Aversion conditioning represents one of the most historically significant and ethically scrutinized paradigms in behavioral science. By pairing undesirable behavioral patterns or appetitive stimuli with noxious, unconditioned events, this intervention systematically transforms once-attractive triggers into potent sources of avoidance. Through decades of clinical implementation and empirical debate, it has illuminated the fundamental neural and psychological architectures governing human learning, reinforcement, and habit modification.
Aversion Conditioning
1. Concise Definition
Aversion conditioning—frequently termed aversive conditioning or aversion therapy in clinical contexts—is a behavioral modification technique and learning paradigm rooted in classical and operant conditioning principles. It involves the deliberate, contingent pairing of a target stimulus or behavior (the conditioned stimulus) with an unpleasant, noxious, or painful event (the unconditioned stimulus) to systematically diminish the frequency or desirability of the maladaptive response.
In formal learning theory, this paradigm operates by converting a neutral or appetitive conditioned stimulus (CS) into an aversive conditioned stimulus. When successful, the individual ceases to experience positive valence toward the target trigger and instead exhibits an acquired physiological, visceral, or psychological avoidance reaction. Consequently, the individual develops conditioned avoidance or escape behaviors designed to preempt exposure to the noxious stimulus.
While primarily developed within the framework of classical conditioning, modern implementations of aversion conditioning often interface with operant conditioning mechanisms. In such dual-process frameworks, the termination or prevention of the aversive stimulus serves as a negative reinforcer for prosocial or alternative behaviors, establishing a broader self-regulatory repertoire within the individual.
2. Etymology & Linguistic Origin
The term derives its foundational component, aversion, from the Latin noun aversio (stemming from the verb avertere), composed of the prefix ab- (meaning “from” or “away”) and vertere (meaning “to turn”). Etymologically, an aversion represents a literal “turning away from” or a deep-seated visceral recoil. The term entered English medical and philosophical discourses in the late sixteenth century to denote an instinctive repugnance, antipathy, or reluctance toward a specific object or sensory input.
The constituent term conditioning arose within the psychological sciences during the early twentieth century as an English translation of Ivan Pavlov’s Russian physiological terminology (specifically uslovny reflex, meaning “conditional reflex”). Behaviorists adopted the anglicized noun form “conditioning” to signify the systematic modification, training, or tuning of an organism’s reflex arc through controlled environmental experience. The synthesized compound term—aversion conditioning—entered mainstream psychological and psychiatric literature in the 1930s and 1940s to describe clinical and experimental protocols explicitly engineered to generate acquired aversions.
3. Pronunciation & Grammatical Form
Pronunciation: /əˈvɜːr.ʒən kənˈdɪʃ.ən.ɪŋ/ (US) or /əˈvɜː.ʃən kənˈdɪʃ.ən.ɪŋ/ (UK).
Grammatical Form: Noun phrase (uncountable). It can serve as a subject, direct object, or adjunct noun (e.g., “an aversion conditioning protocol”). Derivative grammatical variations include:
- Aversive conditioning (noun phrase / adjectival construct emphasizing the noxious quality of the stimulus)
- Aversion therapy (noun phrase specifically describing therapeutic clinical applications)
- To condition an aversion (transitive verb phrase denoting the behavioral action)
- Aversively conditioned (participial adjective modifying an organism or behavioral reflex)
4. Detailed Conceptual Explanation
At its theoretical core, aversion conditioning alters an organism’s motivational and affective response system. Naturally occurring behavioral repertoires are guided by hedonic valence; organisms gravitate toward stimuli that elicit pleasure or homeostatic satiety (appetitive stimuli) and retreat from stimuli that signal physiological damage, distress, or somatic danger (aversive stimuli). However, pathological and addictive behaviors frequently subvert this evolutionary architecture: substances or acts that produce long-term individual harm—such as chemical dependence, paraphilias, compulsive gambling, or specific impulse control disorders—deliver acute, short-term reinforcement. Aversion conditioning counteracts this positive valence by systematically overriding the hedonic appeal of the maladaptive stimulus.
