The treatment of drug abuse: evolution of a perspective

Current approaches to the treatment of drug addiction are based on an earlier approach derived from a traditional psychoanalytic framework. The author describes how this framework has been modified by three broad areas of understanding, i.e., issues related to addicts, to the methods of psychoanalysis, and to the earlier incomplete understanding about drugs. The comprehensive, multimodality treatment approach used today draws on psychoanalysis's contribution of a rational framework for the understanding of personal behavior in all forms of treatment and the need for a relationship as the core of all treatment, regardless of the modality.