(1974). Cultural Therapy - A New Conception of Treatment. Journal of Psychedelic Drugs: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 173-177.

Addiction counseling in the modern era has been practiced as an essentially clinical activity, but this has not always been the case. There have been key points in the history of addiction treatment when the functions of community organization and social activism competed with, or complemented, this clinical orientation. The first section of this paper draws on nine episodes in this history to explore the relationship between addiction recovery and the addict’s identification with, and participation in, a community of recovering addicts. The second section utilizes the work of John McKnight to explore how professionalized and institutionalized services can inadvertently undermine the development and vitality of indigenous community support systems. The third section outlines a series of recommendations that would shift the focus of addiction recovery from something that happens exclusively in the context of professionally-directed treatment to a process that unfolds within the larger community. It is argued that the professionalization (medicalization and psychologization) of addiction treatment needs to be balanced by a re-emphasis on recovery as a connection with indigenous resources and relationships beyond the self. The paper closes with a discussion of the potential pitfalls of this shift in focus from clinical technique to community resource mobilization.

/pdf/a-lost-vision-addiction-counseling-as-community-organization-27y3bcedbq.pdf

Cultural Therapy - A New Conception of Treatment

A Lost Vision: Addiction Counseling as Community Organization

The Tunnel Back: Synanon.

Using the literature as a data source, this paper attempts to: a. examine the wide range of etiological and treatment alternatives with a primary focus on heroin addiction; b. briefly examine the concordance between the etiological and treatment modalities and various conceptualizations and explanatory models of substance use/abuse and social problems; c. outline an examination of both treatment modalities and theoretical approaches to substance use/abuse and their relationship to the question of political-economic influences and gatekeeping factors; d. through critical evaluation of the preceeding issues, suggest what the important areas of concern could or should be in the near future. This work is able to only briefly discuss the very complex issues enumerated above; the findings and recommendations attempt to provide systematic research alternatives.

Substance Use/Abuse Conceptualization, Etiology and Treatment

Peer-reviewed medical journal on psychoactive drugs

Social Class and Mental Illness

Social class and mental illness: Community study.

Persuasion and healing

Identity as a concept is as elusive as everyone's sense of his own personal identity. It is connected with appraisals made by oneself and by others. Each person sees himself mirrored in the judgments of others. The masks he presents to the world are fashioned upon his anticipations of judgments. In Mirrors and Masks, Anselm Strauss uses the notion of identity to organize materials and thoughts about certain aspects of problems traditionally intriguing to social psychologists.The problems Strauss considers to be intriguing traditionally are those encountered when studying group membership, motivation, personality development, and social interaction. The topics covered include: the basic importance of language for human action and identity; the perpetual indeterminacy of identities in constantly changing social contexts; the symbolic and developmental character of human interaction; the theme of identity as it affects adult behaviqr; relations between generations and their role in personality development; and the symbolic character of membership in groups.By focusing on symbolic behavior with an emphasis on social organization, Strauss presents a fruitful, systematic perspective from which to view traditional problems of social psychology. He opens up new areas of thought and associates matters that are not ordinarily considered to be related. Strauss believes that psychiatrists* and psychologists underestimate immensely the influence of social organization upon individual behavior and individual structure, and that sociologists, whose major concern is with social organization, should employ some kind of social psychology in their research. Mirrors and Masks shows that the fusion of theoretical approaches benefits the analyses of many scholars. This fascinating work should be read by sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists.

Mirrors and masks : the search for identity

/pdf/followup-study-of-narcotic-drug-addicts-five-years-after-1iup3zd7e2.pdf

Cultural Therapy - A New Conception of Treatment

Citations

A Lost Vision: Addiction Counseling as Community Organization

The Tunnel Back: Synanon.

Substance Use/Abuse Conceptualization, Etiology and Treatment

References

Social Class and Mental Illness

Social class and mental illness: Community study.

Persuasion and healing

Mirrors and masks : the search for identity

Followup study of narcotic drug addicts five years after hospitalization.

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