Most alcoholics are persons whose development of independence has been blocked by parents or siblings by sexual rivalry or competition for power. In treatment of more than fifteen hundred persons from all economic levels by psychotherapy, often in connection with antabuse, antihistamines, and fructose, the author found that: 'In the psychological treatment of alcoholism group psychotherapy … is able to reduce the risk of the negative transference toward the therapist. Mutual identification in the group makes insight possible for the patients and offers possibilities for direct interpretations. Group psychotherapy frees the therapist from an authoritarian role, because this is given over to the patients themselves who thus can mature more rapidly than in individual treatment only. Group psychotherapy is also applicable to relatives of alcoholics.'