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Heroin therapeutic prescription to opiate drug addicts through a study of the literature on this topic is valued. Some doubts are put forward with the regard to the scientific quality of the studies, disposable nowdays, on the basis of the experiences of United Kingdom and Switzerland. We are expecting longer and finer studies to answer the question whether this kind of intervention is really useful.

On the basis of clinical observation, the authors have classified drug addiction into four types: traumatic, actual, transitional and sociopathic. Such classification helps in epidemiological research to understand better the distribution of people addicted to a given drug. Each type of addiction differs in respect of onset, evolution, prognosis and certain other characteristics relevant to the treatment of drug-addicted persons. Thus, the classification helps in making an appropriate selection of a treatment method and in the evaluation of a treatment programme. It has been observed that (a) traumatic and actual types of addiction have a much more favourable prognosis; (b) individual psychotherapy and support in a medical setting is effective for the traumatic type of addiction; (c) treatment in a family setting appears to be suitable for actual and transitional types of addiction; and (d) the therapeutic community may prove to be effective in the treatment of persons affected by socio-pathic type of addiction.

In this article the authors propose: 1) a typology of drug addiction cases consisting of four main classes: A. traumatic drug addiction, B. drug addiction from actual neuroses, C. transitional drug addiction, and D. sociopathic drug addiction; 2) a clinical study (with 18 months of follow-up data) involving 131 heroin addicts mostly treated with structural or counterparadoxical family therapy in the same psychotherapy center and in the same year; and 3) some preliminary conclusions emerging from an examination of the four-class typology with respect to the effectiveness of family therapy interventions. If, for example, structural family therapy techniques seem more suitable in type-B cases (similar to cases described by Haley in his Leaving Home), the counterparadoxical techniques are likely to be more effective in type-C cases (similar to the anorectics described by Selvini-Palazzoli).

This work is the result of research into chronicity factors in infantile asthma. The research had two main goals. The first, using a sample of 100 asthmatic children, was to reconstruct the therapeutic history of the individual patients on the hypothesis that the therapeutic intervention they had undergone in fact conditioned the quality of the cure demand. The second was to evaluate the influence of family dynamics on the chronic development of infantile asthma. A comparison was made between two interactive models using a sample of 10 families with asthmatic children with chronic tendencies and a sample of 10 normal families. The results show that typical dysfunctional interactive patterns exist in the experimental sample and that they are correlated with the perpetuation of the asthmatic symptom. The paper concludes that every therapeutic intervention that is limited to dealing with the biological component of the asthmatic symptom and ignores the influence of family dynamics becomes itself a major chronicity factor. Thus a "systemic" intervention is considered necessary to prevent chronicity.