ABSTRACT
In the 1970s and 1980s, both research and clinical facilities for alcohol and drug abusing persons expanded very rapidly. The expansion of detoxification, treatment and rehabilitation facilities for substance abusers created a demand for training in relevant skills. In the increasing recognition of alcoholism as a distressing personal and social problem, and with increasing third-party payments for treatment available, inevitably, facilities to treat alcoholics and other kinds of drug abusers have increased. Public interest and governmental interest in alcohol and drug problems have been intensifying for two decades, and in the 1988 election, drug abuse and the call for more treatment resources was a campaign issue. There is a burgeoning development of research on family processes and family therapy, and there is also an increasing, challenging professional literature on conceptions of addiction. In midcentury urban America, the state of theory and practices relating to causes and treatment of mental disorders, was heavily influenced by psychoanalysis.
