How can it be possible for a person to overcome an addiction?... We don't understand the process of addiction. To me it is a fragmentation of the self (or Ego). It could be the illusion of an aggressive rupture of the original symbiotic diada Mother/ child? mean abandonment, At least something perceives like abandonment and betrayal. Or this fragmentation is created by opposite or broken primary-views (mirada) that constitute and structure the Ego/self. Like in the "double message" present in the history of the schizophrenia symptom. It is possible that the structure in the psychosis can offer some light to what happen in the addiction?.. ....everybody is lost, nobody understands addiction. NOBODY! I think that the Self is continued through the Other's look (la mirada del Otro) We are a symbolic reflection of the Other's eyes, I am convinced to this. when those eyes show us a fragmented self we are vulnerable to a "licking" of the Symbolic = Psychosis / or vulnerable to the licking of the imaginary = addiction. Now I think I am into something...of course, intergenerational trauma plays a role in this rupture🔹 Addiction as Fragmentation of the Self
Yes — addiction can absolutely be seen as a response to fragmentation, not just behavioral but structural. The addict doesn’t use substances only to feel good, but often to bind what has come apart — to create a kind of false wholeness, a simulated continuity of self, when the true continuity has been ruptured.
🔹 The Symbiotic Dyad and Abandonment
You say: “It could be the illusion of an aggressive rupture of the original symbiotic diada Mother/child.”
Yes. Addiction often functions like a surrogate Other — one that promises perfect union, like the early mother. The abandonment is not always real — but the psyche registers it as real. The baby does not experience "reality" as separate from feeling; the loss of the mother is annihilation. This perceived annihilation leaves an open circuit that substances or compulsions later rush to fill.
🔹 The “Double Message” and Schizophrenia
You're referencing Bateson's double bind theory here, and you’re right to connect it. In addiction, there is often an early paradoxical injunction:
“Be yourself — but not like that.”
“You’re safe with me — but only if you hide that part of you.”
“You are loved — conditionally.”
These conflicting messages structure a split ego — one that learns to adapt by dissociating from the forbidden self, which may later find expression in compulsive behaviors or substances.
Schizophrenia makes visible this split in a disorganized symbolic reality. Addiction hides it behind compulsive repetition, but the wound is of the same nature: the Other’s mirada failed to reflect a coherent self.
The Role of the Other’s Gaze — “La Mirada del Otro”
We’re tapping into the notion that the Self is structured not as a closed entity but as a mirror-reflection organized through the Symbolic order — through language, name, meaning, mirada.
“When those eyes show us a fragmented self we are vulnerable to a ‘taste’ of the Symbolic = Psychosis / or vulnerable to the taste of the Imaginary = addiction.”
Yes.
Psychosis emerges when the Symbolic fails — when the Name-of-the-Father (the structuring signifier) is foreclosed.
Addiction, by contrast, might occur when the Imaginary (the image of the self) is wounded, when the mirror reflection is grotesque or broken, and substances serve to temporarily reorganize or numb the pain of seeing it.
For Intergenerational Trauma
The rupture isn’t just personal.
If our parents themselves never felt mirrored — if they carried unresolved griefs, abandonments, unsymbolized traumas — then what gets passed down isn’t just behavior. It’s a gap in the Symbolic structure, a void, a non-place in the Self that can’t speak, can’t feel, can’t hold.
And addiction… rushes to fill that place.
So, How Does One Overcome Addiction?
If we follow your theory, then healing addiction is not about willpower. It’s about:
Being seen in a new, coherent way — in a gaze that does not fragment, shame, or double-bind.
Restoring Symbolic anchoring giving language and name to that which was unspeakable, unable to put in words, that we call Integrating the Imaginary and Symbolic. allowing the mirror to reflect a whole-enough self.
Working through the intergenerational gaps — mourning what was never received, metabolizing the inherited silence.
Recovery, then, is a slow,process of restructuring the field of the gaze, internal and external, so the Self can appear, again, without needing to split or numb.
