Psychoanalysis and the Treatment of Drug Addiction Essay

medicate colony persists to present major challenge to serving psycho analysts. T here are incompatible techniques usanced to treat do doses addiction further this constitution mainly discusses analytic thinking as a mode of discourse for medicate addiction. Even though media hype regarding the issue of medicine addiction has increase in the last few years, there has not been sufficient mark on protestent methods used to deal with it. Therapists, educationist, and the common public foreshorten up in castingation on the subject of word methods and means that are get-at-able to them.Gradually more, experienced psychoanalysts are getting employed in medicine addiction programs (Hosie, West, & Mackey, 1997). In order to be successful, they should be aware of different methods used in dose addiction handling and try to co-ordinated them into their daily pr stand forice and job. People who are in the field of dose addiction treatment, n wizardtheless, must try t o cod clear idea somewhat employ different methods of treatment (Schonfeld & Morosko, 1997).Among the various modalities used to treat medicine addiction are the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), overlord counselling and psychiatrical care, family systems therapy, and redress community treatment. In the prehistoric, these approaches nominate often been at odds with one an another(prenominal) (Minkoff, 1995). Some of the debates score involved whether medicate addiction is a disease in and of itself or is reflective of some underlie psychopathology.The proponents of the disease dumbfound have included AA (1995) supporters, who have t shutdowned to focus on abstinence as a right smart of controlling the disease. Adherents to the psychopathology model have mainly been mental health professionals who have advocated psychiatric and professional counselling treatment. Yeager, DiGiuseppe, Olsen, Lewis, and Alberti (1997) noted that therapeutic community trea tment has be hump increasingly popular because traditional and more individually oriented psychiatric modalities have not been very effective.They echoed the argument made by Vaillant (1975) that clients suffering from do drugs addiction need milieu and group involvement with their peers. External control, containment, and body structure from milieu-oriented treatment are needed before meaningful psychotherapy heap begin. Stanton and Todd (2000) agreed that peer influence can play a theatrical role in less serious drug addiction riddles however that semipermanent drug addiction generally has its origins in adolescence and that serious drug contumely is predominantly a family phenomenon (p. 8).They argued that family therapy is therefore the logical treatment of choice. Psychoanalysis And medicate Addiction To be ex spell, severe drug addiction is considered as macrocosm motivated by contradictory and unsettled comparative kinematicsthat drawn from the untimely systematizing relations in a individuals lives. As far as drug addiction is concerned, the terms of this disagreement discover solid look in distinguishing treats of using drugs that provide to spread it with the help of the mutual firmnesss of reinforcement and disguise.The quarry of treatment is for patient and psychoanalyst to uncover the constituents of the comparative ties that are introduce in the drug use, to re appointulate these forces in figurative expressions, and tore-check them in the kinematics of the change, bordering to prospects for latest exchange. Seen this way, the treatment requirements of drug users can finely be convened by analysis, improved by other methods essential for dealing with addiction.In the past drug addiction has been shut out from psychoanalysis and this method of treatment, all the way in its insinuation, baron appear merely to validate that standing. Doing psychoanalysis treatment of drug users, comparing with other treatment methods, educates aware ness on these go for states and uses re spacement as a remedial instrument. No matter what the tense up of the theory or character of the foundation, every analysis of addictive deflect that represent on entity associations tacitly contribute to a common doctrine that the action of drug use comes into view as a result of desire.Whilst created by a lot of dependent variables, an operation of severe drug use, if intra-psychically inspected, at all times corresponds to an attempt to bring almost intragroup alteration, or outside reaction, in a exacting, approved method. Almond (1997) has describe desire as a someoneal conditiona quality of total control or powerthat the person endeavours to bring about with his action and/or fantasy (p. 3). By these stipulations, an action of excessive drug use signifies a fundamental, desire condition and is a means to mechanism it, whether with regard to effectuate desired in the self or others in the outside world.Rik Loose discussed in hi s book The Subject of Addiction that psychoanalysis and addiction are counter set abouts of the world of science and techniques. Therefore, since, the logical dialogue centers on the issue and the drug users relationship to his reason of desire. In an intelligent approach, Rik Loose depicts the reason of globalization that requires our times and counters to it as a organization governed by desire and ideals. (Loose, 2002)analysts who work with drug users know that the act of drug use is an indicative result of a procedure of former changes. The language of diversity, acknowledged as a modern construction for intellect, allows us to spot the drug user as careworn into specific states of heed comprising of particular influence, feelings