The author begins by discussing what he would like to call "psycho-booms," by which he means the phenomenon of a band-wagon popularity achieved by various psychoanalytic theories that are "discovered," blossom, have a few moments in the sun, and then, in the course of time, fall into disrepute, or are regarded as contributing nothing new to psychoanalytic theory overall. Some aspects of this faddish emphasis on one theory or another have led to confusions and contradictory claims in the area of addiction theory, with the result that psychoanalysts have either withdrawn from work with addicts, or are regarded as having no reliable authority in matters of addiction or any theoretical understanding of it. Rost reviews the psychoanalytic