Abstract
Gene Heyman’s book, Addiction: a Disorder of Choice, offers fresh and fertile thinking on the nature of addictions as well a thesis on self-destructive behaviour.1 Liz Sheean, in an editorial review of the book, highlights the following quote from Heyman’s work: ‘The varieties of voluntary human destructiveness are at the heart of many, if not most, literary accounts of the human condition’.2 Heyman says that, contrary to the common view that addicts display compulsive and involuntary behaviour, they are making choices when they take to addiction, and they can also make a choice to move away from addiction. Against this background I wish to present my own perspective of counselling for addictions in the light of my training in Buddhist psychotherapy and especially mindfulness-based counselling.
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Notes
Gene Heyman, 2009, Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Liz Sheean, 2011, ‘Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, an Interview with Gene Heyman’, Psychotherapy in Australia, vol. 17, no. 4, 26–31.
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© 2014 Padmasiri de Silva
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de Silva, P. (2014). Addictions, Self-Control and the Puzzles Regarding Voluntary Self-Destruction. In: An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology and Counselling. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137287557_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137287557_19
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-28754-0
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