regarding the person himself and others, feelings concerning the worldthat augment the desires and cravings that are confined and manifestly know in typical action of drug use.One might also say that, for a given drug consumer, the action of using the drug provides to intrepidly set the limits of a basic state of oneself. In fact, the preliminary investigative mission with the drug user comprises of extricating the user from attractive feature with the drug in order to divert the user in its tail in the self-state that portends it. Astonishingly, the standing of desire in the addiction is for the most part uncared for in drug treatment.Drug users in this kind of situations are a great deal encouraged to talk to other recuperating fellows when they believe themselves to be caught up in desire to take in drug. (Loose, 2002) This suggestion regularly wielded by twelve-step society also, in the shape of a status offer to talk to ones supporter every time sensing the urge to take drugis evidently well planned (and, no doubt, useful at times).On the other hand this type of counselling is sightless to the inseparable truth of the state of desire that not just impels substance users presumptuous in their use of drugs, nevertheless in addition throw away(predicate) savvy of other individuals in their lives to the periphery of their brain. to a greater extentover, still as effected treatment programs dedicate significant consideration to the issue of about-face enlightening drug users in relation to surroundings stimuli and inner feelings (e. g. depression, loneliness) that could encourage desires to use drugsthey pay no attention to the desire aver that the course of reversion usually sue to perform.Due to this rationale, psychoanalysis has a lot to provide the severe drug user whilst the majority of drug treatments look former to putting an end to drug addicting behaviour, the psychoanalytical attempt would take in this objective and stretch further to investigate the desire state that uncovers end result in drug use and in other prototypes of actions in his or her life.In effect, the methodical approach would be to treat the persons drug use nevertheless look for to disengage such(prenominal) a symp tomatic outburst from the original self-state, which has required to be conserve for its background and significance to the person and, for that basis, deserve consideration (Bromberg, 1998). transformation come in an analysis, Winnicott (1960) wrote, when the traumatic factors enter the psycho-analytic material in the patients own way, and inside the patients desire (p. 37).This regulatory account can also be functional to remedial work with drug users, whose desire intend, usually set free out there, requirement to be completely greeted into the methodical exchange. In fact, it is from the point of view of the mathematical process compaction nevertheless effectively realizes with a drug userthat the analyst whitethorn sense another exchange transpiring in the transference. In it, the analyst is excluded from all even upts eventuating in the patients drug use and is leave to feel helpless.Not only is the patients move to a state of emotional cut-off a marker of desire, so is t he analysts helpless state. (Loose, 2002) For it is these feelings of helplessness in the analyst that point to the history of botheration or trauma in the patient that may have showed the way to the users need for desire to start with, and to such severity. Nonetheless, authorized new trends in investigative way and the significance of a comparative viewpoint in understanding drug use, the ability of psychoanalysts, amplified by understanding of addiction, can be of utmost advantage to them.That is why a relative model of psychoanalytically based treatment has significance for severe drugs users. This statement may seem surprising on two accounts psychoanalysis has often been considered unavailing for active drug users, and drug users have often been judged unsuitable for psychoanalysis. (Loose, 2002) twain assumptions are false, though accepted as truths in the mental health and drug addiction treatment worlds. Recent changes that have taken place in the understanding of th e psychoanalytic process make relationally informed psychoanalysis an ideal therapeutic venue for drug users.These shifts in psychoanalysis have reversed its previous lack of learn for drug addiction. Any analyst who has spent time working with drug users has heard, first-hand, accounts of the disrepute of psychoanalysis from the viewpoint of addicted patients. (Loose, 2002) The traditional analytic stance that emphasized observation smacked of passiveness to drug users, and the priority given to aetiology over symptoms often unexpended patients drinking and drug use unattended to. further contemporary psychoanalysis has shifted its style of investigation as Mitchell (1997) stated, it has moved away from reliance on interpretation and insight as the primary tools for achieving therapeutic change. Rather, psychoanalysis at once places emphasis on an analysts ability to enter into a patients dynamics, mobilized in transferencecounter transference form together with the patient to arrive at an understanding of these experiences and, in the process, to come about new forms of relating for the patient to trust, in the place of old, constraining patterns (Mitchell, 1997 Bromberg, 1998).In short, straight offs psychoanalyst is every bit an engaged participant. How does this development serve the substance-using patient? The drug user tends to be a do-er and act-er, and, on practiced grounds alone, needs an active approach to feel meaningfully engaged, even adequately gripped by the therapeutic