Conditioned-Reflex Treatment of Alcoholism

Abstract

FEBRUARY, 1949, marked the end of seven years of application of the conditioned reflex as a therapy for alcohol addiction at the Washingtonian Hospital. This fact calls for an evaluation of this part of the total therapeutic plan^{1 , 2} concerning chronic alcoholism.The present article is the first of two dealing with the rationale, technic, indications, contraindications, risks and psychologic aspects of the treatment, as well as its efficacy and methods of evaluating it.The last two decades have made it quite fashionable for any intelligent lay person, and a veritable shibboleth for a modern professional man, to announce that alcoholism . . .