Alfred R. Lindesmith

Who was Alfred R. Lindesmith?

Alfred Ray Lindesmith was an Indiana University professor of sociology. He was among the early scholars providing a rigorous and thoughtful account of the nature of addiction.

Lindesmith's interest in drugs began at the University of Chicago, where he was trained in social psychology by Herbert Blumer and Edwin Sutherland, earning his doctorate in 1937. His education there was a mixture of the analytical and theoretical, a balance that would later appear in his drug studies. The work at Chicago involved research with interactionist theory, including the research of Chicago's Herbert Blumer, emphasizing the idea of self-concept in human interaction.