Ego Atrophy in Addiction Illustrated through American Cultural Music Folklore JAMES FINE M o t i v a t i o n a l Services, Inc.

SAMUEL JUNI N e w Y o r k University

Popular music is an artifact of folklore that can provide a keen insight into societal complexity. As a window with minimal censorship, it allows access to a subgroup whose motifs are often obfuscated from within and without by defensive and self righteous distortions. Music is a primary source depicting the strivings and failings of a culture or its tributaries. An overview is offered of the American social historical context of substance abuse, as it informs the theory of ego atrophy to conceptualize addiction. In this study, it is appealed to as an aid in the elaboration of addictive behavior. Adjunctively, major themes in movie pictures are referenced as parallel, albeit less refined, indices of stereotype in the culture. Together with societal laws and mores, these markers point to a specific behavioral and value system that typifies the ego of the substance abuser.

THE AMERICAN SOCIAL CONTEXT It is a fact that virtually all cultures (although not all societies within the cultures) sanction intoxicants at some level. In the more structured cultures, sacraments are often the expression of rules regarding chemical use. Alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco are the most popular intoxicants in a global analysis. It can be implicitly assumed that the majority of adults use intoxicants in one form or another. The negative social and medical fallout from this phenomenon is significant. Colloquial wisdom suggests that people will get "into trouble" when they use chemicals. Alcohol use, specifically, as the most common American substance of abuse, is implicated in over half of successful suicides. There is a common perception that a high proportion of violent crimes is attributable to involvement with alcohol or drugs. A tremendous percentage of cases of spouse or child abuse involve chemical abuse. A significant amount of fetal in-utero destruction is attributed medically to alcohol ingestion. A group of disorders with common aspects has begun to emerge, including Chemical Addiction, Sexual Dysfunction, and Food Disorders. The commonality among these domains of affliction is that they each center on functions or objects that people are expected to use regularly and in a socially acceptable fashion. Current Psychology: Developmental 9 Learning 9 Personality 9 Social Winter 2000/2001, Vol. 19,

No. 4, 312-328.

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Alcohol use, in particular, has been intrinsic to American culture. Many of the wealthy families (e.g., the Kennedys) and the large contemporary liquor concerns can trace their economic foundations to major bootlegging operations. Major accumulations of wealth and alcohol-related equipment served to set these businesses ahead of the competition when the time came for prohibition to be lifted. Alcoholism and drug addiction feature historical series of solutions that failed. First on the scene was the Moral Solution, with appeal to the Protestant ethic and the evil of temptation. Not surprisingly, temptation won out. Next to herald the battle was the Legal Solution, with complex and numerous laws dictating what can or cannot be done. Ironically, this was distorted into an economic base for those who were inclined to break the law, and supported by the many who simply would not be deterred from the drinking avocation by paper edicts. The 1960s saw the Social Solution, where addictive behavior was formulated in context of societal causes and its implementation was embedded in ambitious social intervention strategies. Needless to say, the problem continued to evolve, despite the positive societal accomplishments of these programs. A parallel approach that is still preferred today is the Psychiatric Solution, where addiction is described as a symptom of an underlying disorder of the mind. Addiction continues, however, to plague society as a chronic and severe problem. What is at fault with these solutions? Essentially the commonality in these approaches is that they were not created as conceptual frameworks for addiction per se. Rather, they were originally conceptualized from the respective religious, legalistic, social or psychiatric perspectives, and only subsequently applied to addictive behavior. This represented an a priori devotion to a system that had no room for modification or challenge when its application failed to master the social phenomenon of substance abuse. The resulting confusion in the mis-application of these approaches can be best parodied by the implicit attitude: "If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail." It is not difficult to construe any complex behavioral repertoire within the focus of any major discipline. Alas, such a formulation does not connote that the essence of the behavior has been tapped. Thus, although there are undoubtedly moral, legal, social, and psychiatric aspects to addiction, intervention programs based on any one of these hardly have a chance of success. The one approach that has shown distinct promise in terms of results is the one by Alcoholic's Anonymous (AA). It has the distinction of being decidedly empirical and atheoretical in its origin. It was conceived by individuals whose frame of reference was addiction per se, not any of the other academic disciplines. It focused on concise realities: (1) Anyone can become addicted; (2) Addictive behavior looks similar across different people; (3) Behavior associated with addiction can be normalized once chemical or alcohol ingestion ceases. The disease model built on this approach has yielded a sizeable population of recovering alcoholics, validating the AA view as a useful treatment philosophy. Because of the indigenous connection of intoxicants to human behavior--both psychologically and socially--it is unlikely that societal abstinence will represent the direction of the future. With the explicit exception of addicts, moderation and bridling of chemical use is here to stay as part and parcel of society as we know it.

