Solutions to addiction based on correcting individual behavior are hopeless without analyzing the role of dislocation in capitalist society, argues Bruce K. Alexander in his paper The Roots of Addiction in a Free Market Society.This blogger introduces this thesis published in a longer PDF document authored by Bruce Alexander who is a Professor of Psychology at Simon Fraser University located in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Alexander's paper presents a radical thesis regarding addiction which enlarges the concept to apply to other forms other than the conventional forms such as alcohol and drugs.
The English word “addiction” came to be narrowly applied to excessive drug use in the 20th century, but was generally applied to non-drug habits during many previous centuries. There is ample clinical evidence that severe addictions to non-drug habits are every bit as dangerous and resistant to treatment as drug addiction.More importantly, his concept relegates the latter to symptoms instead of causes. He identifies the primary cause as "dislocation". By reading only this article, it was not clear to me what Alexander meant by this term. This article seems to suggest only a physical dislocation. But by reading sections of the longer PDF report by Alexander, it is clear to me that he means any significant dislocation or separation from a society's web of supports and social relationships. Here are some excerpts that point to this meaning:
It [dislocation] can arise from a natural disaster that destroys a person’s home or from a debilitating accident that bars the person from full participation in society. It can be inflicted by violence, e.g., by driving masses of people from their territory, or by abusing an individual child who thereafter shrinks from all human contact. It can be inflicted without violence, e.g., as when a parent instills an unrealistic sense of superiority that makes a child insufferable to others. It can be voluntarily chosen, e.g., in the single-minded pursuit of wealth in a “gold rush,” or in jumping at a “window of opportunity.” Finally, dislocation can be universal if a society systematically curtails psychosocial integration in all its members. Universal dislocation is endemic in free market society.
.... Because western society is now based on free market principles that mass-produce dislocation, and because dislocation is the precursor of addiction, addiction to a wide variety of pursuits is not the pathological state of a few but, to a greater or lesser degree, the general condition in western society. Because western free market society provides the model for globalization, mass addiction is being globalized, along with the English language, the Internet, and Mickey Mouse.The concept also suggests alienation which has been written about throughout history, but in the era under capitalism, such names as Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Erich Fromm are some of the most prominent authors who have linked capitalism with alienation. Alexander builds on this edifice to link "dislocation" or alienation to behaviors characterized as addiction, and even more specifically to drug addiction. The fact that most other Western intellectuals have not, shows the widespread enforcement of capitalist values among capitalist ideologs in defense of their system.
