ABSTRACT
The psycho-pathologist is concerned to discover, for example, what psychic mechanisms are common to chronic alcoholism, dipsomania and Korsakow's psychosis, and then to discover the mechanisms causing clinical differences. A feature of the analysis of alcoholism, drug addiction and manic-depressive insanity is intense preoccupation with oral images and phantasies; these are concerned with mouth-breast gratification, or with scenes of frustration accompanied with rage affect. They may be finally expanded into fellatio, cunnilingual, coprophagic or cannibalistic phantasies. The alcoholic has made a bad start and whether this is exaggerated by constitutional factors or not, he is hampered thenceforward by a tendency to psychic regression which produces inertia in development. The ground is thus prepared for miscarriages of sexual instinct in adult life. Most characteristics of alcoholism depend on the distribution of this regressional interest. Anal sadistic fixation and regression supply the driving power to homosexual impulses, which play so large a part in the analysis of alcoholism.
