Main description:

Drugs and drug use are an integral part of human culture. Yet we know hardly anything about drugs, at least not the kind of knowledge that would help us to understand how drugs affect people and how people beome addicted to drugs. This is most surprising in the light of the vast amount of knowledge accumulated in the sciences. Psychoanalysis might

Contents:

Foreword -- Preface -- Classical Foundations for a Theory on Addiction: The Energetics of Libido and the Economics of Desire -- Introduction -- The place of cocaine in the work of Freud -- Freud's pre-analytical period -- A limit to Freud's dream -- Freud's war during the "inter-bellum": the death-drive and the extermination of happiness -- Conclusion -- The Post-Freudian Reduction of a Field and the Fruits of a Confrontation -- Introduction -- Between drive and ego: the ascent of the subject -- Elements for a Lacanian Theory (and Treatment) of Addiction: The Administration of Toxicity -- Introduction -- The pleasure before death: the symbolic, the imaginary and jouissance -- The death of pleasure: the real, the body and jouissance -- Science, addiction and diagnosis: a question of administration -- Addiction and discourse: a moral question and the ethics of treatment -- Conclusion