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DISCUSSION: Dr. Melitta Sperling felt that the importance of the oral phase and deprivation had been overemphasized. She stressed two factors in the genesis and dynamics of addiction: (1) the role of the anal phase when impulse control is learned; (2) the quality of the object-relationship which, in addiction, is of the fetishistic type.
Dr. Otto Sperling brought out that Freud's System Theory emphasizes the need for stimuli, and that this plays an important role in addiction. Dr. Austin Silber stated that addicts seek to use the drug and the psychological effect it exerts upon them in a reparative sense. Dr. Frank Berchenko felt that lowered self-esteem is one of the reasons that people take drugs. Parental permissiveness may also play a role. Adolescents who resort to drugs are like children who play near one another but not with each other because of their inability to interact; with the use of the drug they feel they are interacting.