The mechanics of this intervention rely on temporal contiguity, contingency, and biological preparedness. An appetitive stimulus (for example, the sensory properties of alcohol: smell, sight, and taste) is presented in precise temporal alignment with a biologically potent unconditioned stimulus (UCS) that predictably triggers an involuntary unconditioned response (UCR). Standard unconditioned stimuli historically employed include pharmacologically induced emesis (nausea), electric shocks, olfactory disgust agents, or prolonged imaginal distress. Over repeated contiguous pairings, the previously rewarding sensory attributes of the target behavior become a conditioned stimulus (CS) capable of evoking a conditioned response (CR) composed of autonomic arousal, visceral nausea, intense anxiety, or physical revulsion.
Beyond simple Pavlovian association, the operational success of aversion conditioning frequently requires cognitive and behavioral restructuring. If an individual merely experiences conditioned disgust in a clinical laboratory but retains the rational belief that the unconditioned stimulus will never occur outside the clinic, the conditioned response undergoes rapid behavioral extinction. Advanced theoretical formulations therefore conceptualize aversion conditioning not as a blind, mechanical reflex modification, but as a multi-tiered recalibration of an individual’s cognitive expectancies, perceptual appraisals, and somatic representations.
The boundaries of aversion conditioning distinguish it strictly from general punishment paradigms. In operant punishment, an aversive consequence is administered following the voluntary execution of a broad motor response in order to suppress the probability of future actions. In classic aversion conditioning, the focus is the fundamental hedonic transformation of the antecedent stimulus itself. The organism does not merely learn to withhold an action out of rational fear of delayed retribution; rather, the stimulus itself is rendered intrinsically distasteful, repulsive, or horrifying.
5. Historical Development
The foundational milestones of aversion conditioning parallel the rise of experimental behaviorism in the early twentieth century. While natural avoidance conditioning was observed in classical Russian reflexology laboratories under Ivan Pavlov and Vladimir Bekhterev, the deliberate application of aversive techniques to reshape complex human behaviors emerged prominently in the late 1920s and 1930s. Nikolai Voegtlin and Walter Voegtlin spearheaded some of the earliest systematic clinical applications at the Shadel Sanitarium in Seattle, Washington. They administered chemical emetics, such as emetine, alongside the sensory sampling of alcoholic beverages to treat severe chronic alcoholism, reporting remarkable initial abstinence rates among their clinical cohorts.
During the mid-twentieth century, the paradigm expanded dramatically under the umbrella of emerging behavior therapy movements led by figures such as Hans Eysenck, Joseph Wolpe, and Stanley Rachman. This era saw the proliferation of electric shock apparatuses, which offered researchers precise control over stimulus duration, intensity, and temporal onset. Investigators began applying aversive protocols to an increasingly wide array of behavioral presentations, including substance abuse, smoking cessation, obesity, trichotillomania, and various impulse-control conditions.
This historical trajectory was not without catastrophic scientific and humanitarian missteps. During the 1950s through the 1970s, psychiatry and clinical psychology weaponized aversion conditioning in attempts to suppress or alter homosexual orientation and other gender or sexual variations under the diagnostic auspices of “curing” what was then classified as sexual deviation. Individuals were subjected to severe chemical, olfactory, or electrical aversion while viewing homoerotic imagery. These practices caused profound psychological trauma, sustained widespread institutional harm, and demonstrated catastrophic failure rates in producing genuine alterations in underlying sexual orientation. The professional condemnation and subsequent diagnostic declassification of homosexuality in 1973 by the American Psychiatric Association precipitated an urgent, sweeping reexamination of the ethical boundaries, consent parameters, and biological plausibility of aversive procedures.
Concurrently, biological discoveries fundamentally reshaped the field’s theoretical landscape. In 1966, John Garcia and Robert Koelling published their landmark findings on conditioned taste aversion (the “Garcia Effect”). They proved that rats selectively associate nausea with gustatory sensations rather than visual or auditory stimuli, even when the delay between ingestion and sickness spans several hours. This shattered the prevailing behaviorist assumption of equipotentiality (the dogma that any arbitrary stimulus could be conditioned equally to any response), forcing aversion conditioning models to integrate evolutionary biology, biological preparedness, and modern neurocognitive science.
6. Theoretical Foundations
Aversion conditioning is supported by three primary psychological and biological frameworks: Pavlovian conditioning theory, two-factor learning theory, and neurobiological reinforcement circuitry.
