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Psychosomatic Medicine, 1946, Vol. VIII, No. 1, pp. 36–52.
Experimental neuroses were induced in twenty-one cats after a feeding situation, which involved various conditional signals and the solution of difficult situations in order to reach the food, had been established. The neurotic symptoms were severe inhibitions, hypersensitivity and aversion to stimuli associated with the experimental conflict, loss of dominance over a passive partner and other somatic and motor dysfunctions. Small doses of alcohol disintegrated these neurotic patterns and permitted the experimentally conditioned 'normal' goal-oriented responses to re-appear, although there were co-ordinative evidences of intoxication in the execution of the 'normal' response. Some animals developed temporary addictions to alcohol, the addiction disappearing after the normal goal activities had been carried out successfully several times under the influence of alcohol. In the control situation, before the neuroses had been induced, under the influence of alcohol, the cats suffered disintegration of the 'normal' experimentally conditioned patterns involved in reaching the goal. The alcohol injured the most recently learned complex adaptive patterns in the cat, whether they were experimentally normal or experimentally neurotic.