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ADDICTION IN A M E R I C A N HISTORY

Zinberg (1985) charts the changes in alcohol use since the colonial period in America, noting a gradual shift from strong prohibition toward access. Alcohol was definitely part of the fabric of army life in Western Culture. The British Navy actually paid one third of each sailor's salary in rum. Liquor was also an intrinsic aspect of colonial life in American history. In that era, few citizens owned liquor privately; it was too expensive. The tavern, which was a central fixture of colonization, provided a controlled environment for alcohol intake. In this period, the tavern served to protect society from the disruption of alcohol by providing a strict context for its use. The tavern was a place where all generations would be present, and liquor consumption was generally part of a larger meal. Many non-drinkers frequented the tavern, as it also served as the Post Office and Town Hall for meetings. The implicit control of drinking by this context was further reinforced by the person of the tavern keeper who was technically an official of the Crown and a symbol of law and order. A clear change occurred as wars became part of life in the United States. Army generals, in their engineering of human behavior, were well aware that soldiers needed to have a "fighting spirit"; allowing the use of intoxicants was often the vehicle for this spirit. Indeed, providing drugs, women (i.e., prostitution), and gambling to isolated fighting men, became the sine que non of army life as well as Westward expansion. It is hardly an exaggeration to assert that the saloon was the very first edifice erected when a town was established in the West. When Westward expansion stopped in the late 1800s, alcohol abuse and its attendant behaviors, which had been tolerated in frontier life, were no longer acceptable. Roves of mis-socialized men addicted to alcohol (and its concomitant notions of macho/violence) reverted to the towns and brought havoc with them. No longer useful as aggressors against the "enemy," their behavior now surfaced as a mainstream societal problem, necessitating a societal response. This came in the form of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which espoused that it was morally wrong to drink. Beginning with the postulate that the "Devil is in the bottle," it followed that drinking will result in making the Devil part of you. The Harrison Act, The Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Prohibition Amendment to the Constitution all codified this orientation into American Law. When society establishes controls that outlaw chemical use but is unable to restrict access, it entails the construction of the alcohol and drug problem as a manifestation of an individual weakness rather than as a social inadequacy. Such a reformulation, however, does not preempt social consequences. Rather, it obfuscates them, minimizing the chances of their correction. Alas, Prohibition also yielded two sociological lessons: (1) Declaring a common practice illegal may engender a veritable increase in that practice. By virtue of a reaction formation, citizens will trample on edicts they consider outrageous and running against the very grain of human nature. (This may be one reason why home-brewed liquor is purported to be of higher quality than the bottled variety.) (2) By translating