Under Pavlovian classical conditioning, learning occurs via the associative integration of environmental predictive relationships. When an appetitive stimulus ($CS_1$) is persistently and contingently paired with an aversive event ($UCS$), a transfer of affective value occurs. Rescorla and Wagner’s associative learning model formalizes this via prediction error mathematics: associative strength changes predictably as a function of the discrepancy between expected and experienced outcomes. The subjective pleasantness once afforded by the target stimulus is extinguished and replaced by an aversive predictive association.
Second, O. Hobart Mowrer’s two-factor avoidance theory explains how aversion conditioning transitions from visceral reflex to proactive behavioral suppression. In Factor 1 (classical conditioning), the individual learns to fear or abhor the target stimulus through its association with the noxious UCS. In Factor 2 (operant conditioning), the organism discovers that executing an avoidance or escape response reliably removes the newly conditioned aversive stimulus, causing an immediate reduction in emotional distress. This distress reduction operates as a potent negative reinforcer, establishing durable habits of active avoidance.
From a modern neurobiological perspective, aversion conditioning alters synaptic plasticity within the amygdaloid complex, particularly the basolateral amygdala (BLA), and the insular cortex. The insular cortex is critically involved in processing visceral sensations, somatic disgust, and interoceptive awareness, while the amygdala facilitates the emotional tagging and storage of threat-related stimuli. Dopaminergic projection pathways originating in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and terminating in the nucleus accumbens—the primary drivers of craving, reward salience, and behavioral approach—are functionally dampened or counter-regulated by hyperactivation of central stress circuits, including the locus coeruleus and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.
7. Key Components, Types & Dimensions
Aversion conditioning can be classified along several procedural and sensory dimensions, depending on the nature of the stimuli utilized and the target modalities involved:
- Chemical / Pharmacological Aversion: The contingent administration of emetic agents (such as apomorphine or emetine) or physiological sensitizers (such as disulfiram) paired with the consumption or tactile handling of the target substance, most commonly alcohol.
- Electrical Aversion: The delivery of calibrated, non-lethal transcutaneous electric shocks via skin electrodes upon engagement with the target behavioral trigger, providing precise temporal control over onset, offset, and intensity.
- Olfactory and Gustatory Aversion: The introduction of putrid, noxious odors (such as ammonia or valeric acid) or extremely bitter substances concurrently with the execution of an undesirable habit, capitalizing on biological preparedness for ingestive defense.
- Covert Sensitization (Imaginal Aversion): A cognitive-behavioral adaptation pioneered by Joseph Cautela, wherein no physical noxious agent is applied. Instead, the client is guided through rich, vivid mental visualization of the target maladaptive behavior immediately followed by deeply repulsive imagery (e.g., imagining intense vomiting, social humiliation, or physical decomposition).
- Auditory / Sensory Overload Aversion: Less common modalities involving the contingent presentation of high-decibel acoustic blasts, blinding strobes, or noxious tactile stimuli designed to interrupt severe, refractory self-injurious motor patterns.
8. Examples & Illustrative Cases
To contextualize these theoretical mechanics, consider the following real-world applications across clinical and clinical-analogue settings:
Case Illustration 1: Chemical Aversion in Alcohol Use Disorder. A 46-year-old patient with severe, treatment-refractory alcohol dependence enrolls in an inpatient chemical aversion conditioning program. In a sterile medical setting, the patient is administered an injection of emetine hydrochloride. As profound somatic nausea begins to manifest, the therapist instructs the patient to pour, smell, swish, and taste their preferred spirit. The onset of emesis is precisely coordinated with the ingestion of the alcohol. Over multiple sessions separated by rest intervals, the previously craved sensory profile of ethanol undergoes a profound hedonic shift. Post-treatment evaluations demonstrate that mere exposure to the sight or aroma of alcohol elicits spontaneous physical nausea and acute revulsion, eliminating craving during initial recovery phases.
