Prologue

Toward the temporary staying of the malignancy of the self-destructive impulse, toward the averting of the premature capitulation to Death, we may sometimes, by prodigious labors, lend an effective hand.

Nearly 5,000 years ago one of the emperors of China developed a smoking mixture from the plant Cannabis. Today on any school playground or in any city park one can find young people using essentially the same drug. Over this long span of human history people in many cultures have sought to alter the nature of ordinary mental functioning with a variety of chemical compounds and derivatives. Indeed, drug-taking is a commonplace in our own culture today, and while many people are alarmed by its growing cultural acceptance, some dismiss it as a benign form of pleasure-seeking or point out that, with 5,000 years of drug use, the cause of drug control is a hopeless one.

But for those of us in the mental health field who as a part of our everyday clinical practice see the drug-dazed and numbed adolescent without ambition or mental acuity, whose grades have plummeted and whose family is frantic or alienated, the extent of the damage we can lay at the door of that Chinese emperor is no small matter. In our efforts to discover ways to help these young patients, we find ourselves confronted with a number of serious questions: How do we understand the enigma of drug-taking motivation? How do we tease out the contributing developmental factors? And how do we clarify the confusions that surround the nature and seriousness of the underlying pathology? In addition, what can we make of the current addiction to cults, leading to behavior that, while not drug-induced, often seems to be mind-warping