Richwin, Iara Flor

From psychic wandering to the solution of substance abuse - 2022.


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This article aims to analyze the relationship between drug addiction and “psychic wandering” in situations of precariousness and social exclusion, based on a clinical case study. It starts from the idea that the contexts of precariousness and social vulnerability can trigger a state of “psychic wandering”, marked by the disorganization of identity and narcissistic foundations and by the impossibility of constituting a subjective place of presence, belonging, and registration of the subject in social ties. In this sense, we identified that drug use works as a “somato-psychic solution” to psychic wandering. Faced with a subjective world that has become uninhabitable, due to the processes of desymbolization, discouragement and subjective destitution, the subject makes an attempt to self-treat and regulate his discomfort through toxic exploration of the body and sensoriality.