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This 33 year old soldier was seen in treatment for five months at an Army General Hospital, where he was admitted following his first episode of acute alcoholic hallucinosis.
He was a highly intelligent,1 tense, ingratiating, passive, self-depreciating, apologetic individual. He expressed feelings of dejection and worthlessness in relation to his drinking and its companion physical, social, economic, and moral disintegration. When it was offered to him, he eagerly accepted the opportunity of trying to get at the roots of his problem through a psychoanalytically oriented uncovering psychotherapy.
Born in a small community of a northwestern state, he was the second son of French-Canadian immigrants, the only sibling being a physically handicapped step-brother from his father's previous marriage. Early development was normal despite feeding problems during infancy, both on breast and bottle. There were no difficulties over urinary control, but bowel training was handled by the mother with rigidity and great emphasis. He clearly recalls her strict insistence on his scheduled sitting on the toilet until he defecated, and it was usually a prolonged period before he complied. During this chore on the “throne” he distinctly enjoyed phantasies of control: sitting with the privy door ajar, he imagined that he was directing in kingly fashion the movements of his mother and the other passers-by. He developed in early childhood his fascination for feces, malodorous perspiration, and “all the miraculous productions of my body”. During a period at about the fifth to sixth year there was the surreptitious practice of stealing and eating his mother's laundry starch, which he would eat, marveling at the way chewing it induced copious salivation. Fascination for money developed around this time, and he was