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We are indebted to Dr. Savage for giving us a glimpse into the dynamics of group process in a subculture involved in drug abuse. Few psychoanalysts have encountered this in their professional careers.
I wish to direct my discussion to a brief consideration of the “Outsider” and to the place of hallucinogenic drugs in the framework of the psychopathology of the addiction process.
The Outsider is indeed not a freak. He has become an ever increasing phenomenon. He is representative of a large group of individuals comprising a cross-section of all levels of the population, not all limited to middle-class intellectuals. The not-so-sensitive “beatniks” and “hippies” are also in disharmony with the Establishment.
Dr. Savage's patient is described as being rebellious, depressed, obsessional, impulse ridden and infantile. These characteristics would predispose him to failure as a clergyman or in any profession where sound object relationships are required. Ordinarily, through an empathic relationship with his parishioners, a minister experiences a benevolent, well-sublimated omnipotence as God's representative on earth. By means of the rite of Holy Communion he achieves a sense of “oceanic” reunion with the concept of an all-powerful God which enables him to share with his followers the experience of religious fervor. In this way he feeds them with a periodic ego repair, and he in turn is nourished by their adoration and identification with him. This is an example of group process utilized in the service of ego enhancement.
But this was no longer possible for Dr. Savage's Outsider. We are told that for the worship of Christ he had now substituted the worship
of drugs. Having lost God and his fiancée as love objects, he regressed to the level of part-object relationships. “He took peyote as he had formerly incorporated the body of Christ the Father at communion, and as he had incorporated the breast.”
Let us contrast the peyote ritual among the native American Indian tribes wit