Within the Seba depth-psychology corpus, the term ‘psychostimulants’—encompassing principally methylphenidate and amphetamine compounds deployed in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder—occupies a contested space between neurobiological optimism and socio-cultural critique. The neuroscientific literature represented by Rubia, Peterson, Faraone, and Wong maps the pharmacological action of these agents onto frontostriatal and default-mode networks, demonstrating that acute stimulant administration normalizes hypoactivated prefrontal and cingulate circuitry in ADHD populations. Faraone supplies the most systematic pharmacological analysis, tracing how amphetamine and methylphenidate differentially modulate catecholaminergic transmission and interact with comorbidities including depression, anxiety, and substance-use disorders. A distinct strand of inquiry, represented by Findeis, de Jong, and Osianlis and colleagues, exposes a gendered pharmacological gap: psychostimulant efficacy fluctuates across the menstrual cycle in ways that clinical research has largely ignored, with estrogen potentiating and progesterone attenuating stimulant response. Against this biomedical consensus, Gabor Maté situates stimulants within a broader trauma-informed framework, reading ADHD itself as an adaptive response to developmental adversity and observing the paradox that stimulants such as cocaine serve analogous self-regulatory functions for undiagnosed individuals. Blum’s reward-deficiency model provides a theoretical bridge, locating ADHD and stimulant action alike within disrupted dopaminergic reward circuitry. The corpus thus presents psychostimulants simultaneously as first-line neurological correctives and as pharmacological proxies for unmet developmental and self-regulatory needs.