Jellinek's anti-hagiography

Abstract

The principles of modern addictology are rooted in alcohology. The development of the field is inseparable from E. M. Jellinek’s contribution. The scientific-medical agenda of alcohology has apparently been created by him. This paper provides a brief overview of Jellinek’s professional and personal history.

The paper is a sort of „work in progress”. Authors opened the project to study those episodes of Jellinek’s life story that are not yet known to the public. At the end of the 1990s Ron Roizen revealed an infamous episode of Jellinek’s past. Although Roizen’s presumption was not proved, the hypothesis that E. M. Jellinek was the same as the Hungarian fraud named Jellinek Morton has some grounding. The supposition was confirmed in an interview with Jellinek’s daughter, Ruth Surry in the mid-1960s, in which she asserted that his father had become involved in a post-World War I currency speculation.

Presently, we do not have any information about the origins of Jellinek’s interest in alcohol studies and 12-steps conception. Authors assume that his past in Budapest - an unknown terrain in the story of addictology - might explain for this turn in his life. What were the intellectual and emotional influences which inspired him to enter the field of alcohol studies?