PSYCHODINAMIC ASPECTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DRUG ADDICTED

Abstract

In this text, the author underlines some obstacles in
establishing a clinic for toxicomania. Taking the drug problem as the
"encounter between a product, a personality and a socio-cultural
instant", this text insists in taking in to account the extreme force of the
imaginary experience of the drug-user which transgresses the
traditional causal perspective.
As a consequence of this specific kinetic, it remains very difficult
in traditional clinic to make a clear difference between a recreative
drug-user and a real drug-addict, because of the numerous intermediary
situations which prevail.
Afterwards, the author rapidly presents the evolution which
induces the drug-addict's destiny. Starting from the "broken mirror
stage", going through the quest of a lost identity, through the "beyond
measure stage" and the encounter between the product and the
dependency induction, the drugg-addict's destiny finally results in the
sufferings of detoxication, last stage of a trajectory made of tentatives
and renouncements.
Taking into account the evolution of the "man of the broken
mirror", which is made up of three dual conditions (relation with the
product, with the fault, with the suffering), the author puts forward as a therapy the setting up of a system with intervals and transitional
persons, made up of three steps: detoxication, separation of the
surroundings, and specific psychotherapy. It is important to recall, in
this context, that ethic reflection must be included in clinical work, so
as to prevent the risk of substituting a dependency (drugg-addiction) by
another (therapy).