Distorsione della relazione oggettuale e persistere della tossicodipendenza.

The authors base their paper on their work experiences with drug-addicts and elucidate the psychopathological factors which favour the persistency of the addiction, beyond the occasional assumption of drug, quite common with adolescents under social and economical pressure. From the discussion of the cases it emerges how the drug-addict, in his use of the drug, concretely reproduces the continuous conflict caused by his relationship with a non reliable object, which is at the same time idealized as omnipotent and despised and feared as destructive and tyrannical. In this particular distortion of the object relation, what appears to be determinant, in keeping with the results of the competent literature, is the quality of the parents-child relationship; most evident is the absence of an adequate emotional relationship, between the two extremes of permissivism and authoritarianism. In this kind of situation the psychotherapic approach seems scarsely efficient, in the absence of adequate external support, but what seems important is an early detection of the disturbance in the relationship, in order to effect therapeutic and preventive interventions.