Based on interviews with several hundred parents, teachers, physicians, and hyperkinetic children, the paper addresses the scope and nature of the social aspects of the psychopharmacological treatment of hyperkinetic children. Excerpts from interviews are given. Reported among findings are an inability of individuals who are charged with the responsibility for the delivery of services to children to develop the working agreements necessary to provide a cohesive and rationalized approach to the delivery of those services; that parents and physicians each tend to nominate themselves as legitimate and dominant; that both parents and physicians see the teacher as rarely dominant and often nonlegitimate, and teachers concur; and that teachers also tend to agree with parents in their definition of who should be dominant and who should be legitimate. (SBH)