Abraham Wikler (October 12, 1910 – March 7, 1981). was an American psychiatrist and neurologist who made important discoveries in

drug addiction Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to engage in certain behaviors, one of which is the usage of a drug, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use oft ...

. 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 Drug withdrawal, drug withdrawal syndrome, or substance withdrawal syndrome, is the group of symptoms that occur upon the abrupt discontinuation or decrease in the intake of pharmaceutical or recreational drugs. In order for the symptoms of wit ...

symptoms. His research on conditioning and relapse played a pioneering role in the neuroscientific study of addiction.

Biography

Wikler was born and grew up on the Lower East Side of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, the son of a Jewish butcher who had immigrated from the Probuzhna shtetl in

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

.., "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.. He joined the Lexington Narcotic Hospital, a

prison farm A prison farm (also known as a penal farm) is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are forced to work on a farm legally and illegally (in the wide sense of a productive unit), usually for manual labor, largely in the open ai ...

run by the

United States Public Health Service The United States Public Health Service (USPHS or PHS) is a collection of agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services concerned with public health, containing nine out of the department's twelve operating divisions. The Assistant ...

for drug addicts in Lexington, Kentucky, as an intern in 1940. 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 suffered physical brain damage.. After the internship, he took a one-year fellowship at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

and

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

, where he studied the work of

Ivan Pavlov Ivan Petrovich Pavlov ( rus, Ива́н Петро́вич Па́влов, , p=ɪˈvan pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈpavləf, a=Ru-Ivan_Petrovich_Pavlov.ogg; 27 February 1936), was a Russian and Soviet experimental neurologist, psychologist and physio ...

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 Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a triangle). It also refers to the learni ...

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 The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state ...

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. He had four children; the oldest, Marjorie Senechal, became a mathematician and historian of science at Smith College.. A son, Daniel Wikler, is a bioethicist with the

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. The school grew out of the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's first ...

. He died on March 7, 1981, in Lexington, Kentucky.

Biography

References

Further reading