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Alfred Ray Lindesmith (August 3, 1905 – February 14, 1991) was an Indiana University professor of sociology. He was among the early scholars providing a rigorous and thoughtful account of the nature of addiction. Lindesmith's interest in drugs began at the University of Chicago, where he was trained in social psychology by Herbert Blumer and Edwin Sutherland, earning his doctorate in 1937. His education there was a mixture of the analytical and theoretical, a balance that would later appear in his drug studies. The work at Chicago involved research with interactionist theory, including the research of Chicago's Herbert Blumer, emphasizing the idea of self-concept in human interaction. ==Theory of addiction== Lindesmith's work on drugs began with his questioning of the nature of addiction in a 1938 essay entitled "A sociological theory of drug addiction". This paper appeared in the ''American Journal of Sociology'' and involved in-depth interviews with 50 so-called addicts. As this work progressed, it developed into a full theoretical and empirical account of the nature of opiate addiction, culminating in his book ''Opiate Addictions'' in 1947 (republished as ''Addiction and Opiates'' in 1968). What Lindesmith developed was an account of opiate addiction that (1) distinguished between the physical reactions of narcotic withdrawal and its psychological (phenomenological) experience, and (2) described the relationship between these two phenomena and addiction. Addressing the question of why regular users of opiates do not necessarily become dependent or addicted, he found that, while continuous opiate use does cause many to experience physical withdrawal, the impact of withdrawal on the likelihood of dependence and addiction is not certain. Lindesmith's "addicts" revealed this, in part, as did general reports from individuals who, despite regular use of opiates, failed to become habitual users, stressing "the advantage of attributing the origin of addiction, not to a single event, but to a series of events, thus implying that addiction is established in a learning process extending over a period of time." This learning process has two parts. First, opiate users must connect their drug withdrawal to their use of the drug, which is something that individuals exposed to opiates in hospital settings are more likely to do. When withdrawal is interpreted as a form of addiction, the perceived (and felt) need for more drugs grows. More recent research has shown that, because hospital patients often associate opiate analgesia with an illness and/or hospital care, and because the drugs cause sedation and other mind-altering effects, patients rarely experience any withdrawal. Here is the second part of the equation: if and when an opiate user identifies opiate withdrawal as such, he or she must initiate a ritual activity that is a physiological, cognitive, and behavioral mixture. As Richard DeGrandpre writes in ''The Cult of Pharmacology'',〔R. DeGrandpre, The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World's Most Troubled Drug Culture. Durham: Duke University Press (2006).〕 "the opiate user must first experience withdrawal (a physical phenomenon), he or she must develop a concern over the withdrawal experience as such (a cognitive phenomenon), and then he or she must engage in drug use, taking opiates repeatedly to eliminate or avoid opiate withdrawal (a behavioral phenomenon). A breakdown in any part of this bio-psycho-social circuit can keep a pattern of dependent opiate use from emerging." In Robert Scharse's study of Mexican-American users, for example, some interpreted withdrawal as a sign of emerging drug dependence, and subsequently reduced or quit their drug use. For others, the withdrawal experience caused an obsession over the prospect of withdrawal, encouraging them to repeatedly use in order to avoid it. This then completed a circuit, with Lindesmith's learning process being reinforced and strengthened. As his career ended, Lindesmith held on to his belief that opiate addiction is not the simple product of one's exposure to opiates. Rather it is the result of a dramatic shift in a person's mental and motivational state. Once the individual concludes that he or she is hooked, it rarely occurs to them that they are engaging in a self-fulfilling prophecy, trapped within a belief that makes the experience exactly what it is feared to be. While Lindesmith’s theory retains its canonical importance, it has been subject to several serious critiques. Lindesmith's theory of opiate addiction cannot explain relapse after physiological withdrawal symptoms have ceased and, more fundamentally, it relies on an outdated division of human perception into: (1) brute biological sensations the body passively experiences in immediate response to its physical environment, and (2) the mind’s active and deliberate interpretation of those sensations. In short, Lindesmith's reliance on Herbert Blumer's voluntaristic understanding of meaning and interpretation profoundly undermined his capacity to theorize addiction as a loss of self-control, or as something suffered rather than chosen (Weinberg 1997).〔Weinberg, Darin. 1997. "Lindesmith on Addiction: A Critical History of a Classic Theory." Sociological Theory. 15(2): 150-161〕 For a debate of this critique see (Galliher 1998,〔Galliher, John. 1998. "Comment on Weinberg's 'Lindesmith on Addiction'." Sociological Theory. 16(2): 205-206〕 Weinberg 1998〔Weinberg, Darin. 1998. "Praxis and Addiction: A Reply to Galliher." Sociological Theory. 16(2): 207-208〕). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alfred R. Lindesmith」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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