On October 22, 2013 we have commemorated 50 years since the loss of E. M. Jellinek, one of the leading experts of the 20th century in the field of alcoholism, perhaps even the most important one. His work influenced quite essentially both our understanding of alcoholism and the medical practice. He was an advocate for the medical model of alcoholism (the so called “disease theory of alcoholism”). We can easily find a reference to his name in our domestic literature, but only a few professionals have access to his original texts today. The purpose of this paper is to fill in this gap. Jellinek’s definition of “alcoholism” as “any use of alcoholic beverages that causes any damage to the individual or society or both” is very broad, accordingly often pointed out in quotation marks. The paper is composed of two parts. A brief outline of his life is presented in the first part of the article. The second part deals with three crucial themes of his work: 1. Alcoholism as a disease; 2. Alcoholism as a progressive illness; and 3. Typology of alcoholism. The first two themes draw on an excerpt of his concept of phases of alcohol addiction based on two analyses of members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) published in 1946 and 1952, the third is illustrated by a translation of a fragment from chapter III on the species of alcoholism of his most famous book The Disease Concept of Alcoholism (1960).
Key words: Jellinek – disease theory of alcoholism – phases of alcoholism – typology of alcoholism