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morality into the legal domain, the moral problem of drinking becomes transformed into a legal problem. Scofflaws were now identified where morally weak men trod earlier. The laws also spawned a new breed of violent drug running criminals as depicted in "The Untouchables." ADDICTION AS EGO ATROPHY Part of the difficulty in the field of substance abuse has been a classification problem. Disease is characterized by signs and symptoms as well as by a designated organ (or area) where damage is occurring (or has occurred). The lack of a specifically designated body part has delayed the induction of the addiction phenomenon into the medical illness glossary. While we are not offering any organ as the focus for the etiology of addiction, we are instead positing a particular function or structure that is an apparent site of damage. That structure is the ego. The atrophy of the ego--particularly in its defensive capaci t y - i s posited to be the essential process responsible for the disease of addiction. Defense mechanisms are dedicated to the mastery of anxiety. It is a primary function of the ego to coordinate and affect the expression of available defenses toward this end (Juni, 1997). Heightened anxiety levels are common in substance abuse, a phenomenon that may be a direct pharmacological result of the drug or part of the antecedent (environment or intra-psychic) conditions fostering abuse. It may well be that this process is responsible for the clearly severe ego deficit that is a prominent feature of addiction. Dynamically, the patient loses the ability to navigate the world of internal stressors and external constraints using standard ego defenses, while the drug becomes the primary defense of the patient. We are suggesting that the process of addiction atrophies ego function in general, and the defensive function in particular. The patient is then left with narrower and more constricted defensive repertoires, with a concentration of the more primitive defenses (such as regression and projection). While the profile of addiction is phenomenologicaly congruent with those of the character disorders, there is a significant difference in terms of prognosis, however. Implicit in this formulation is that the treatment of addiction will restore ego and defensive functioning fairly rapidly to premorbid levels. This contrasts sharply with the treatment of character disorders where progress is anything but rapid, and rarely productive. We therefore take a firm stand against the prevalent diagnostic tendency designating drug addictions as Axis II disorders of DSM-IV, especially as they are commonly relegated to the borderline personality category. In the process of addictive ego atrophy, a telescoping of ego functioning occurs. The satisfaction derived from chemical use becomes the primary focus of cathexis and all other interests and relationships gradually wane and wither. This process soon yields an individual with a one-track focus, with no option for alternatives. To take a physiological analog, this would parallel a deteriorative eye disease, for example, where the patient gradually loses eye muscle control so that he can only move his eyes to the fight instead of maintaining control in all directions. In the emotional realm, we might compare this constriction to that of the distressed patient who can only experi-

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ence sadness or to the paranoid patient who can only experience anger. While many adults occasionally (or even habitually) use intoxicants, only a subgroup of individuals are designated as clinically "addicted." It is ego atrophy that distinguishes the latter category and is pathognomic of the process. We refer to the process as atrophy because these patients come with a personal history of higher levels of previous ego adaptation. Moreover, degeneration of ego function is often observable as addiction becomes more insidious. In addition, we find that the process of rehabilitation, which entails primarily the recovery of ego function, contrasts with the extensive therapy required to bring borderline patients to adapt. As a group, addicts also recover faster and more uniformly. These patients seem to undergo a process of ego reconstitution as they rehabilitate, confirming the notion that the problem of adaptation in addiction is atrophic rather than representing an outright functioning deficit as such. It is the renunciation of all interests and desires in the service of total devotion to the addictive substance that is the hallmark of ego atrophy. The atrophy process of the ego we are referring to occurs primarily in the realm of object relations and its concomitant defensive responses. For well functioning individuals, object cathexes are usually expressed in invested relationships with people and with activities that bring satisfaction (and feelings of well being) to individuals. Having established a wide and varied net of such cathexes, the individual creates a defensive buffer that protects him from environmental mishap. Thus, for example, when one loses his fortune, he always can take solace in his health; when one loses a loved one, he can be comforted in his material success; when one is in trouble with the law, he can find relief in religion and spirituality. It is the primary function of the ego to operate a network of defense mechanisms designed to minimize anxiety and narcissistic pain which result from natural mishaps and difficulties. Such defensive maneuvering is predicated on multiple emotional investments by the individual, where (emotionally speaking) "all the eggs are not in one basket." Thus, while relationships, interests, and possessions, are important to the maintenance of self esteem and self image, no one of the elements in particular is the necessary and crucial one. THE ADDICT AS PORTRAYED IN POPULAR MUSIC

The addictive substance gains value which exceeds other material needs and social values. Physical body integrity, personal appearance, sexuality, and pursuit of leisure interests all fall by the wayside once addiction takes hold. As an artifact of popular culture, contemporary music can be viewed as a barometer of social values, mores, and preoccupation. Insofar as young people's attitudes are concerned, it seems that contemporary rock and country music of the 60s and 70s is particularly salient to elaborate on the emotional and social aspects of addiction. In this context, it is noteworthy that "country music" of that era has been deplored as emphasizing such "negativity and psychopathology" as marital and relationship problems, alcohol abuse, maladjusting aggressive or antisocial behavior and "outdated" sexist or chauvinistic

