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October 27, 1923. A. Kielholz: Some remarks on the psycho-analytical conception of alcoholism.
The subject of dipsomania has received but meagre treatment in pre-war psycho-analytical literature. According to Freud, a constitutional intensification of the erotogenic significance of the oral zone produces a disposition to alcoholism. Reference was also made to Abraham's and Ferenczi's writings.
Stress is to be laid on the connection between dipsomania and the homosexual instinct-components in men. The insane jealousy so common in alcoholics is probably based on a fixation on these components and the same is true of the alcoholic's heightened suggestibility. His excessive vanity and other traits testify to a regression to infantile narcissism. The frequent combination of physical defect with incurable dipsomania indicates a permanent injury to the subject's narcissism.
In the children of drunkards the Oedipus complex is often intensified by the brutalities of their dipsomaniac fathers, giving rise to an unconscious feeling of guilt and to depression of spirits; and these in their turn impel the sufferers to drown their troubles in alcohol and so may have no less deleterious an effect than direct hereditary taint.
The hallucinations of alcoholic delirium are frequently found to be deeply rooted in the youthful experiences and affective attitudes of the personality. We may follow Hanns Sachs in placing persons suffering from abnormal cravings, and particularly psychopathic alcoholics, midway between obsessional neurotics and perverts.
The only correct treatment of alcoholics, namely, by gradual education to total abstinence, is not unlike the newer psycho-analytical methods, which require patients to renounce pleasurable habits whilst undergoing analysis.
(Author's abstract.)
November 9, 1923. H. Zulliger: Clinical contributions to the subject of sexuality in children.
A father and mother kept a diary recording observations made on the sexuality