A neuropsychoanalytic perspective on addictions

Abstract

I begin, of course, with (Sigmund) Freud, who wrote the following in 1897: “I realized that masturbation is the only important habit, the primal addiction, and that it is only as substitutes and substitution for it that the other addictions (to the alcohol, morphine, tobacco, etc.) arise”. Freud believed that the only impulse for pleasure is sexual. Today, we neuroscientists know that there are many different types of pleasure in the brain, and each of them has its own drive. Consistent with this fact, post-freudian psychoanalysts such as (Ronald) Fairbairn and (John) Bowlby, among others since then, have shown that the impulse to Attachment is independent of the sexual drive. With regard to the discoveries of modern neuroscience, they were right. There is a separate impulse to cling. It is not the same as sexual. [...]