Dr. Wiseman's study offers theoretical insights gleaned from its perspective on alcoholism as an interactive phenomenon, to which the concepts of G.H. Mead and Blumer can be applied to illuminate the carefully presented data and go beyond them. New terrain in studies of alcoholism is thereby explored, including such themes as the social construction by the subjects of their husbands' drinking, their marriage and their self-images; the strategy of coping mechanisms; and the effects of the crisis of alcoholism on gender, sex roles, and power differentials.
"The Other Half "complements Dr. Wiseman's prize-winning work on the treatment of Skid Row alcoholics, "Stations of the Lost, "while involving issues of greater complexity on both the methodological and theoretical plane.