ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the study of actual cases of alcoholic automatism; not only criminal cases, but also, and perhaps more particularly, cases where the automatic conduct has been of a socially indifferent character. An element of automatism belongs, of course, to the common phenomena of drunkenness. As the neuropathic conditions that predispose to automatism are nearly all of them of a permanent nature, it is to be expected that the patient will already have shown repeatedly his special susceptibility to the drug. An obscuration of memory is the special characteristic of cerebral automatism of whatever origin. In the case of alcoholic automatism, however, it has certain peculiarities which are liable to give a false impression of malingering. Very often the crime of the alcoholic is characterized by the same incoherence, the same lack of apparent motive, the same savage violence, and the same inconsistency with the individual’s normal feelings that mark so frequently the crime of the epileptic.
