ABSTRACT
All three aspects of role insecurity – anxieties about role adequacy, role legitimacy and role support were all basically caused by deficiencies either in the agents’ training or in their working situation. General community agents rarely diagnosed any drinking problems by themselves until they had become blatant and when, possibly, some of the damage had become irreversible. In some cases the problem was too obvious for the agent to be able either to avoid it or to deny that it merited a response. Negative characteristics were attributed to the client. The low therapeutic commitment of agents thus consisted of a series of safeguards against the threat experienced in responding to drinking problems. The threat emanated from having to respond under conditions where agents felt they did not have the ability or the right to respond.
