Addiction and the Brain

Abstract

Whether or not addiction is best seen as a chronic brain disease is perhaps the most crucial issue facing the field of addiction studies in our time. In the midst of this debate, it is essential that we acquire an understanding of the brain disease model as a socio-cultural process-its influence on how people and societies perceive forms of addiction as problems. This book goes a long way to achieving that aim. By giving an independent role to constructs, notions and representations, the authors are able to depict the symbolic force by which neuroscience and other stakeholders in the brain disease understanding of addiction have an impact on both expert and popular perceptions. The social and ethical consequences of this cannot be stressed enough.

New work on the brain and addiction

“…The second book is a Palgrave Macmillanpublished monography by an international author group of social scientists from Finland, Canada and Germany, including myself as first author (Hellman et al, 2022). The focus of research is here how understandings of the brain affect our view of reality.…”

Addiction, cure or care?

“…The brain-centred view or disease model of addiction is however increasingly contested in the literature as narrow and even a promoter of social injustice (Hart, 2017;Heather, 2017;Hellman et al, 2022). This paper aims to show that a reduction of the various aspects implicated in addiction to its neurobiological underpinnings, by neglecting the phenomenological experience of being addicted, is limiting its understanding and, importantly, its treatment.…”