ARGUMENTS
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is achieved. Nor is psychoanalysis without dangers somewhat comparable
to those experienced by a youth who takes pot, and especially acid.
Analysts know that a "transference psychosis" can sometimes occur
among even the most normal (apparently) of patients, in treatment with
the most skilled of doctors. The patient's defenses are down; he is as
it were exposed to his naked self as never before; for a while he feels
overwhelmed, indifferent to the "real" world, prey to fantasies, wishes
and fears once held firmly under control, and indeed out of sight, out of
mind. I am not saying that the various turmoils of psychoanalysis or
psychotherapy are the "same" as those brought on by drugs, but I am
trying to put the "problem" of drugs in a larger perspective--so that
when someone on marihuana or LSD gets in an automobile accident or
even tries suicide I am not driven into a state of near hysteria by the
eagerly reported and prominently billed news that drugs were "involved."
Every day good law-abiding people, who have scarcely heard of
iniquitous drugs, go wild; they kill themselves or others; sometimes they
are even "driven mad" (or so they see it) by their "loved ones," their
neighbors, even their doctors. We may "know" that fact, but we seem
to forget it, too. We forget that what is "normal" varies; that even
madness or cruelty have their styles. One culture does not permit but
asks a man to take cocaine; another is shocked at how drugs lead to
beards. Some men run amok in the jungles of Asia, with little or nothing
but their own inexplicable misery to account for their deeds; and others
take a few martinis, complain bitterly about the boss or the way things
are going at home, step on the gas of a car whose speedometer goes
up to 140 miles per hour-and wrap themselves and any number of
other people around a tree, a post, whatever.
I do not see how we can refuse to see the challenge that marihuana
and LSD make to our society. They may be called "drugs," and we
doctors may want to handle them as a "medical" problem, but much
more is at stake. The psychologist William McGlothlin is right when-in
articles contributed to both books- he brings up the social, cultural,
religious and economic aspects of drug usage, here and abroad. After
all, what Max Weber called the "protestant ethic" was not fashioned to
achieve nirvana, or even a resolution .of the Oedipus complex. Men
were asked
to
heed their elders, work hard, pray a lot, but think not very
much-so that "things would get done." God is transcendent and not
'(as for so many Asians) immanent, and He is to be reached (by hard
work, loyalty, subservience and spurts of initiative) rather than felt.
Respites and crutches are allowed (such as alcohol and tobacco) but
not the kind of self-regard that challenges the "ethic" of the "system"
