Conditioning and Conditioned Aversion Therapies in the Treatment of the Alcoholic¹

Abstract

Conditioning therapies in the treatment of the alcoholic are traced from their crude beginnings in the non-scientific aversive methods of the thirties through the more rigorous application of the principles of classical conditioning (but still the traditional conditioned aversion model) to the present “broad-spectrum” use of modern learning theory by the behavioral clinician in the treatment not only of alcoholism but of a wide variety of other disorders.