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attitudes (Alias, 1998, p. 108). This is exemplified in the phrases of Gimme that Wine (Lambert et al., 1969), a musical score that describes the general stance of the substance abuser: My wife got tired of me runnin' around So she tried to keep me home Well she broke my nose and hid my clothes But I continued to roam Then she finally hit my weak spot Threatened to throw my bottle out Well, from the basement to the rooftop Everybody could hear me shout Gimme that wine Don't grab that bottle . . . . Well one damp dark and dreary night When I was staggering home to bed Well, the bandit jumped from the shadows And put the blackjack 'side my head. That cat took my watch, my ring, my money And I didn't make a sound But when he reached and got my bottle You could hear me for blocks around Gimme that wine Don't grab that bottle . . . . Beat my head out of shape but leave my grape Watch, ring, money ain't nothing Don't mess with my wine, Jim . . . . You could take all those Hollywood Glamour Girls Lana Turner, Rim Hayworth, Brigit Bardot, and Lucille Ball and all the chicks and line 'em up side the wall Put a gigantic jug beside 'em and tell me to take my choice Well there'd be no doubt which one I choose The minute I raised my voice Gimme that wine Oh-Oh-Oh Well those chicks look fine but I love my wine Now some folks like money

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Some like to dance and dine But I'll be happy If you give me that wine

In Gimme that Wine, the deficits of the addictive personality are highlighted in the lack of caring and dismissal of such basic interests as possessions, sex, or family9 From an object relations perspective, a process of displacement occurs, as the substance of abuse becomes the cathected substitute object for all attachments that were abandoned (Juni, 1992). The general ego capacity to manage one's life as a whole seems impaired. Alcohol is depicted in popular songs of the late 1970s as a tool for coping with life's hardships and punishments. Consider the following theme summation in Two More Bottles of Wine by Emmylou Harris. After a listing of personal trials and tribulations, the hero concludes: 9

but it's alright cause it's midnight and I've got two more bottles of wine.

Psychodynamically, it is clear that the infatuation with alcohol is based on the repressive effects of the substance. Thus, the positive feeling is actually the effect of the removal of pain from consciousness9 This is evident in some lyrics, where the drunkard is depicted as giving up his mind to alcohol, as in Whiskey River sung by Willie Nelson: Whiskey River take my mind. Don't let her memory torture me. Whiskey River don't run dry. You're all I got to carry me.

It is equally evident, however, that not far below the surface of the depressive who is self medicating with alcohol, drinking actually abets the expression of misery. This is often noted in music that emphasizes "blue" feelings of the alcoholic, in testimony to unsuccessful repression9 This facet is quintessentially portrayed in Crystal Gale's rendition of Paintin' this Old Town Blue: All I need is a little more time, a little less memory and a little more wine. I'll forget about you after I'm through, paintin this whole town blue. Your memory's flowing. The wine is red, Honey, my eyes are too.

American music, as a rule, devotes considerable focus on the motifs of love and

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affection. There is a general theme lauding object relations and interpersonal intimacy, with the understanding that a solid bond between individuals is the key to overcoming adversity and that love can make hardships in life tolerable. One example of such a message is discernible in My Girl by the Temptations (1973): I got sunshine on a cloudy day When it's cold outside I got the month of May . . . . . I guess you'll say What can make me feel this way My Girl, My Girl, My Girl Talkin' about--My Girl. I've got so much honey The bees envy me I've got a sweeter song than the birds in the trees I guess you'll say What can make me feel this way My Girl, My Girl, My Girl Talkin' about--My Girl.

What a clash of orientation, indeed, between this idealized portrayal of man in the Westem world and the sterile interpersonal domain of the drug user! The singer in Cocaine Blues (Davis, 1969) preaches the worthlessness of any individual in the addict's constellation. Others are useful only insofar as they expedite drug acquisition or help alleviate misery associated with drug use: You take Mary I'll take Sue ain't no difference Twixt the two Cocaine, running all 'round my brain. Yeah baby Come here quick This old cocaine about to make me sick Cocaine. Started down Beale street and I'm turning up Main Looking for a gal who sells cocaine Cocaine, running all 'round my brain.

