Unrepressed unconscious and unsaid in addictive symptomatology

Abstract

The aim of this work is to understand, from a developmental-relational perspective, the emotional nature of addictive symptoms. Many studies have shown that addictions are linked to traumatic emotions that, once activated, could cause a feeling of emotional confusion that in the most severe cases could be connected to the fear that the Self might disintegrate. Before understanding the relationship between dissociation and addictions, it is essential to distinguish disintegration (désagrégation, in the language of Pierre Janet) and dissociation. Indeed, if the disintegration is a structural and pathological condition of the personality caused by early and chronic emotional traumatic memories, the dissociation is a defensive reaction to a stress: this reaction can be normal (flexible and adequate) or pathological (rigid and inadequate). Thus, addictive behaviours could be associated to a dissociative reaction in individuals with a structural dissociation of the personality (désagrégation). This disintegration would be linked to traumatic emotions: unconscious and unsymbolised emotions. On the unconscious nature of these emotions, the author of this paper underlines the role of the unrepressed unconscious, which in addicts would seem to be impaired.

Keywords:

• psychoanalysis
• addiction
• unrepressed unconscious
• repressed unconscious
• alexithymia
• dissociation

Notes

1. The Janetian unconscious (or subconscious) is related to a hierarchical conception of consciousness characterised by a failure in the psychological synthesis. This is very different from the Freudian interpretation of the unconscious as a specific mental system linked to ‘psychic representations’.