial craps player, is the opposite. This is a person who's willingly placing himself in the middle of a game of pure chance that is rigged against him.

A blackjack player can be either type. A skilled player can be a businessman. An amateur can be no more in charge of his destiny than the slots player. The same is true of the horse player. Although all of them are playing a losing game in the long run--you can't win when the taxes taken out are 18 percent and up--they at least base their betting on some form of science, not pure chance.

But even the pro poker player can lose it at times. The expression around the tables is "on tilt." When an otherwise normal player starts betting wildly, he's said to be on tilt. It means he goes a little crazy for some reason and bets heavily on hands that he should have folded. Interestingly, most good poker stories come from situations just like this. I just never knew the crazy guy was fixated on a phallus while he was doing it.

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© Copyright 2003 United Press International and Joe Bob Briggs

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