Meeting of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

DISCUSSION: Dr. Max Schur stated that he was pleased that the American Psychoanalytic Association is planning to appoint a committee to study this most pressing problem of addiction. He agreed with Dr. Savitt that the intravenous route and its effects may achieve for the addict the symbolic meaning of complete fusion with the mother, of complete re-fusion of self and object representations, and even of the return to the womb, but he wished to stress that we should not ascribe a primary motivational or etiological status to what is secondary symbolization. He felt that this error is made at times in the psychoanalytic literature. Dr. Schur mentioned certain conditioning experiments in utero by psychobiologists, factors which are possibly quite important but which never reach the status of mental representation. He called special attention to certain aspects which have to be considered in addiction: different degrees of structural maturation; the immediate and prolonged consequences of the addicting agent; the impact of the route of administration (the intravenous route being tied up with immediate regression and rapid psychological deterioration);