[Clinical and demographical aspects of alcohol and drug dependent physicians].

Unlabelled: The misuse of alcohol and drugs among physicians is a common cause of malpractice, absenteeism and complaints to the Medical Councils. This problem demands more attention, because it entails risks to the population and to the physicians themselves.

Aims: To describe the clinical and demographic profile of a sample of physicians in treatment for alcohol and drug dependence also to evaluate psychiatric comorbidity and consumption-related consequences.

[From one beer with friends to alcohol dependence: a synthesis about our knowledge of this path].

Review paper about prospective studies concerning the natural history of alcoholism. Emphasizing Vaillant and the impact of his contribution to the evolution of the concepts of harmful use and dependence, as well as its most important therapeutic implications. The fact that the abstinence rates, in the treatment of a severe dependence, almost remaining the same in the last twenty-five years is highlighted.

What can we learn from psychoanalysis and prospective studies about chemically dependent patients?

Despite the common occurrence of drug abusers in the psychoanalytic clinic, contemporary literature on the subject, particularly among publications in the IJP, is sparse. This paper aims to review the most important psychoanalytic contributions on drug dependency in the past 100 years, then attempts to compare their postulations to the findings of pertinent prospective studies. In these patients, a persistent symbiotic object relationship is found, which ties them to narcissistic functioning, where drug use is viewed in the light of both pleasure without object and omnipotently controlled need.

Revisiting Anna O.: a case of chemical dependence.

The famous clinical case of Anna O./Bertha Pappenheim, who was treated by Breuer from 1880 to 1882 and whose pathology was discussed by him and Freud in an 1895 article (J. Breuer & S.