Clinicians and researchers alike have long struggled to make sense of the fundamental
paradox of substance abuse: why so many addicted individuals maintain their pattern of
abuse despite the terrible consequences of doing so. For much of human history, this conundrum
was understood to be an expression of abusers’ disdain for society’s expectations,
a consequence of willful immorality, sociopathic personality disturbance, or both. As recently
as DSM-I (1952) and DSM-II (1968), this understanding largely informed the work
of psychiatric diagnosticians: alcohol and drug abuse, like antisocial behavior and sexual
deviation, with which they were grouped, were seen as an expression of the abuser’s decision
to flaunt society’s rules of proper conduct. Although not framed explicitly in motivational
terms, this view of substance abuse nonetheless conceptualized the moral shortcomings of
alcohol abusers as working hand-in-hand with their motivational deficits to maintain......

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Title: Motivational Counsling
Approximate Word Count: 1085
Approximate Pages: 5 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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