Doctors and drunks: Addiction medicine and addiction psychiatry in America.
Item
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Title
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Doctors and drunks: Addiction medicine and addiction psychiatry in America.
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Identifier
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AAI3311204
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identifier
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3311204
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Creator
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Freed, Christopher R.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Barbara Katz Rothman
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, General | Psychology, Clinical | Health Sciences, Medicine and Surgery
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Abstract
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Two distinct medical disciplines treat addiction in the United States: addiction medicine and addiction psychiatry. This dissertation examines the professional competition between addiction medicine and addiction psychiatry to "own" the medical treatment of addiction. The field of addiction medicine originated in 1954 and grew rapidly between the 1960s and 1980s, attracting doctors recovering from alcoholism and drug abuse and loyal to Alcoholics Anonymous. Addiction psychiatry was born in 1985 when academic psychiatrists, who eventually won recognition from the American Board of Medical Specialties, questioned what doctors in recovery knew medically about substance abuse besides what they learned in Twelve-Step treatment. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with prominent addiction medicine physicians, addiction psychiatrists, and former officials from both fields, in addition to historical documents on the development of addiction medicine and addiction psychiatry, this dissertation shows how scientific knowledge generates institutional power in organized medicine. Addiction psychiatry owns the medical treatment of addiction institutionally due to its academic base, abstract and formal knowledge, and subspecialty recognition from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Addiction medicine, stigmatized by its tradition of physicians in recovery, owns the medical treatment of addiction ideologically due to the ubiquity of Twelve-Step care.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
