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In a remarkable essay Marcovitz (1969) reported on a penetrating study of addiction to cigarette smoking. He started with the observation that some people cling to cigarettes as to a mother in the presence of strangers. A significant factor which labels smoking as an addiction is the importance placed on deep inhalation of the smoke, so far unidentified in any analytic attempts at explaining the dynamics of smoking. Deep inhalation, exhalation of the smoke and visualization constitute respiratory introjection followed by extrojection (or projections). The deep inhalation makes inner ego boundaries known and pleasantly felt to the smoker. It fills his inner body emptiness. Smoking, more than eating, produces the sense of inner boundaries and of self-delineation. Preserving these inner boundaries increases and deepens narcissistic investment in one's self. It is as if the person now deeply feels that he is 'me, here, now'. (See also Kline & Tabachnick, 1970.)
The exhalation of smoke makes the breath visible (as we shall see later, laughter makes breath audible). Seeing one's self in the form of one's own exhaled smoke is a reassurance that one exists (as hearing one's own laughter is a similar reassurance).
There are a number of hints in the psychoanalytic literature about the dynamics and the symbolism of breathing. For instance, when Fenichel (1931) discussed Freud's (1918) analysis of the Wolf Man, he also discussed respiratory introjection. Fenichel stated that since the Wolf Man feared exhaled objects he must have previously incorporated them by inhalation.
Smoking is an interchange between parts of one's self with parts of the external world. This may be the reason for the relaxing and at the same time stimulating influence of smoking: it unites inner and outer man, giving a momentary peaceful feeling, which is followed by an illusion of strength, often felt as stimulation to action.
There is a second reason why smoking stimulates and tranquillizes simu