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It is the virtual devaluation of others to the point of the professed interchangeability of people that connotes the dehumanization inherent in the life of the addict. People are no longer human beings; rather, they are objects in the addictive orbit which are significant only in what they can offer toward the altar of intoxication. The Temptations (in My Girl) celebrate man's ability to cathect onto the object; the job, as well as the family, are lauded, rather than succumbing to a constrictive regression to intra-body processes. In Cocaine Blues "Van Ronk's junkie in his twilight world of fixes, nausea, and inevitable death, has a pathos about him rarely evoked on a record" (J.R. Goddard, on the Van Ronk album jacket). In this work (hailed in its literature as a "minor masterpiece" of talking and singing), we hear the addict announcing that he can truly relate only to himself, or to the drugs, which he makes part of himself. It is noteworthy that, based on the frenetic style and activity level inherent in amphetamine use, caffeine often shares the ignonimity of substance abuse. This is evident in the following excerpt from Driving My Life Away by Eddie Robert:

Hey waitress pour me another cup of coffee. Pop it down, jack me up shoot me out, I'm flyin' down the highway, lookin' for the morning. The substance abuser is on close terms with death. Indeed, he lives on the edge of it constantly. On one end is the realization of the physiological reality that the ingested chemicals are killing him, slowly but surely. On the other, is his keen conviction that he will die without his fix. This no-win situation is acutely represented in Rye Whiskey (Rush, 1960), a folk ballad dating well into the 1800s:

Rye Whiskey, Rye Whiskey, Rye Whiskey, I cry. If l don't get Rye Whiskey I surely will d i e . . . Well, I'll eat when I'm hungry and drink when I'm dry If liquor don't kill me, I'll live 'til I die. If the river was whiskey, and I was a duck I'd dive to the bottom, and never come up. The concept is also presented in a more amusing fashion in Gimme That Wine (Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross, 1969):

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Well, one day while crossin' the avenue, a big car knocked me down Well, I was stretched out tyin' up traffic, and crowds come for blocks around. Now the police were searchin' my pockets, before they sent me to the funeral parlor But when one of them cops took my bottle, Jack, I jumped straight up and commenced to holler: Gimme that wine Don't grab that b o t t l e 'cause I can't get well without Muscatel. The last line, alas, is testimony to the troubling circularity in addiction that is responsible for its insidiousness. The intoxicant is imbued with magical healing powers--It can literally bring you back from the dead, and easily relieve any of the troubling withdrawal symptoms. Ultimately, however, dying with liquor is a predestined end that is inevitable. In musical folklore, however, it is often represented in a bittersweet lofty light. Consider its formulation, again, in the lyrics of Gimme that Wine: Well one day my house caught fire, while I was layin down sleeping off a nap. And when I woke up, everything was burning with a pop and a crackle and a snap. Now the fireman chopped up my TV set, and tore my apartment apart But when he raised his axe to my bottle, I screamed with all my heart: Gimme that wine Don't grab that bottle, Oh, Gimme that wine Don't grab that bottle, Gimme that wine Don't grab that bottle, So I can drink one toast, before I roast. No sense in going out half baked, Might as well be all done up.

In Rye Whiskey, the belief that he will die without liquor is a keen reflection of the mantra of any substance abuser. Cognitively, it represents a firm conviction based on psychological and physiological realities. Yet, as the musical lyrics note, the addict

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knows full well that liquor is dangerous and is actually a killer in its own right. The persistence in a self-defeating and, indeed, fatal behavior pattern betrays the compulsive nature of this illness. The lamentation in Rye Whiskey is not at all different from Humphrey Bogart's matter-of-fact assertion (as the derelict launch captain) in The African Queen, in an early World War I scene as he watches Katherine Hepburn (as the spinster sister of a British Missionary) pour out his stash: "I'11 perish without a hair of the dog." Moreover, there appears to be a modality which approaches a death wish of sorts, evidenced by repeated references in ballads to the idea of dying with liquor or being totally consumed by it--as a positive goal! This is starkly exemplified by the abovequoted verse in Rye Whiskey: Gimme that wine Don't grab that bottle, So I can drink one toast, before I roast.

