rve centers and allow nature to return to a normal condition" (Enfield, 1992, p. 1403).
Bride and Nackerud (2002) explain that over the course of the 20th century, the so-called "disease model" of alcoholism, abetted and significantly influenced by the temperance movement of the early part of the century, remained dominant, especially in the US, with the principal and only proper treatment being abstinence rather than positive administration of wonder drugs. The disease modality has been linked with the emergence of clinical and hospital facilities specializing in overseeing programs of abstinence for patients. A research structure for the disease model of alcoholism grew out of a taxonomy proposed in a seminal text on the subject that emphasized the progressive and irreversible nature of the disease (movement from psychological to absolute and uncontrollable somatic dependence on alcohol intake) and the genetic predisposition toward, or family history of, alcoholism (Jellinek, 1960; Bride & Nackerud, 2002).
Addictiveness and irreversibility were fundamental tenets of the disease model of alcohol abuse, which helps explain why abstinence was considered the only effective treatment. However, beginning in the 1960s, anomalous clinical findings began to challenge the disease model. Bride and Nackerud (2002) cite longitudinal research showing that some previously diagnosed alcoholics returned to drinking moderately, with no resumption of pathological drinking patterns. This led to controversy and division in the medical-research community beginning in the 1970s, with disease-model advocates deploring the anomalous research as unscientific. However, by the early 1990s, a new consensus definition had been crafted by the clinical community that mediated the more rigid features of the disease model in a way that accounted for the newer research. Bride and Nackerud (2002, p. 28) quote the new definition in full:
Alcoholism is a primary,...