ABSTRACT
There are three main sources of psycho-analytic interest in drug-addiction. In the first place its etiology is still obscure; consequently the treatment of drug-addiction lags behind that of the psycho-neuroses. A second source of interest lies in the correlation of drug-addictionwith various other psychopathological states. The third source of interest is mainly domestic. Study of psycho-analytic views concerning alcoholism and other drug-addictions seems to illustrate very clearly the different tendencies which from time to time have dominated psycho-analytical research or doctrine. The same divergence can be demonstrated in the case of drug-addiction. The opposite tendency, viz. search for a specific etiology of drug-addiction of a kind that is primitive without being pre-structural is hard to find in psycho-analytical literature. Drug-addiction has been treated on the whole as a step-child of the psychoses. The divergences can be detected not only in papers on drug-addiction, but throughout the field of psycho-analytic research.