Case Illustration 2: Covert Sensitization for Paraphilic Arousal. An adult male presenting with distress over recurrent, non-consensual exhibitionistic urges engages in outpatient cognitive-behavioral covert sensitization. Rather than physical shock or emetics, the clinician guides the patient through progressive relaxation, followed by a vivid visualization of walking toward a public setting with the intention to expose himself. The moment the patient imagines lifting his coat, the therapist directs him to imagine a sudden, overwhelming wave of projectile vomiting all over his clothing, accompanied by the laughter and disgust of onlookers and immediate police intervention. After repeated guided practice and daily self-directed homework imagery, the patient reports a sharp decrease in automatic arousal, with the anticipatory impulse eliciting visceral anxiety and cognitive avoidance.
Case Illustration 3: Ecological Aversion in Wildlife Management. Aversion conditioning is also extensively applied outside human clinical contexts. In conservation biology, wolves and coyotes that prey on livestock are exposed to carcass meat laced with non-lethal doses of lithium chloride. The ingestion produces severe, delayed gastrointestinal sickness. Following a single exposure, the predators form robust conditioned taste aversions to sheep or cattle meat, reliably steering clear of pastoral herds while remaining ecologically viable within their native predatory niches.
9. Measurement & Assessment
Assessing the efficacy, acquisition, and durability of aversion conditioning involves a battery of subjective, psychophysiological, and behavioral measures:
Subjective Valence and Craving Inventories: Clinicians and researchers employ standardized psychometric scales to measure shifts in perceived pleasantness and subjective craving. Common tools include Visual Analogue Scales (VAS) for craving and disgust, the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) for measuring emotional valence and arousal, and validated disorder-specific measures such as the Penn Alcohol Craving Scale (PACS) or the Obsessive-Compulsive Drinking Scale (OCDS).
Psychophysiological Monitoring: Because cognitive responses can be distorted by social desirability bias, physiological markers provide objective corroboration of conditioned aversion. Modalities include:
- Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) / Electrodermal Activity (EDA): Quantifies sympathetic nervous system activation upon exposure to the conditioned stimulus.
- Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and Photoplethysmography: Detects transient autonomic deceleration or acceleration patterns reflecting defensive orienting responses.
- Facial Electromyography (fEMG): Measures micro-contractions of the corrugator supercilii (frown muscle, indicating negative affect) and the levator labii superioris (specifically associated with the human disgust expression).
- Penile Plethysmography (PPG) / Vaginal Photoplethysmography: Historically used to assess alterations in genital blood volume during sexual aversion protocols, though now constrained by profound ethical and methodological guidelines.
Behavioral Avoidance and Extinction Tasks: Behavioral tests evaluate real-time physical interaction with the stimulus. In a Behavioral Avoidance Test (BAT), the participant is exposed to the target trigger (e.g., holding a lit cigarette or sitting before a glass of alcohol) while latency to touch, duration of proximity, and behavioral signs of distress or flight are recorded.
10. Applications & Practical Significance
While historically widespread, contemporary applications of aversion conditioning have narrowed significantly due to ethical evolution and the advent of less distressing, equally potent therapeutic modalities. Nevertheless, several prominent implementations persist in modern practice:
Substance Use Disorders: Modern clinical aversion therapy maintains a niche presence within highly specialized, accredited addiction facilities. Rapid smoking protocols—in which smokers take rapid, continuous inhalations every few seconds until severe dizziness and nausea ensue—represent an intensive behavioral variation designed to extinguish nicotine dependence. Similarly, disulfiram (Antabuse) therapy acts as an operant-classical pharmacological hybrid: while designed as a deterrent, any accidental or deliberate consumption of ethanol triggers an intensely noxious acetaldehyde buildup, producing rapid flushing, tachycardia, and vomiting that conditions profound avoidance.
Compulsive and Self-Injurious Behaviors: In rare cases involving profound intellectual disability or severe neurodevelopmental conditions where individuals engage in life-threatening, intractable self-injurious behaviors (e.g., extreme head-banging or ocular enucleation) that have failed every functional and positive behavioral intervention, contingent cutaneous shock has been applied under strict court oversight and human rights committee regulation. However, this application remains exceptionally controversial and subject to intense international condemnation and regulatory restriction.
Trichotillomania and Onychophagia: For mild habit disorders like chronic nail-biting (onychophagia) or hair-pulling (trichotillomania), over-the-counter aversion products—such as intensely bitter lacquers (e.g., denatonium benzoate) applied to the fingernails—leverage low-level aversive conditioning to disrupt automatic, unconscious motor chains.
