ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses of continuity and discontinuity, unity and disunity, obduracy and plasticity important in the conceptual history of addiction neuroscience. Despite attempts to unify object and approach, the social and affective complexity of addiction exceeds them. Multiple shifts in the conceptual practices of addiction research have occurred—from battles over addiction’s proper name to the waxing and waning of an array of hypotheses about etiology, neural mechanisms, importance of social and environmental context, and the role of learning, memory, motivation, and reinforcement. “Addiction” names a non-specific disease state that has ranged historically from allergy to autoimmune to infectious to metabolic to neural. Science was brought to bear upon narcotic drug addiction in the late nineteenth century. The “behavioral revolution” wrung moralism and stigma, psyche and society out of the addiction equation. Research specialization and adoption of narrow translational goals has oriented addiction neuroscience towards medications development based on identifying molecular targets and drugs to hit them.