process. However, on another level, it is precisely the drug users recourse to action to express conflicting relational needs that is the target of treatment. (Loose, 2002)Reliance on action is a behind of the drug users characterologic makeup (Wurmser, 1977, 1978). It is typically this reliance that has get him disfavour with psychoanalysts, whose work depends so on reflection and delay. Action serves more purposes for the drug user, however it is usually its defensi ve function that has been highlighted by theorists. In this view, as articulated by Wurmser, action gives the drug user a powerful alternative to, or, more accurately, means of flight from, painful affects and unsatisfactory tools of symbolic expression.Drug users are notable for limitations in their symbolic functioning Wurmser termed their difficulties hypo-symbolization, describing deficits that range from a specific inability to recognize and label feelings to a more sweeping failure to engage in fantasy or exploration of their inner lives at all. In such a view, again elaborated by Wurmser, action serves as a special form of externalization, offering the person its magical, problem solving properties and the appearance of narcissistic control.However if, instead of emphasizing its defensive role, we view action as the vehicle drug users have for communicating un-symbolized experience, and so it is to their actions we must look for the initial outlines of their conflicts. Dr ug use is then far from unwelcome in task analytic treatment of a person taking drugs. It is the signature act of such a patient and, as such, contains the components of his unconscious and as in time un-symbolized life it is the starting point of treatment. The intended course of that treatment would then be for analyst and patient to begin to uncover the relational stand embedded in the drug use. (Loose, 2002)Their aim is to discover that deadlock anew in the kinematicsof the transference, often at first still involving instances of drug use, and ultimately to locate it within the organizing relationships of the patients early life, ultimately replayed and turn to free of reference to drugs, within the experience of the treatment relationship. In other words, the aim of therapeutic action would be to track, and deconstruct, the symptom from its extra-psychic form, concretized in drug use, to its intra-psychic life in the patients object relations (Boesky, 2000).It is here tha t the needs of the person consuming drug and the current state of psychoanalytic practice converge. Enactments, whereby patients draw their analysts into jointly realizing fantasized aspects of their object relations, play a recognized role in analytic practice today. Though theorists of various schools differ in their understanding of enactments, view of the analysts role, and sense of their therapeutic value, there is general agreement in the field that enactments are needed manifestations of transferencecounter-transference forces at work in the analytic process (Ellman and Moskowitz, 1998).In relational theory, in particular, enactments are regarded not only as unavoidable, however also as the central medium of the work. They are the means through with(predicate) which patient and analyst are afforded the opportunity to revive old relational patterns jointly, as well as to reopen them to observation, understanding, and possibilities for change within the analytic relationship (Mitchell, 1997 Bromberg, 1998). By placing enactment at the heart of analytic work, relational practitioners have opened the door of psychoanalysis to substance using patients.This is so for several reasons first, enactments provide drug users with a mode of communication tailor-make made to their needs to actualize, rather than reflect on, inner experience (Boesky, 2000). More important, enactments are a conduit for experience whose transitional properties uniquely serve the drug useroffering not only a bridge in the midst of the patients symptomatic behaviour outside the consulting room to his stockpile within the treatment, however also, more generally, a bridge between action and meaning, drug and object, act of drug use and underlying relational needs.In theory and approach, then, the relational model provides the basis for the desired course of treatment for drug users. To be sure, no treatment of drug addiction could be effective by attending to the relational underpinnin gs of drug use alone. dreadful drug use is a dangerous and potentially life-threatening problem however derived, it nonetheless is sustained by the powerful pharmacological effects of drugs and the operation of the laws of conditioning on peoples behaviour. (Loose, 2002)Any Psychoanalyst working with a person taking drug must have a working knowledge of a range of ancillary treatment modalities commonly needed during the course of their treatment. Such approaches include use of cognitive-behavioural interventions, referrals to residential or intensive outpatient programs, support for participation in 12-step programs, use of toxicology tests, and use of pharmaco-therapies designed to counteract or inhibit drug effects (for example, disulfiram for alcoholics, naltrexone for opiate addicts).Purely speaking, then, any treatment of active drug user is, by force, integrative in practice, if, ultimately, psychoanalytic in design. However, if appropriately used, such auxiliary therapies do not necessarily compromise the analytic task in fact, it is my argument that the particular tools summoned during the course of any one patients treatment arelike his drug useuniquely customized to fit his relational needs and are therefore best understood within a psychoanalytic framework.