11. Research & Empirical Evidence
Empirical evaluations of aversion conditioning have yielded mixed, context-dependent findings across nearly a century of rigorous trial data. Early retrospective studies conducted by Voegtlin and colleagues during the 1940s claimed abstinence rates exceeding 60% at one-year follow-ups among patients undergoing emetic conditioning for alcohol dependence. Subsequent randomized controlled trials (RCTs) demonstrated that while chemical and electrical aversion protocols often yield robust immediate suppression of cravings, the long-term treatment effect declines markedly without ongoing booster sessions.
A critical body of research highlighted the problem of spontaneous recovery and contextual renewal. Landmark laboratory experiments by Mark Bouton revealed that conditioned fear and aversion do not erase the original learning memory trace; rather, they form an alternative inhibitory “CS-No US” or “CS-Aversive” trace that is profoundly dependent on environmental context. When an individual departs the clinical environment where the aversive contingency was enforced and re-enters their baseline psychosocial environment, the original appetitive associations reliably re-emerge.
Furthermore, comparative empirical trials have evaluated covert sensitization against overt physical aversion. Research conducted by Joseph Cautela, followed by comparative reviews by Alan Kazdin and colleagues, revealed that imaginal covert aversion yields therapeutic outcomes comparable to chemical or electrical conditioning, while completely eliminating physical hazards and dramatic dropout rates. Systematic reviews by contemporary clinical institutions generally conclude that while aversion principles are biologically valid, aversive conditioning in isolation demonstrates inferior sustainability compared to Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics (CBIT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and standard Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) supplemented by evidence-based pharmacotherapies.
12. Cultural & Cross-Cultural Considerations
The acceptability, perceived morality, and legal regulation of aversion conditioning vary significantly across global socio-cultural landscapes. In Western liberal democracies, the primacy of individual autonomy, informed consent, and bodily integrity has placed immense regulatory burdens on any clinical paradigm involving deliberate distress or pain. By contrast, in some collectivist or strictly state-regulated societies, coercive behavioral modification programs—often incorporating harsh physical drills, sensory deprivation, or involuntary aversive therapies—have historically been tolerated or sanctioned for managing behavioral deviance, internet addiction, or illicit drug use.
Cultural definitions of what constitutes a valid target for aversive conditioning have historically caused immense social harm. The historical pathologization and subsequent torture-adjacent aversive conditioning of LGBTQ+ individuals in Western societies illustrates how clinical techniques can mirror prevailing socio-religious prejudices rather than objective medical pathology. In contemporary global mental health, transcultural psychiatrists emphasize that what one culture categorizes as an unacceptable impulsive behavior requiring aversive eradication, another culture may conceptualize as an adaptive spiritual trial, an interpersonal friction, or a systemic family dysfunction that demands structural support rather than individual conditioning.
13. Criticisms, Debates & Limitations
Few topics in behavioral science have generated as much controversy, ethical backlash, and clinical divergence as aversion conditioning. The primary objections are categorized across three major domains: ethical considerations, treatment dropouts, and therapeutic durability.
Ethical Violations and Human Rights: The central ethical debate centers on the principle of non-maleficence (“first, do no harm”). The deliberate infliction of physical pain, vomiting, or acute terror—even with putative therapeutic intent and nominal patient consent—borders uncomfortably on torture and cruel or degrading treatment under international human rights declarations. The historical deployment of aversion therapy against sexual minorities remains an indelible moral stain on the psychological professions, prompting explicit apologies and prohibitions from the American Psychological Association, the British Psychological Society, and the World Psychiatric Association.
High Attrition and Treatment Resistance: Because aversive conditioning is intrinsically noxious, attrition rates in clinical trials and real-world programs are exceptionally high. Patients frequently refuse to complete the required number of conditioning sessions, terminating therapy prematurely. Such high dropout rates undermine the overall ecological validity of the intervention and often exacerbate the patient’s underlying feelings of helplessness, guilt, and therapeutic failure.
Mechanistic Fragility and Extinction: Classical conditioning principles dictate that whenever the conditioned stimulus is experienced in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned response undergoes extinction. In everyday life, an individual cannot maintain a perpetual state of pairing. Once a person with alcohol use disorder realizes that drinking a beer at home does not trigger the violent nausea experienced in the clinic, the conditioned disgust response rapidly decays, opening the door to catastrophic relapse.
