ADD as a Social Invention

By Thomas Armstrong

In 1851, a Louisiana physician and American Medical Association member, Samuel A. Cartwright, published a paper in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal wherein he described a new medical disorder he had recently identified. He called it drapetomania (from drapeto , meaning "to flee," and mania , an obsession), and used it to describe a condition he felt was prevalent in runaway slaves. Dr. Cartwright felt that with "proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented."

In the last 20 years, we have witnessed the birth of a new medical disorder--attention-deficit disorder--which has grown from a relatively rare neurological condition (under other names) during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s to a condition today said to afflict millions of children and adults (a recent Time magazine cover story even suggested that President Clinton may have ADD and could be "only a pill away from greatness").

Attention-deficit disorder (or, more recently, "attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder"--the syndrome has changed names at least 25 times in the past 120 years) has the support of thousands of scientific studies, the American Psychiatric Association, the U.S. Department of Education, and many other solid institutions in this country and worldwide. Yet, like Dr. Cartwright's "drapetomania," ADD may in fact come clothed in scientific respectability yet have disturbing social overtones which are scarcely acknowledged by...