Ltt #/é “ 1999 ADDICTION Charles Melman I am going to tell you things, both classical and original, having consequences for the treatment of addicts. As you know, neither Freud nor Lacan directly interested themselves in the area of addiction. Nevertheless, they have left us with a certain number of elements which will allow us to have an orientation and also to arrive at conclusions with respect to this very difficult question. I am going to start with some of the theses that Freud tackles in his famous work Mourning and Melancholia. These theses are going to tell us that we are all dependent and that we are all ina state of addiction. Secondly, I am going to try to show you the role of addiction in the field of toxicomania. And then in the third part of my presentation I am going to give you the exact name for the drug that is used by toxicomaniacs. So the first part of the question: What does Freud teach us in Mourning and Melancholia? He shows us that there are two different types of loss. First of all there is bereavement or mourning which normally provokes a state of sadness, but which also, paradoxically, in some cases can produce phenomena of happiness, gaiety and joy. And there is another type of loss, which for its part produces a destruction of the personality, of identity, and which is called melancholia. And Freud explains for us very accurately the difference between the two. We know, thanks to psychoanalysis, that the mechanism of desire is set up in the human subject starting with a fundamental loss. For example, with what the theory calls the Oedipus complex, the child must lose the being that for him has been the closest and dearest, in order to gain access to desire * This article represents the text of a lecture given at LSB College, Dublin during April 1999, (Trans. C. Gallagher). As such it retains the character of a spoken presentation. (Ed).and sexual maturity. The paradox, therefore, in the human being is that desire is set up starting from a fundamental and foundational loss. And it is on the foundation constituted by the loss of this fundamental object that there will be set up in reality the objects that are cathected or invested, the beloved/cherished persons who are going to be the support for desire. But these objects or these people are never more than the substitute for the fundamental object, which was initially lost. So you can see that there are two kinds of loss that can take place. I may happen to lose, on the occasion of a break-up or of a bereavement, a beloved person and I am in a state of bereavement or mourning. But clinical experience shows that I can also lose the initial loss, the fundamental loss, namely what allowed desire to exist and be organised. In that case I enter into a state of melancholia. This is what Freud says in his article Mourning and Melancholia. This is just to tell you that we are all dependent, since we all depend on that original loss. And if this original loss is lacking, you will find depersonalisation and melancholia. And if you reflect a little you can easily see that each one of us is in a state of addiction to the agency that is represented by this original loss, - this original loss, therefore, which organises desire and which Freud called 'libido' and to which Lacan gave a more precise name, - 'the Phallus’. What you see in a clinical situation when there is great passionate love, when the object that is loved is not simply a representative of the lost object but has become that lost object itself, is that it can happen that the loss of this passionately loved or beloved object, which had taken on the value of the originally lost object, can provoke an effect that is just like melancholia. Every novelist understands these mechanisms perfectly well and I must say that in general we love these types of romantic stories. The state of dependency with regard to the beloved object that concerns all of us leaves us, nevertheless, with a certain distance, with a certain space with regard to this object, since this beloved object is never more than a substitute, - Lacan would say a semblance (un semblant). This means that this distance with regard to the beloved object, - and for which the beloved object will sometimes berate his partner, - leaves the subject with a certain freedom of choice with regard to this object. The whole 2moral responsibility of the subject, in his behaviour and in his choices, is determined and is permitted by this distance with regard to the beloved object. And this distance exists because this object is a substitute and is not the primordial object. I will now move on to the problem of dependency in the case of toxicomania. First of all, there are, appearing in a natural state and manufactured in laboratories, products which are capable of provoking an enjoyment, a jouissance that is greater and stronger than the enjoyment that is allowed of by sex. What do we mean by saying that it is greater than the jouissance or enjoyment allowed of by sex? As I pointed out just now sexual enjoyment cathects or always involves a certain dimension of failure and on the other hand, from an economic point of view, it does not permit a complete lowering of psychical tension. I remind you that Freud called this state of happiness Nirvana, which was linked to the lowest state of psychical tension and we all search for the enjoyment which the maximum lowering of this psychical tension results in. Now there exist laboratory products or natural products that are capable of provoking a complete lowering of psychical tension because they lead to a complete loss of consciousness. Mainly these objects, these drugs, present themselves as if they were no longer substitutes but as if they were in fact the original object itself. Because they are capable of allowing this complete resolution of psychical tension by giving the subject the feeling that he can't go any further, the toxicomaniac or drug addict is going to become dependent on this object, which is no longer a lost object but a very real object, - with this quite essential difference, that since it is the real object and is no longer a semblance or appearance of the object, he no longer has any distance with respect to it, which means that he no longer has any freedom, no longer has any choice. He has become the prisoner, as you know, of his object which has appeared there in reality, acting as if it were the original lost object, So, as you see, or as I am trying to show you, the first moment when we see that we are all in a state of addiction with regard to a lost object, and insofar as our cathexes or our investments are in an object that is a substitute for this lost object, this leaves us with a certain degree of 3.