Freud's Encounter with Cocaine

This essay is a tribute honoring the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary. When I was invited to contribute to this anniversary volume as one of only three surviving authors in the pages of volume 1 of the journal, I must confess that I was seized initially with serious misgivings. It pleased me to be in the company of Jacob Arlow and Leo Rangell, two truly distinguished colleagues (who are also dear friends). It is no false modesty to say that while their place in these special pages is truly meritorious, my own presence here is connected in significant degree to my longevity.

In any event, I reacquainted myself with my journal article (Linn 1953). That paper's conclusion is that in patients who are charactero-logically predisposed to the use of denial, organic interferences with perception facilitate denial. Conversely, the need to deny can result in functional disturbances in perception (inexact perception). I discussed the relationship of denial to other defense mechanisms as well. My paper concludes with the statement that alcohol and drugs can plunge a person into a pharmacologically induced dreamy state in which perception and recent memory are impaired and in which denial is facilitated. In short, I was suggesting how organic brain changes can affect purely psychological defense mechanisms and in this way explain some of the clinical aspects of addictive states. I wrote that paper while serving as liaison psychiatrist on the neurology service of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. It was one of several papers I wrote during those years in which I tried to explore the mind-brain interface, an interest that continues to this day (Linn 1948, 1953, 1954a, b, c, 1955, 1958, 1960, 1974, 1986, 1987, 1989, 2000; Linn and Stein 1944, 1945; Linn, Cohen, and Zimmerman 1945; Linn 1948; Linn and Goldman 1949;