Addiction is a substitutive treatment

Through a reflection on "contrainte par corps" (civil imprisonment, litterally: bodily constraint), and on the "unconscious addictive identifications", the author questions the manner in which addicted subjects try to build up a "substitution body". Our intention is to demonstrate how the addictive process aims at the construction of a new body: by making a "foreign body", incorporating a toxic foreign body is an intent to self-medicate, in order to remove the hold of a primordial other. All these clinical and theoretical elements, developed in this article, raise the question of the status of the "substitutive treatments" that medical doctors prescribe to addicted patients, as the articulation of these with therapies proposed by clinical psychologists. (C) 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.