The current literature no longer refers to "the alcoholic personality". There is no such thing. If you run MMPI's on us, you won't get a consistent one. There is no more mental illness in the alcoholic population than there is in the normal population. True mental illnesses include Schizophrenia, Bipolar 1, Psychotic depression. Virtually all of them have a genetic background. But in our area of interest, we can see a huge increase in Affective and Mood Disorders. Silkworth described this when he said that we are "irritable, restless and discontented". He was looking at Anxiety, Depression, ADD, Mood disorders, Cyclothymia, but he didn't know those terms, so he just called them "irritable, restless and discontented". We drink or act out sexually for relief.