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Definition
This chapter introduces critical perspectives of the way addiction has been conceived in mainstream mental health field during twentieth century, referring primarily to a disease or disorder of the brain. Among the counterpoints that are offered, we can differentiate between two main groups. The first one focuses on the very essence of addiction itself, its ontology. These theories question the individualized discourse in which addiction is embedded and offer other paradigms that can be used as lenses to analyze this phenomenon. They typically come from sociology and other social sciences, namely addiction as a choice, assemblage theory, and relational approaches towards addiction. The second big group of counternarratives come primarily from neuroscience and psychology. They mainly stay in the individual perspective but challenge the way of how addiction originates, its ontogenesis. The dislocation theory,...
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Nepustil, P., Swim, S. (2022). Critical Perspectives of Addiction. In: Lester, J.N., O'Reilly, M. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Critical Perspectives on Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12852-4_52-1
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