ABSTRACT
This chapter continues the previous one in reviewing the main psychoanalytic perspective on drug abuse and addiction from the end of World War II until the present. Cultural processes, technological advances in the pharmaceutical industry, such as the discovery of hallucinogenic drugs and opioid pain killers, as well as the works of analysts such as Wurmser, Krystal and Khantzian, contributed to the movement of the subject of drug abuse and addiction from offstage to onstage. In addition, the contribution of the relational school of thought to the psychoanalytic treatment of drug abuse and addiction is discussed.
