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The Meaning of Addiction: An Unconventional View

The Meaning of Addiction: An Unconventional View

by StantonPeele (Author)

  • New

    Paperback 1998

    $37.66
Synopsis

A controversial and persuasive analysis of addiction

A tour de force, a spectacular effort of research and understanding. This book gives us the courage to bypass disease notions to deal with intrapsychic, family system, and social and cultural dynamics in addiction.
?David Cook, Counseling and Psychological Services, University of Wisconsin

This compelling and controversial book challenges the widely accepted belief that alcohol and drug addiction have a genetic or biological basis. The so-called disease theory
suggests that a substance or activity can cause the addict to lose control of his behavior. Stanton Peele demonstrates how this notion fails to make sense of scientific observations.

Analyzing studies of drug and cigarette addiction, alcoholism, obesity, and other potential compulsions such as running and sex, Peele reveals the surprising frequency of self-cure as part of the evidence. The author finds that compulsive habits and depAndency are a way of coping that individuals can reverse as their life circumstances change. This brilliantly argued book is sure to provoke discussion and stimulate new approaches to treatment.

$37.66

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 224
 Edition: 1998 Reissued Paper Edition
 Publisher: Jossey Bass
Published: 14 Aug 1998
ISBN 10: 0787943827
ISBN 13: 9780787943820

Media Reviews
A tour de force, a spectacular effort of research andunderstanding. This book gives us the courage to bypass diseasenotions to deal with intrapsychic, family system, and social andcultural dynamics in addiction. (David Cook, Counseling andPsychological Services, University of Wisconsin)

The Meaning of Addiction presented a new paradigm of addiction.The field has since become more open to the kind of complex, contextual view of addiction and compulsive behavior that itpresents. Nonetheless, it remains the classic source for expressingthis point of view. (Archie Brodsky, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School)

Peele's theory of 'addiction as an experience' in The Meaning ofAddiction remains a pathbreaking one that offers readers anaccessible and empowering understanding of their own experiences, desires, and addictions. For understanding addictions, Peele is inmy view (and for my courses on this subject) still the source ofall sources. (Richard J. DeGrandpre, Department of Psychology, St.Michael's College, Burlington, Vermon)

Stanton Peele's books have been instrumental in helping meunderstand my own underlying causes of addiction and how, howeverwell-intentioned the 12-step model is, it led me to focus on thewrong aspects of addiction. (Marianne Gilliam, author, HowAlcoholics Anonymous Failed Me)

Offers a thought-provoking, insightful, and controversialperspective on the etiology of addictive behaviors. Peelechallenges the biological model and provides an importantalternative view on addictive behaviors. The Meaning of Addictionshould be required reading for students and professionals alike. (Kim Fromme, Department of Psychology, University of Texas)

Given the extraordinary, but largely unsubstantiated, confidencethat many in both the public an professional ranks have insimplistic conceptualizations of addictive behavior, it isreassuring that sophisticated and provocative alternatives such asthose proposed by Stanton Peele in The Meaning of Addiction surfacefrom time to time. It offers hope for constructive change byputting reason an choice back into the addiction formula. (Alan R.Lang, Department of Psychology, Florida State University)

This is a book to be read slowly, to be taken seriously, and to bedebated hotly by every professional in the field. This wholesubject is one of the major medical political and society problemsof our civilization, and we seem unable to find any workablesolution. (John A. Owen, Jr., M.D., Professor of InternalMedicine, University of Virginia School of Medicine)
Author Bio
STANTON PEELE, a leading figure in the addictions field, has won the Mark Keller award from the Rutgers Center Alcohol Studies and the Lindesmith Award from the Drug Policy Foundation. He is the author of the classic Love and Addiction and The Truth About Addiction and Recovery.