This book reports the findings of a study of the treatment of alcoholism in the out-patient clinics and the related in-patient facilities of state-supported alcoholism programmes in the United States. The authors compared a number of clinics simultaneously, and were thus able to investigate the influence of a variety of treatment programmes on a variety of patients. They show that clinics play a valuable role in assisting patients who have retained social stability despite their problem by maintaining contact with such patients, but that they are rarely useful for modifying either drinking habits or other aspects of malfunctioning in the case of patients whose social stability has crumbled. The study further shows that improvement in drinking habits (either by abstinence or by controlled drinking) is related to what the clinic does and to changes in the patient's social and interpersonal environment outside the clinic.