Does the Marlatt model underestimate the importance of conditioned craving in the relapse process?

Since its first formulation by G. Alan Marlatt and his colleagues in the late 1970s, the concept of relapse prevention, the model of the relapse process associated with it, and the intervention procedures to which it gives rise have generated a great deal of attention in clinical practice and some interesting research. Like any fertile idea in science, one of its chief virtues is that its very popularity has led others to criticize and revise the original formulation (e.g., Saunders and Allsop 1987). It is in this vein that this chapter is written.