Book - The Meaning of Addiction

The Meaning of Addiction - An Unconventional View

The Meaning of Addiction presents an entire non-reductive, experiential model of addiction. It became a major nondisease text, including use at Harvard. Dr. Margaret Bean-Bayog (who surrendered her medical license in a case involving the suicide of a patient who had in his possession sado-masochistic sexual fantasies Bean-Bayog had written) said the book "worried" her in a review in the New England Journal of Medicine and asked for people who felt the same way to contact her.

Praise for "The Meaning of Addiction"

The Meaning of Addiction is to my mind the best recent comprehensive statement about addiction —Herbert Fingarette, author, Heavy Drinking

Stanton Peele writes so clearly and cogently that his scholarship and erudition remain continuously intriguing, adding to the readability of a volume that will become a classic contribution to the field —Jules Masserman, Past President, American Psychiatric Association

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 it presents. Nonetheless, it remains the classic source for expressing this point of view. —Archie Brodsky, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Stanton Peele's books have been instrumental in helping me to understand my own underlying causes of addiction and how, however well-intentioned, the 12-step model is, it led me to focus on the wrong aspects of addiction. —Marianne Gilliam, author, How Alcoholics Anonymous Failed Me

Published in 1986 by Lexington Books ISBN 0-669-13835-5

next: Stanton Peele's Bookshop
~ all Stanton Peele articles
~ addictions library articles
~ all addictions articles