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Updated: Aug 12, 2026

Murine Drinking Models in the Development of Pharmacotherapies for Alcoholism: Drinking in the Dark and Two-bottle Choice
Published on: January 7, 2019
[Transformation of semantic concepts in alcoholism]
Abstract:
As many as 20 alcoholic patients and 20 healthy men were subjected to a free associative experiment with the stimuli-words such as "wife", "chief", "shop", while the word "pencil" was used as neutral control. In the patients, the words "chief" and "wife", in particular, evoked highly predominant emotional associations due to the negative characteristics of the chief and positive ones of the wife, her general human qualities and attitude toward her husband. The latter association was compensatory in nature, reflecting the importance of the wife theme for alcoholic patients. As compared to the healthy persons, the degree of transformation of the meanings of the stimuli-words in the patients can serve as an indicator of the importance of the meanings "wife", "chief", "shop" and "pencil" (zero transformation). The data obtained indicate that the psychosomatic approach makes it possible to rearrange the semantic structure of the patients transformed personality, to reveal its so-called "hot points" which may require psychocorrection.
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