Addictions, Avoidance, and Trauma Repetition
Sinanian, Alexandre
Addictions, Avoidance, and Trauma Repetition - 2014.
13
The link between trauma and addiction has been debated since the work of Ferenczi, and is now the topic of numerous psychopathological, epidemiological, as well as neurobiological research studies. From a psychodynamic perspective using psychosomatic models, we want to understand how a traumatized subject’s recourse to an object of addiction can be thought of as a double-sided process. On the one hand, the aim is to reduce psychological distress by repressing and “ejecting” affects, revealing the negative effects of trauma, i.e. dissociation and splitting. On the other hand, this tendency attempts to ensure a link between the excess of experienced excitation, as in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in a search for reorganization, which is one of the positive effects of trauma (Freud, 1939a). In a clinical case, we will try to show how addictive behavior repeats, not on the psychological but on the bodily level, a new “traumatic” experience where this time the subject, rather than the object, may be the agent of his or her actions.
Addictions, Avoidance, and Trauma Repetition - 2014.
13
The link between trauma and addiction has been debated since the work of Ferenczi, and is now the topic of numerous psychopathological, epidemiological, as well as neurobiological research studies. From a psychodynamic perspective using psychosomatic models, we want to understand how a traumatized subject’s recourse to an object of addiction can be thought of as a double-sided process. On the one hand, the aim is to reduce psychological distress by repressing and “ejecting” affects, revealing the negative effects of trauma, i.e. dissociation and splitting. On the other hand, this tendency attempts to ensure a link between the excess of experienced excitation, as in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in a search for reorganization, which is one of the positive effects of trauma (Freud, 1939a). In a clinical case, we will try to show how addictive behavior repeats, not on the psychological but on the bodily level, a new “traumatic” experience where this time the subject, rather than the object, may be the agent of his or her actions.
Réseaux sociaux