Abstract
The chapter examines the topic of substance misuse as a part of general psychopathology, whose fundamental interest lies in the meaning of existential vulnerability and comorbidities with the use and misuse of psychoactive substances. The existential conditions related to substance misuse are studied in terms of anthropological disproportions. They are borderline disproportion, phobic disproportion, melancholy disproportion, hyperthymic disproportion, compulsive disproportion, obsessive disproportion, schizoid disproportion. Finally, an investigation of the relationship between depression and anxiety and depression and melancholy is offered.
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Notes
- 1.
I will refer to this in the next section concerning structural disorders. Anthropological disproportions are essentially analogous to any human experience of suffering that originates in a reduction of the capacity of existence to transform itself over time (Messas 2004).
- 2.
I understand “positive” here as “according to the psycho-pathological definition” and “negative” as “opposed to the psycho-pathological definition”. This definition does not imply any affirmation of positive or negative psychological value.
- 3.
These categories are synonymous for the effects of this study.
- 4.
There are obviously experiences that cannot be interpreted individually, like suffocation caused by lack of oxygen or the approach of a dangerous animal. What I refer to here are experiences that most healthy individuals could have a more personal interpretation of.
- 5.
This also occurs in hyperthymic disproportion , although while the melancholic person submits to it, the hyperthymic person tries to use it to their best advantage, as I will show further on.
- 6.
It is not, therefore, a spatiality of distancing, as is seen in phobic disproportion , where the self-pole essentially continues to gravitate around a powerful other. Here, the self-pole tends to isolate itself from connection with the other-pole, constituting a deformity from which no liberation is possible.
- 7.
See note 3.
- 8.
Some phobic people may superficially reproduce this pattern of domination and submission. However, their capacity to shake off this pattern grows as they mature existentially.
- 9.
Hypermeria is a neologism, based on the association of one of the meanings of the prefix hyper in Ancient Greek, above measure (Liddell et al. 1940), with the noun meros, meaning part, portion. Hypermeria is literally “the condition in which the parts are more than they should be”, which results in an undesirable state. An identical use can be encountered in the term hypermetria – meaning “passing all measure”.
- 10.
Although, as we will see below, the ability to experience whole-part dialectics is not lost.
- 11.
This is a stronger form of hyperthymic hypersymmetry.
- 12.
It is important for the progress of this book to distinguish the concept of perfection from that of plenitude (Sect. 7.2). In plenitude, there is a suppression of the dialectics of the constituent parts of experience, an option for the supremacy of the whole over the parts. The goal of plenitude is the absolute. On the other hand, in order to experience perfection, it is fundamental for the parts that compose a whole to appear simultaneously in this structural arrangement. Perfection is an arrangement in which all the parts appear and so the notion of dialectics is not only maintained, but is accentuated. The conflict of the obsessive person is precisely the difficulty of maintaining a perfection that is constantly vanishing. Whereas the notion of perfection is an aspect of complexity, plenitude, is one of simplification, as I will explain further on.
- 13.
It is important to indicate here that this analysis considers obsession in its strictest sense. As indicated above, there are obsessive experiences that refer mainly to personal morality, which are based pre-reflexively on personal retention. That is not what I am talking about here.
- 14.
There is some resemblance to the schizoid person in this spirit of originality, as we will see.
- 15.
Similarly, I would argue that the notion of rationality is too nonspecific to capture what I see as central to this form of anthropological disproportion.
- 16.
We have seen above, for example, how melancholic disproportion is born from a heteronomic imbalance.
- 17.
Note how different this fragmentation is from that of borderline experiences. In them, the self-pole is fragmented due to its weakness in the face of a hypersufficient otherness. Here, we have a relatively hypersufficient self-pole, for whom the other-pole appears smaller (although the self-pole also fragments, as we will see below).
- 18.
This yearning for definition also justifies another typical behaviour in schizoid people, mainly suffering from eating disorders: self-mutilation. Self-hurt is a way to put an end to the indetermination of agonising conflict.
- 19.
I am of the view that antisocial behaviours are the most visible external manifestation of a variety of anthropological experiences produced in different contexts (Englebert 2019). However, I maintain that at their core, these behaviours generally have some schizoid root.
- 20.
Although in a somewhat distinct understanding of depression, this position is shared by Ratcliffe (2015).
- 21.
This definition is important in order not to confuse depression with the existential emptying of schizophrenic people. In it, even the capacity to make some positional sense is lost (at least in areas fractured by the disease). Depression must also be differentiated from the experience of grief. In this, there is not exactly a loss of positional sense, but the presence of an absence. As Ratcliffe points out, in grief, “the retention of an intense second-person connection” is maintained. (2015, p.199).
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Messas, G. (2021). Anthropological Disproportions (Anthropopathologies). In: The Existential Structure of Substance Misuse. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62724-9_3
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