Stanton Peele

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Stanton Peele (born January 8, 1946 ) is an American social psychologist and addiction researcher. It gained international influence because it was one of the first to apply the term addiction to non- substance dependent addiction . As a representative of the nondisease approach , however, he questions the concept of addiction and thus also the corresponding treatment concepts . He is particularly critical of the Alcoholics Anonymous disease model and its influence on the American healthcare system.

Contributions to addiction research

Peele studied at Rutgers University , the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan , where he received his Ph.D. received his doctorate . In 2011 he was honored as one of America's ten most influential addiction researchers.

The addiction was devoted to Peele initially together with Archi Brodsky. In their book Love and addiction they developed a new concept of addiction. They showed that love relationships can have just as destructive compulsive character as addiction to heroin. The key to this is loss of self-control . For Peele, addiction or dependency is an out of hand, but basically quite normal, self-active search for experiences that is culturally pre-formed and adapted to the respective situation, but is driven "in a devilish circle" by a lack of belief in one's own self-control and self-efficacy . Addiction is thus a "ingrained reaction" to certain life problems that guarantees special emotional rewards at a high price.

With this, Peele opposes the widespread model of Alcoholics Anonymous, according to which alcoholism is an incurable disease that the individual cannot bring to a standstill on his own but only with the help of a spiritual experience. In the USA in particular, this model was also applied to the dependence on other substances and processes, the treatment of which the twelve-step program is also used. Peele countered this by stating that most of those affected would stop their addictive consumption at some point ( maturing out ). Reasons for growing out of addiction are mostly identity-creating changes in the life of addicts that lie outside of their actual “addict identity”, such as motherhood . Henning Schmidt-Semisch concludes from this using the example of heroin addicts following Peele: "If heroin addiction were a really inevitable consequence of regular heroin use, neither controlled consumption nor maturing out would be possible."

Fonts (selection)

  • Love and addiction (with Archie Brodsky). Taplinger Pub. Co, New York 1975, ISBN 0800850416 .
  • How much is too much. Healthy habits or destructive addictions. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs 1981, ISBN 0134241924 .
  • The meaning of addiction. Compulsive experience and its interpretation. Lexington Books, Lexington 1985, ISBN 0669029521 .
  • Diseasing of America. Addiction treatment out of control. Lexington Books, Lexington 1989, ISBN 0669200158 .
  • The truth about addiction and recovery. The life process program for outgrowing destructive habits (with Archie Brodsky). Simon & Schuster, New York 1991, ISBN 067166901X .
  • Recover! Stop thinking like an addict and reclaim your life with the perfect program . Da Capo Lifelong, Boston 2014, ISBN 9780738216751 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical information according to Curriculum Vitae, The Stanton Peele Addiction Website , accessed on May 28, 2019.
  2. ↑ Alain Ehrenberg : The exhausted self. Depression and Society in the Present. From the French by Manuela Lenzen and Martin Klaus, 2nd edition, VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2010, p. 153.
  3. ↑ Stephan Quensel : The misery of addiction prevention. Analysis - Criticism - Alternative , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010, p. 110.
  4. ↑ Sebastian Scheerer : Sucht , Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1995, p. 86.
  5. ↑ Henning Schmidt-Semisch : Smoking weed is not enough or: Radical alternatives in drug policy , online publication, DrogenGenussKultur, p. 9, PDF, accessed on September 27, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Peele, Stanton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychologist and addiction researcher
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1946