An Integral Foundation for Addiction Treatment Beyond the Biopsychosocial Model

Abstract

It is rare to find a thoughtful and scholarly blend of theoretical astuteness and clinical wisdom in a single book about addiction. The author accomplishes this goal by the skillful application of integral theory as a framework for understanding addiction and its treatment. An Integral Foundation for Addiction Treatment belongs on the shelf of every psychotherapist who treats addiction or is interested in the topic. -Philip J. Flores, Ph.D., ABPP, author of Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations (3rd ed.) and Addiction as an Attachment DisorderAn Integral Foundation for Addiction Treatment is a brilliant overview of a truly integral or comprehensive approach to what has now become a crisis level epidemic in America (and indeed, much of the world). The great difficulty, up to this point, is that there are several different existing approaches to addiction and its treatment, and unfortunately none of them have worked nearly as well as it was hoped they would. This has left the field facing an epidemic with no agreed upon solution.Guy du Plessis takes one of the most comprehensive metatheories now in existence-that of Integral Metatheory-and shows how it can indeed integrate and synthesize virtually every major approach to addiction now existing. The immediate benefit of such a far-reaching approach is a direct application to actual cases of addiction itself, and wherever this has been tried so far, the results are astonishingly effective.This book is for, first of all, either those who treat, or those who suffer from, a specific type of addiction. Guy walks us through a clear, easy to understand, step by step introduction to each of the major areas of addic-2010). Furthermore, studies have shown that many existing rehabilitation programs may be no more successful than the spontaneous remission that occurs in the untreated population (Alexander, 2008(Alexander, , 2010. Despite the magnitude of addiction's negative consequences for individual and civic well-being, we have failed to make adequate progress in controlling or preventing the spread of addiction on a global level.Alexander (2010) lamented that a "century of scientific research has 1 The contents of chapter one to four of this book is an abridged version of my master's dissertation (Du Plessis, 2014b) as well as articles published in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (Du Plessis, 2010, 2012a, 2012b, 2014a, reprinted with permission. When relevant, I will reference the sections of the text that were originally printed in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, but will not reference the sections from my master's dissertation as this will unnecessarily clutter the text.In Chapter 1, a brief overview of the most prominent etiological models of addiction are presented. The discussion is structured under the following headings: genetic/physiological models, social/environmental models, personality/intrapsychic models, coping/social learning models, conditioning/ reinforcement behavioral models, compulsive/excessive behavior models, existent...

An Existential Perspective on Addiction Treatment: A Logic-Based Therapy Case Study

“…Similarly, in this essay I argue (and as I have done elsewhere, see Du Plessis, 2015Plessis, , 2016Plessis, , 2018) that an adequate understanding of addiction and recovery should be informed by an existential understanding of human nature, otherwise we remain prone to reducing our being-in-the-world to its constitute parts and consequently, and will likely miss the big picture. 5 I will provide a brief overview of an existential perspective/foundation of addiction and recovery, which will contextualize the essay.…”

Towards a dispositionalist (and unifying) account of addiction

“…The use of ontologies -roughly, controlled vocabularies with logically well-formed definitions [16] -is one way to achieve this sort of unification [17][18][19][20][21][22]. In fact, West and colleagues argue for the implementation of ontology for just this reason in their chapter, and they are not alone in doing so [7,10,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. I fully agree with these authors.…”

More Human Than All Too Human: Challenges in Machine Ethics for Humanity Becoming a Spacefaring Civilization

“…For example, Heinz Kohut (1971Kohut ( , 1977 implies an inverse relationship between an individual's early experiences of positive self-object responsiveness and their tendency to turn to addictive behaviour as a substitute for damaging relationships. Scholars who support the "self-medication hypothesis" believe that addicts often suffer from defects in their psychic structure owing to poor relationships early in life (Khantzian et al, 1990), leaving them prone to seeking external sources of gratification, e.g., drugs, sex, food, or work in later life (Kohut, 1977;Du Plessis, 2018). Khantzian (1995) says "that "substance abusers are predisposed to become dependent on drugs because they suffer from psychiatric disturbances and painful effect states.…”

“…From a psychodynamic and needs perspective addictive behaviour can be understood as directed at meeting ontological needs, but what differentiates addictive behaviour from other responses (or other satisfiers) is that it paradoxically destroys the individual's capacity to meet the need (s) it is attempting to satisfy, as well as the capacity to meet other needs. As an addictive lifestyle progresses, the individual's capacity to have most of his or her needs met becomes diminished, until there is an almost total reliance on the substance or behaviour to meet these needs (Du Plessis, 2014, 2018.…”