When stressed as adults, oral-dependent people are more likely to turn to alcohol to cope. Later in life such men will have a strong need to remain dependent on either their mother or another woman. When their needs become frustrated, they become angry. Unable to deal with anger assertively, these people find that alcohol provides an effective way to reduce aggressive impulses. It has the additional advantage of hurting those people around them.
Psychoanalytic theories make some intuitive sense since many alcoholics have immature social skills.
They often turn to alcohol to help cope with life stresses. Despite this intuitive appeal, there are little prospective data to support these theories. An alcohol dependent person may exhibit dependent traits, however, these traits are just as likely to result from chronic alcohol use as they are to lead to it. Even if correlations exist between alcohol abuse and dependent personalities, it is not clear which is the cause and which is the effect. In summary, there is little evidence to support the oral fixation theory.