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A relatively new social phenomenon has recently imposed rather special problems for those psychoanalysts who treat adolescents and young adults—the extensive use of various kinds of non-narcotic drugs, ranging from marijuana through the amphetamines, barbiturates and tranquilizers to LSD and its analogues.
In the population with which psychoanalysts are generally concerned—the intellectually oriented, affluent and culturally sophisticated middle class—the use of such drugs among 16 to 25-year-olds is so widespread as to be considered in part a sociocultural rather than a solely individual characteristic. Estimates of usage vary because accurate figures are difficult to obtain, but an eminent educator has estimated that at least one-third of the students in the large metropolitan university where he teaches have had some experience with these agents. I consider this estimate conservative.
Parallel with this development, a substantial body of popularized and semi-scientific literature has appeared concerning the use and/or supposed merits of some of these drugs. These books have been widely sold in college and university communities and, symptomatic of our time, are in no sense regarded as “underground” literature. Featuring extensive discussions of the pharmacology of marijuana, they are widely cited by adolescents to support their contention
that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol and should be legalized.
Too, religiously-tinged theatrical performances openly advocating the use of “psychedelic” agents attract large audiences of young people who respond to the claim of a new value-system that rests on something other than what they regard as the hypocrisy and materialism of their elders.
Psychoanalysts have traditionally disfavored drug usage. Confirmed users or addicts have generally been considered outside the pale of psychoanalytic concern, and literature on the subject is sparse indeed. Analysts who have attempted to treat addicts have often enjoined abstinenc