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Pathology, identity and the social construction of alcohol dependence

Pathology, identity and the social construction of alcohol dependence
Pathology, identity and the social construction of alcohol dependence
The notion of 'addiction' appears to present profound and intractable difficulties for contemporary medicine. Using the problem of alcohol addiction as a mediating example, this paper examines some of the sources of these difficulties, and relates these to critiques of the medicalisation of the addictions. It is argued that the difficulty that medicine faces in the case of the 'addict' is not that addiction to alcohol has been medicalised, but rather that over a period of two centuries the medicalising project has been only partially successful. Thus medical knowledge and practice have taken as their focus the problem of susceptibility, but made little headway in the domain of conceptualising recovery. In this context, the clinician is forced to divide the susceptible from the culpable in the diagnosis of addiction, and to explain this in terms of the potential for moral self-actualisation on the part of the addict.
0038-0385
385-401
May, Carl
17697f8d-98f6-40d3-9cc0-022f04009ae4
May, Carl
17697f8d-98f6-40d3-9cc0-022f04009ae4

May, Carl (2001) Pathology, identity and the social construction of alcohol dependence. Sociology, 35 (2), 385-401. (doi:10.1017/S0038038501000189).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The notion of 'addiction' appears to present profound and intractable difficulties for contemporary medicine. Using the problem of alcohol addiction as a mediating example, this paper examines some of the sources of these difficulties, and relates these to critiques of the medicalisation of the addictions. It is argued that the difficulty that medicine faces in the case of the 'addict' is not that addiction to alcohol has been medicalised, but rather that over a period of two centuries the medicalising project has been only partially successful. Thus medical knowledge and practice have taken as their focus the problem of susceptibility, but made little headway in the domain of conceptualising recovery. In this context, the clinician is forced to divide the susceptible from the culpable in the diagnosis of addiction, and to explain this in terms of the potential for moral self-actualisation on the part of the addict.

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Published date: May 2001

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 163415
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/163415
ISSN: 0038-0385
PURE UUID: 35a82608-78c7-404e-8ffe-c9feb158fba1
ORCID for Carl May: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-0451-2690

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Date deposited: 09 Sep 2010 08:39
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 02:05

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Author: Carl May ORCID iD

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