Relationship Between Effects of a Number of Centrally Acting Drugs and Personality

Abstract

The relationship between the effects of drugs and the personality of the recipient of the drugs is an area of research that has been ignored, for the most part. It is usually tacitly assumed that the personality will have something to do with the manner in which the individual responds to a drug. This view is commonly held concerning alcohol. Most people who have observed others under the influence of this drug are implicitly, if not explicitly, aware that the personality of the indulger, as well as the situation, will contribute to the effect of this universal relaxer. A specific attack on the problem of the relationship between personality and drug effect was made by von Felsinger, Lasagna, and Beecher.¹They concluded that those subjects who seemed to have deviant personalities, as determined by interview and the Rorschach test, were the subjects who responded atypically to amphetamine and morphine.