In a provocative juxtaposition of music and monologues, the final phrase of the tune: No sense in going out half baked, Might as well be all done up.

is presented atonally--as a fatalistic finale after the musical rendition of the ballad seems to have been closed, almost as a final pronouncement that serves as an epitaph for the drinker whose life just ended in parallel with the music. A moralistic trend in conceptualizing substance abusers is reflected in the shift in motif of popular contemporary movie pictures. Compare, for example, James Cagney in the early 1900s picture titled Public Enemy Number 1, which traces the career of a ruthless gangster involved in a prohibition racket. James Cagney is depicted simply as a bad person, who is easily scripted into the concomitant moralistic message of the times: The bad guys always lose! In contrast, by the late 1930s, Cagney appears in Angels with Dirty Faces, a tale of two childhood friends who become a criminal and a priest respectively; the priest finds his hard work undermined as his friend, the criminal, is idealized by young hoodlums. Here, Cagney confronts the viewer as a complex troubled person influenced by a variety of social and psychological factors. Gone is the simplistic, black and white relegation of people (and their respective behaviors) as good vs. evil. There are occasional references in popular music which suggest one view of drugs as disinhibitors that serve to excuse extreme aggressive and psychopathic acting out. This trend is suggested in such criminal stereotypes as the bandit in Pancho and Lefty: Pancho was a bandit boy . . . . his breath as hard as kerosene.

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It is starkly spelled out, moreover, in the music popularized by Johnny Cash in Cocaine Blues: Early one morning while making the rounds, I took a shot of cocaine and shot my woman down. Despite this strain in the popularized version of substance abuse, the mainstream of ballads and popular songs, as well as the narratives of actual addicts in our clinical experience, depict drugs as ameliorative aids allowing one to live on without being at the mercy of internal or environmental stressors. The ultimate aim of intoxication is to provide a relatively limited period of bliss or enjoyment, (or, more descriptively--relief from pain and misery), as contrasted with the long periods of grief which precede the acquisition of the substance and which follow during withdrawal. Indeed, the pain of withdrawal--both physiological and psychological--is the major impetus for increased substance ingestion. The fleeting nature of this enjoyed interlude in a sea of despair is captured in the verses of Cocaine: If the feeling is gone, And you wanna ride on, cocaine. Don't forget this fact, you can't get it back, cocaine. Should the alcoholic or junkie chance to focus upon the ultimate future, there is no rationalization that will insulate him from realizing the destructiveness of his life style. Denial and feeble intellectualization are the only defenses at his disposal, and though these are used excessively, their effectiveness is limited by their transparency. Consider the hopelessness of the junkie trying to soothe his partner after escaping near death on his just accomplished acquisition (and ingestion) of his fix in Lou Reed's (1963) Waiting for my Man: Baby, don't you holler, Darling don't you bawl and shout. I'm feeling good, You know I'm going to work it on out I'm feeling good, I'm feeling so fine. The desperate attempt to convince himself that he feels "so good" belies the internal realization that panic cannot be delayed for long. Implicit is an indistinct differentiation between objective reality and a fantasy or magical view: "All it takes is for me to get my shit together, then I can handle all that" (Zinberg, 1975, p. 573). Besides overt denial, the addict will also try to convince himself that he is in fact only engaging in some form of self medication. This stance is exemplified in the phrase that is weakly muttered (atonally, for effect) between song phrases in the

