The Battles Over Addiction Treatment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5734875 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Claire D Clark (0009-0002-5988-1095, University of Kentucky, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 130 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1123-1133 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ahr/rhaf395 |
| OpenAlex | W4414314130 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
To the extent that it is remembered today, the controversial California commune Synanon is known for two things-(1) attempting to murder attorney Paul Morantz by putting a rattlesnake in his mailbox and (2) spawning an addiction treatment model with violent and totalizing tendencies: the therapeutic community (TC). My book, The Recovery Revolution: The Battle Over Addiction Treatment in the United States, omitted the rattlesnake in the mailbox and glossed over the details of Synanon's spectacular decline. According to some critics, including Morantz himself, this was a major mistake, and a small but highly vocal cadre of activists went online to publicly question my historical objectivity and reframe what I had intended as a nonpartisan history of Synanon's public relations campaigns as an endorsement of therapeutic violence. The omission led me, then a closeted person in long-term eating disorder recovery, to a mental breakdown, psychoanalytic psychotherapy to treat it, and, with this approach, fresh insight into the value of analysis as well as synthesis in the development of historical knowledge. I conclude by exploring "reparatory history" as both a method and a way forward for our impossible profession
Addiction · Addiction treatment · Battle · Cognitive reframing · Objectivity (philosophy) · Therapeutic community · Value (mathematics) · Pharmaceutical industry and healthcare
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |