Paul Verhaeghe – Remarks on the Theory and Treatment of (Pathological) Administrations of Enjoyment
 
THE LETTER 25 (Summer 2002) pages 17-20
 
Addiction, like prostitution, is a phenomenon as old as the human race. Evidently they have something in common – their relationship to desire and enjoyment – and both pose a problem for the society in which they occur. It is not too difficult to find a reason for this. A society is a perfect example of an institution consisting of a collection of people held together by a number of commonly shared rules and conventions. This applies to every institution, be this a family, a school, an association, or a psychiatric institution. The rules and conventions that we find in these institutions, no matter how private they may be, always have the same aim: the regulation of enjoyment on the basis of a number of collectively developed and often legally binding agreements. Hence, every institution also presents an ideal, precisely through which that regulation is articulated.