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middle of Gimme that Wine, while the lyrics extol the supremacy of liquor: "I only drink for medicinal purposes anyway," and by the phrase in the same tune where the explanation is offered for the intense need to drink: "Cause I can't get well without Muscatel." The acute misery of the addict is perhaps most poignantly described in Waiting for My Man, as the junkie puts his life on the line for his fix: Feeling sick and dirty, more dead than alive. We have found in our work with substance abusers that the ego's mastery of time as a construct becomes severely distorted as a result of addiction. Time can become endless under certain conditions, while it becomes ephemeral under others. Overall insight based on reality becomes usurped, not unlike the state of affairs for the young child whose temporal allegiance varies with his or her interests. This distortion is most blatant by the verses in Waiting for My Man that exemplify extremes in time misperceptions and inconsistencies. While waiting in a most dangerous neighborhood for the pusher to appear, the singer explains: He's never early, He' s always late. 'Cause the first thing you learn, Is that you always gotta wait. I'm waiting for my man. As soon as he gets his fix, however, the time relationship changes dramatically: He's got the works, gives you a sweet taste. Then you got to split, because you got no time to waste. I'm waiting for my man. At the end of the cycle, when contemplating impending withdrawal, time is finally relegated to the infinity of time: I'm feeling so fine, until tomorrow. God, It's just another time. I'm waiting for my man. It is clear that the refrain of "waiting for my man" has become the motif of this addict's existence. Yet, within this very refrain stanza, time distortion still functions to allow him to see no temporal connection between the present's feeling of "fine" to the horror which is sure to follow.

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In compulsive behavior, we often find that the patient will use intellectualization in convincing himself that his transgression against the superego's tyrannical forces is minute and merely technical. This allows a defrayal of guilt, since the forbidden symbolic act is construed as inconsequential. Following several transgressions, guilt becomes inevitable. The ego then becomes overwhelmed, adopting the stance of despair. This position entails a dynamic succumbing to self-accusation, but carries with it the proverbial paradoxical conclusion of hopeless despair: "I have sinned so badly that I cannot be saved; thus there is no sense in my attempting to control myself, and I may as well continue to transgress. I am beyond help!" This attitude is part of the weak defensive complex of the substance abuser, not surprising in view of the addict's lifestyle of compulsivity. It is reflected in the abject abandon implicit in Gimme that Wine, quoted above: Oh, Gimme that wine Don't grab that bottle-No sense in going out half baked. Might as well be all done up. Indeed, some analysts have seen in this attitude evidence for the intrapuntive pattern of the addict: "Their primitive unconscious superego never rests" (Zinberg, 1975, p. 574). The picture of the addict, as it emerges from musical themes, is valid and stark. An atrophied ego with a distorted sense of time, depleted resources and no object relations, stands alone facing certain destruction amid the ruins of a former life. As fast as they are available, all assets are quickly traded in for an ephemeral respite from pain. Death, when it comes, is most likely a welcome relief from the endless battle against discomfort and impending doom, with perhaps occasional stirrings of a vestigial superego or social conscience. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY It is stressed that our analysis is limited to the thematic aspects of music. It is recognized that the form of the music, its instrumentational arrangements and, most importantly, the tune and score, are vital aspects of the message. Some critics have pointed out the intra-psychic message in popular music, based on the confluence of several of these factors. Consider, for example, the depiction of Cocaine Blues as the juxtaposition of the personal and intimate (Goddard, on the Van Ronk album jacket). Other analysts have focused more on the social context of popular music and its role in consciousness raising. The Velvet Underground, the spawning ground for Andy Warhol's Collection, is heralded on its album jacket as being in the center of the hip New York community, the first truly psychedelic experience of very loud and heavy music replete with a "full light-show of exploding oils with chromosonic, stroboscopic and cosmotronic diversions." The album is described as an important historical document witnessing the "insection of the wider underground movement" and its evolution. The "intricate fabric of John Cole's crushing organ and viola outbursts, inextricably interwoven with Lou Reed's monotoned, throw-away vocals [results in] an unmistak-

