Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Addiction and Enjoyment

Abstract

This article discusses how decentered understandings of addiction might benefit from ongoing debates in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Departing from recent critiques in critical addiction studies, it claims that psychoanalysis offers a framework that both challenges abstract, essentialist ontologies and recognises addiction as a valid phenomenon. Crucial to this framework is a notion of freedom linked to the symbolic break with bodily enjoyment, which, according to Lacan, lies at the origin of the constitution of subjectivity and which neither presupposes the existence of a conscious will nor rejects freedom as a mere product of abstract bio-political governmentality. The article explores how, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, addiction is seen as a way of denying this freedom through the realisation of an enjoyment independent of the symbolic order. Moreover, the article argues that its definition of addiction allows for both a decentered understanding of addiction and a critical challenging of current societal processes of addictification.

The poisoned father: Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog and the unexpected relevance of Lacan to psychiatric practice

“…She initially strives to be accepted by the paternal order but soon encounters its cruelty (both in the form of Phil, and of representatives of local ‘society’). Her response is to escape into alcoholism, literally becoming ‘wet’ (see also), 6 seeking to return to an amorphous Real outside the Nom-du-Père. However, there is a critical difference in Rose’s arc.…”