COMMENTARY

Jack Friedman questions whether the concept that family processes maintain substance abuse naturally leads to the assumption that interruption of the interactional pattern will alter drug use, i.e., transfer a symptom. He feels that it is important to look at factors related to the onset of abuse by the acquisition of historical information at the individual, family, and societal level. An epidemiological approach might be the next step in the process of research, for instance, testing out an alternating generational hypothesis. For both an historical and epidemiological approach, it is important to address the relationship between families and researchers; this could be illuminated by some naturalistic observation. Final comments stress the importance of reliability of instrumentation, especially in the area of self‐report about others, where little work has been done.