ABSTRACT
A literature search carried out at the Project Cork drugs and alcohol database at the US Dartmouth College in April 1996 gave rise to 791 references in response to the keyword genetics, 231 to psychology and only 33 to history, culture and society. The 1995 Annual Scientific Meeting of the US College on the Problems of Drug Dependence showed a similar trend towards research of a medical, biological or genetic nature. These observations show that there still exists in the 1990s a dominant emphasis within drug and alcohol research towards the search for genetic markers, gene loci and regions of neurobiological reactiveness within the brain which can explain individual differences in the use of moodaltering substances. In many respects this is perfectly appropriate as it is clearly the case that whatever else human beings may be, they are biological entities and as such any comprehensive explanation of human action, at the individual or collective level, needs to be embodied. That is, as Edelman (1992: 239) has stated, thought, and thus intention, is not transcendent but ‘depends critically on the body and the brain’. For Edelman the mind is embodied in that evolution and developmental processes give rise to a particular brain morphology from which particular patterns of thought arise: ‘Gestalts, mental images, bodily movements, and the organisation of knowledge must all to some degree be the result of evolutionary and developmental constraints [on the morphology of the brain]’ (p. 239).
