Commentaries by Edward Khantzian and Henry Krystal allow me to elaborate the role of dissociation in addictive disorder, and its misguided place in the design of many therapeutic strategies to overcome it. Promising direction for the treatment of the characters and symptoms of drug-dependent patients lies in the application of developments in current analytic theory and technique. Such developments include familiarity with enactment, dissociative and projective processes, and work in a two-person frame to enable treatment to encompass and reach more of the patient.