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IN A RECENT CRITICAL SURVEY OF PSYCHOANALYTIC WRITINGS ON drug addiction one of us (Yorke, 1970) drew attention to some of the anomalies that exist in the literature spanning a period of
some 80 years and pointed to several possible sources of confusion and misunderstanding. The problem of definition was, and remains, one of the more obvious of these; but the difficulties in distinguishing between the psychological effects of a drug on the one hand and the pharmacological effects on the other, and the problem of whether addiction to different types of drugs could be distinguished on etiological grounds were, and remain, vexed questions. Although such difficulties were only to be expected, it was disappointing to conclude that "idiosyncratic viewpoints … can sometimes obscure otherwise useful clarifications of existing knowledge; that too many papers fail to supply convincing clinical evidence to support their assertions; [and] that, overall, there is a good deal of diagnostic disarray" (p. 156). In some instances, this was traced to an unfortunate tendency on the part of some writers to equate depressive affect an