Ritualization and the identity development process among past and current heroin users
In the psychopathologic field, the introduction, or reintroduction of the concept of addiction marks a certain evolution in our comprehension of drug abuse practices. With less focus on the drugs’ psychopharmacological effects or the deviant “personality organization” supposedly common to all the individuals concerned, contemporary approaches now consider the phenomenon in the light of the psychological dynamics it involves. From the same point of view, addiction generally appears to be a specific and trans-nosographic coping mechanism, a means of psychic survival or “identity saving” intended “to compensate” for a degree of narcissistic fragility. This is confirmed by the anthropo-analytical reading of the drug-addiction experience model, based on thematic and structural analyses of life narratives of a number of heroin addicts and ex-addicts. The results of this study, which combines anthropological reflections with a psychoanalytical reading of the data, reveal that intoxication behaviour may be part of ritualizing functions, as many authors point out, by highlighting the return to archaic means of physic functioning, the “trauma treatment value”, the anxiolytic effect or even the “containing function” triggered by the product’s appeal. However, these approaches usually focus on the protective or overprotective effects of intoxication, neglecting the losses and deconstruction events caused by these marginal trajectories. Nevertheless, interest for these “negative experiences” could allow us to identify the real ritual sense contained in this model of experience, in so far as any exhaustive definition of a rite is based on symbolizing and socializing functions. At this point, for these subjects, the possibility of questioning the foundations of their symbolic identity appears to be a sort of “initiation into negativity”.