ABSTRACT
Analysis of the questionnaire scores suggested that developing high therapeutic commitment to drinkers was a two-stage process, in which agents firstly developed a sense of role security and then a sense of therapeutic commitment. The highest level of therapeutic commitment of any of the groups of agents the people studied was found amongst the experienced counsellors who worked with the United States Air Force in Europe. Agents were drawn into a milieu of support, experience, low threat and high therapeutic commitment. The recruit moving into a supported environment gradually improved until he reached a position of role security; the unsupported agent gradually declined towards a nadir of ineffectiveness and low therapeutic commitment. If the major responsibility for responding to drinking problems was to be transferred to community agents, then these agents would have to be helped to break out of their negative cycle of role insecurity and to develop instead within the positive cycle.