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ably American sound, encapsulating all the feelings of violence that have exploded throught that society's contemporary history." Some critics have gone so far as to see popular music as an index of movement for societal change and evolution. Here, too, the writing on the Tom Rush jacket (Peter Knobbier, Crawdaddy Magazine) is definitive. It presents Tom Rush as finding the core of hope in the history of the oppressed in the form of "folk consciousness" juxtaposed with a cynicism toward "rights" to empathy and "legitimate" emotions. Progressive thinking juxtaposes with reverse psychology to present emotionally explosive issues in an insulated and detached fashion. Indeed, our analyses did not focus specifically on songs which were solely designed to espouse the exhilaration of drug use. Some of these numbers were most popular in the student drug oriented underground, with the common themes extolling the virtues of drugs as a means of transcending mundane and hypocritical existence. Some also starkly preached the position that once drugs are ingested, all other concerns, issues, values, and relationships are moot, irrelevant, and even worthless of attention. Of the more brazen titles, we point to Sister Ray in the White Light~White Heat album, Another Girl-Another Planet, The Heartbreakers' One Track Mind, Lookin' for a Kiss, Chinese Rocks, Too Much Junkie Business, and Born to Lose on the LAMF album, Downtown, and N.Y. Dolls' First Album single Looking for a Kiss (heroin), Raw Power, While Light/White Heat (speed), Before the Kiss--a Redcap (seeonals), Sister Morphine (morphine), Last Trip to Tulsa, Saturday Afternoon/Won't You Try by the Jefferson Airplane (acid), Kill Your Sons (pep/the), Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges (speed), Black Sabbath's Hand of Doom (acid, speed, heroin), Fairies Wear Boots (marijuana, lsd) on the same Paranoid album, Last Days of May (marijuana), and Neal Young' s The Old Laughing Lady (alcohol). From our perspective, it is noteworthy that some popular songs of the era when drugs were highlighted in music represented efforts to combat drug use. A prominent work of this genre is the 1970 collage album of popular creations titled First Vibrations. In the album, artists like Donovan, Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, Buffalo Springfield, and others all donated works with the unifying message that speed kills. Hailed as a major drug education effort, some of the works describe Amphetamine Annie (Canned Heat) and elaborate the paranoid ideation enhanced by speed (Nowhere Man by The Beatles), self righteousness (Artificial Energy by The Byrds), the ultimate loss of friends (Somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane), and ultimate deterioration (The Long Road by Genesis). Some songs contrast exhilaration and the feeling of impending doom, either by overdose or as a result of acting out. Another strand of the album involves venting anger toward the drug distributors (The Pusher by Hoyt Axton), who are seen as responsible for the addict's misery. Contemporary reviewers in psychology pointed to this particular album as a prototype of good judgement countering the glamorization of drug use in that culture (Morris, 1970). While our study focus is restricted to lyrics only, we did note that virtually all of our scores were written in the "major" music scales. We mention, parenthetically, that this pattern is not what might have been predicted theoretically. Previous research, both theoretical and empirical, has demonstrated the notion that dependent themes in

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music are linked to the minor, rather than the major, scales (Juni & Nelson, 1987). Based on the linkage of the additive personality to an oral dependent typology (Rado, 1958), it would have been intuitive to hypothesize that dependency be reflected in the scales. It would appear, therefore, that the music in our songs is more related to the general culture than to the specific content of the lyrics. Indeed, with the exception of "country music," a good percentage of the various forms of "rock music" of the 60s and 70s do appear with "major" instead of "minor" scaling. Perhaps further research may explicate relationships between lyrical thematic content and musical scaling and form.

NOTE Accepted for publication: 16 July 1999. Address correspondence to: Samuel Juni, Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, 400 East Building, New York, NY 1000345674.

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Rush, Tom. (1963). Rye Whiskey (Traditional): Tom Rush (The Album). Fantasy Records (24709). The Temptations: Anthology. (1973). My Girl. William Robinson & Ronald White. Jobete Music Co. (ASCAP). Produced by Smokey Robinson, 1965. Motown Record Co. The Untouchables. (1987). Television series based upon works written by O. Fraley with E. Ness & P. Robsky. Motion Picture based on the series, directed by B. DePalma, produced by A. Linson, written by D. Mamet. Paramount Pictures. Zinberg, N. E. (1975). Addiction and ego function. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 30, 567-588. Zinberg, N. E. (1985). The role of the social setting in the prevention and treatment of alcoholism. In J. H. Mendelson & N. K. Mello (Eds.), The diagnosis and treatment of alcoholism, second edition (pp. 457483). NY: McGraw Hill. Zandt, T. V. (1973). Pancho and Lefty [recorded by Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson]. NY: Epic Records. EMI U Catalog, Inc.