Anticipation and Identity Formation towards a Rewriting of the Fundamental Fantasy in a case of Toxicomania

A psychoanalytic cure brings about fundamental changes in a person's emotional, cognitive and behavioral life by rewriting the past, by transforming the fundamental fantasy. People suffering from drug addiction have been considered by Freud as unsuitable for psychoanalytic treatment because every difficulty in the cure draws them back to dope themselves. Contemporary psychoanalysts rather ask for interrogating psychoanalytic theory and practice instead of refusing those subjects that are under the spell of a total but devastating solution. In this paper we shed light on a man's changing process during his stay in a Therapeutic Community for addiction. By living in a drug-free environment that pulls him back into social bonds a process evolves that affects his fundamental fantasy. We have been able to discern how his interpretation as a preschooler of his mother's leaving has played an anticipatory role in his identity formation. In the discussion several questions are dealt with: Why does this non-psychoanalytic setting succeeds to trigger a 'psychoanalytic' process that would not have been possible in a classic talking cure? What lessons can be learned for psychoanalytic theory and practice ?