[Dynamics of intellectual mnestic disorders in alcoholism].

Thirty alcoholic patients with remissions and one hundred alcoholics with relapses were followed up for three years using cross-section and longitudinal psychological examinations. The development of the psychic defect was shown to be related to the degree of personality degradation and the character of organic cerebral pathology. The patients with remissions displayed a greater reversibility of intellectual and mnemonic derangements; there was improvement in their memory and concentration levels as well as combinative abilities; their personal attitude to the study situation changed favourably. The patients with relapses in the course of disease were characterized by deteriorated capacities for memorization, analytic and synthetic mental processes as well as by increased exhaustibility, anxiety, and affective instability. Intellectual and mnemonic disorders in patients with alcoholic dementia were the least reversible.