You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
March 17, 1969. PSYCHOANALYTIC CONCEPTS OF ADDICTION (SYMPOSIUM). Robert A. Savitt, M.D., Chairman; Lawrence Deutsch, M.D.; William A. Frosch, M.D. (by invitation).
Dr. Savitt discussed the psychopathology of the addictive process, stating that when the mothering process is disturbed, there may be psychological predisposition to addiction. He suggested that the model for addiction later in life lay in the vicissitudes of the feeding and weaning process during infancy. Addition to drugs and addiction without drugs have the same fundamental psychopathology. All addictions run the gamut from the malignant to the relatively benign, the malignancy of the addiction process being in direct proportion to the integrity of the ego structure. Examples of addict personalities were presented: one case was afflicted with multiple addictions, to thumbsucking, food, amphetamines, and cigarettes; another was a classic type of opiate abuse.
Dr. Deutsch discussed addiction with special reference to adolescence. He presented the case of a thirteen-year-old boy suffering from intractable asthma, who was completely dependent on medication. He was treated as an addict with good results. The relationship between asthma and addiction, and the use of either or both to deny and yet gratify underlying phobic fears, was discussed. Dr. Deutsch singled out marijuana as a flagrant example of drug choice and abuse in adolescence. He stressed that 'miracle' drugs, such as Prednisone, can lead to iatrogenic addiction on a psychological basis. The relationship between the ego and superego in the adolescent addict was discussed. He emphasized that drugs themselves cause superego regression, leading to a synergistic effect between that regression and the type of regression due to corrupt parental influences and to the normal adolescent regression. He cautioned against social sanction of drugs such as marijuana.
Dr. Frosch reviewed the types of drug that provide satiation, activation, and fus