Abraham Wikler

{{Infobox person

| name = Abraham Wikler

| image =

| image_size =

| caption =

| birth_date = October 12, 1910

| birth_place = Lower East Side of New York City, US

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1981|03|07|1910|10|12}}

| death_place = Lower East Side of New York City, US

| occupation = Prison psychiatrist, substance abuse researcher, neurologist

| spouse = Ada

| children = {{plainlist|1=

}}

| alma_mater = Long Island College of Medicine, MD, 1935

}}

Abraham Wikler (October 12, 1910 – March 7, 1981){{citation|title=Images in Psychiatry: Abraham Wikler, M.D., 1910–1981|journal=The American Journal of Psychiatry|year=1998|volume=155|issue=8|page=1109|doi=10.1176/ajp.155.8.1109|url=http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=172961|first=Thomas R.|last=Kosten}}. was an American psychiatrist and neurologist who made important discoveries in drug addiction.

He was one of the first to promote a view of addiction as conditioned behavior, and made the first observations of conditioned response in drug withdrawal symptoms.{{citation|title=Understanding the Alcoholic's Mind: The Nature of Craving and How to Control It|first=Arnold M.|last=Ludwig|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1989|isbn=9780195059182|pages=[https://archive.org/details/understandingalc0000ludw/page/43 43–44]|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/understandingalc0000ludw/page/43}}. His research on conditioning and relapse played a pioneering role in the neuroscientific study of addiction.{{citation|title=Discovering Addiction: The Science and Politics of Substance Abuse Research|first=Nancy Dianne|last=Campbell|publisher=University of Michigan Press|year=2007|isbn=9780472116102}}. Page 203: "Neuroscience entered substance abuse research not as a revolution but as a legitimizing force deeply interconnected with behavioral antecedents and with Abraham Wikler's work on conditioning and the role of cues in triggering relapse."

Biography

Wikler was born and grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of a Jewish butcher who had immigrated from the Probuzhna shtetl in Ukraine.{{citation|contribution=Narco Brat|first=Marjorie|last=Senechal|author-link=Marjorie Senechal|title=Of Human Bondage|editor-first=D.|editor-last=Patey|editor-link=Douglas Lane Patey|series=Smith College Studies in History|volume=52|publisher=Smith College|year=2003|url=http://wikler.net/marjoriesenechal/images/NarcoBrat.pdf}}.{{harvtxt|Campbell|2007}}, "A disease sui generis: The conceptual contributions of Abraham Wikler", pp. 75ff. He earned an M.D. from the Long Island College of Medicine in 1935.{{citation|journal=SUNY Downstate Medical Center Alumni Bulletin|volume=XXIII|issue=3|date=December 1967|page=5|title=The President's Page|last=Marino|first=A. W. Martin Jr.|url=http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/bitstream/handle/1951/45116/alumni23.3.pdf}}. He joined the Lexington Narcotic Hospital, a prison farm run by the United States Public Health Service for drug addicts in Lexington, Kentucky, as an intern in 1940.{{harvtxt|Campbell|2007}}, p. 56. There, he ran the narcotic-withdrawal ward and worked to quantify effects of opiates on addicts. He became interested in the neurophysiological basis for addiction, and the physiological changes caused by addiction, after successfully diagnosing a patient who had previously been thought to be grieving as having sustained physical brain damage.{{citation|title=Abraham Wikler: A scholar—sui generis|first=Jerome H.|last=Jaffe|journal=British Journal of Addiction|volume=76|issue=4|pages=431–432|date=December 1981|doi=10.1111/j.1360-0443.1981.tb03243.x}}. After the internship, he took a one-year fellowship at Yale University and Northwestern University, where he studied the work of Ivan Pavlov on conditioning. He then returned to Lexington as associate director

and chief of the section on experimental neuropsychiatry, one of three permanent staff researchers at the facility. In his work there, he observed both classical conditioning and operant conditioning in humans and in studies with rodents; from these observations, he hypothesized that conditioning led addicts to relapse long after the physical symptoms of their addiction had faded, and that the "hustling" behavior of addicts seeking their next fix was a symptom of conditioning.

Wikler retired from the USPHS in 1963 and joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky{{harvtxt|Campbell|2007}}, p. xvii. In 1967, the alumni association of the SUNY Downstate Medical Center (to which the Long Island College of Medicine had been renamed) gave him their Alumni Achievement Medallion for Distinguished Service to American Medicine. In 1976, he won the Nathan B. Eddy Award of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence.[http://www.cpdd.vcu.edu/Pages/Index/Awards/AwardPreviousByYear.html Award winners] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130510135930/http://www.cpdd.vcu.edu/Pages/Index/Awards/AwardPreviousByYear.html |date=2013-05-10 }}, College on Problems of Drug Dependence, retrieved 2013-07-16. He had four children; the oldest, Marjorie Senechal, became a mathematician and historian of science at Smith College.{{citation|last=Brunner|first=Regina Baron|contribution=Marjorie Wikler Senechal|title=Notable Women in Mathematics: A Biographical Dictionary|editor1-first=Charlene|editor1-last=Morrow|editor2-first=Teri|editor2-last=Perl|publisher=Greenwood Press|year=1998|pages=225–229|isbn=9780313291319 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u7nqH3RzUusC&pg=PA225}}. A son, Daniel Wikler, is a bioethicist with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He died on March 7, 1981, in Lexington, Kentucky.

Abraham Wikler

Biography

References

Further reading