14. Related Terms & Distinctions
Understanding aversion conditioning requires differentiating it from closely related behavioral and psychological constructs:
- Aversion Conditioning vs. Positive Punishment: In operant positive punishment, an aversive consequence is applied contingently following a targeted action to decrease the future probability of that action (e.g., fining a driver for speeding). Aversion conditioning focuses fundamentally on transforming the hedonic valence of the antecedent cue itself via Pavlovian pairing, rather than merely suppressing response probability via behavioral consequences.
- Aversion Conditioning vs. Negative Reinforcement: Negative reinforcement involves the removal or avoidance of an aversive stimulus to increase the likelihood of a desirable behavior (e.g., buckling a seatbelt to silence an annoying chime). Aversion conditioning introduces an aversive stimulus to generate antipathy toward an appetitive object.
- Aversion Conditioning vs. Systematic Desensitization: Systematic desensitization is essentially the direct inverse of aversion conditioning. It seeks to eliminate an excessive, irrational aversive reaction (such as a phobia) by pairing the feared stimulus with deep relaxation or positive states (counterconditioning). Aversion conditioning deliberately constructs a strong negative reaction toward a previously attractive cue.
- Aversion Conditioning vs. Extinction: Extinction involves presenting a conditioned stimulus repeatedly without any unconditioned stimulus, leading to the gradual waning of the conditioned response. Aversion conditioning actively introduces a powerful new noxious stimulus to fundamentally rewrite the learned association.
- Aversion Conditioning vs. Covert Sensitization: Covert sensitization is a specific, purely imaginal subtype of aversive conditioning that eliminates physical emetics or electrical shocks in favor of self-generated mental disgust imagery.
15. Summary / Key Takeaways
Aversion conditioning occupies a unique nexus within behavioral psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and bioethics. Procedurally, it relies on the contingent pairing of an appetitive, maladaptive trigger with a noxious, unconditioned stimulus to replace positive hedonic valence with visceral revulsion or behavioral avoidance. Theoretically anchored in Pavlovian associative mechanisms, Mowrer’s two-factor theory, and the neurobiology of the amygdala and insular cortex, the paradigm provided historic validation of associative learning models while subsequently dismantling the behaviorist myth of biological equipotentiality.
However, the application of aversion conditioning has contracted dramatically over the modern era. Plagued by substantial relapse rates due to context-dependent extinction, high patient attrition, and a dark historical legacy of human rights violations—most visibly the pseudo-scientific effort to alter sexual orientation—overt physical aversion therapies have largely been abandoned. In their place, modern behavioral healthcare emphasizes constructive, positive reinforcement paradigms, cognitive restructuring, acceptance-based therapies, and targeted pharmacological supports. Where aversive principles survive—such as in covert sensitization, conservation biology, or mild habit-reversal tools—they are executed with heightened ethical safeguards, strict voluntary consent, and a holistic focus on human dignity.
References
- American Psychological Association. (2020). Report of the APA task force on appropriate therapeutic responses to sexual orientation. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/therapeutic-response.pdf
- Bouton, M. E. (2004). Context and behavioral processes in extinction. Learning & Memory, 11(5), 485–494. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.78804
- Cautela, J. R. (1967). Covert sensitization. Psychological Reports, 20(2), 459–468. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1967.20.2.459
- Garcia, J., & Koelling, R. A. (1966). Relation of cue to consequence in avoidance learning. Psychonomic Science, 4(3), 123–124. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03342209
- Rachman, S., & Teasdale, J. (1969). Aversion therapy and behaviour disorders: An analysis. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
- Rescorla, R. A., & Wagner, A. R. (1972). A theory of Pavlovian conditioning: Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and nonreinforcement. In A. H. Black & W. F. Prokasy (Eds.), Classical conditioning II: Current research and theory (pp. 64–99). Appleton-Century-Crofts.
- Voegtlin, W. L. (1940). The treatment of alcohol addiction in relation to the conditioned reflex. Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 1(3), 501–504. https://doi.org/10.15288/qjsa.1940.1.501