Fighting fire with gasoline.

Methadone is state-issued drugs for addicts. A chemical fix for a chemical problem. The subject remains absent—now with a prescription.

Fighting fire with gasoline.

Methadone is the pharmacological solution to a pharmacological problem. One drug to treat addiction to another drug. The logic is impeccable in its circularity: if the problem is chemical, the answer must be chemical. The subject disappears twice: first into heroin, then into its legal substitute.

This strategy reveals something about our era: we prefer to manage symptoms rather than interrogate them. Methadone doesn't cure; it administers. It keeps the addict functional without ever asking what they sought in the substance. It's harm reduction elevated to health policy. The State becomes an authorized dealer, dispensing regulated jouissance to prevent unregulated jouissance.

Contemporary clinical practice receives subjects who have been medicated but never spoke about their addiction. They arrived at a counter, not a consulting room. The question of desire remains indefinitely suspended by the substitute's efficacy. The subject stays absent—now with a prescription.

References Loose, R. (2011). Modern symptoms and their effects as forms of administration. In Y. Goldman Baldwin, K. Malone & T. Svolos (Eds.), Lacan and Addiction: An Anthology (pp. 1-38). Karnac Books.

Psychotherapy

1h

Book Now

Suitcase children.

Suitcase children: abandoned, transported, reunited with strangers who claimed to be parents. The trauma began when they crossed without you.

Suitcase children.

They were called "suitcase children"—creatures transported between countries according to adult convenience. Abandoned with grandparents while their parents emigrated, reunited years later with strangers who claimed kinship. The child who lost her parents at age two does not recognize the telephone voice a year later: "Who are you?". The woman who carried her in her womb has become a stranger. Siblings are new faces. The biological family is more foreign than the foreign country.

Özbek documents the devastation: the younger the child at the moment of abandonment, the deeper the damage. Each parental visit reopens the wound; each departure confirms that attachment is dangerous. Better not to take root. These children grow up fearing connection because the original connection was betrayed. Their parents chose geography over bond. The message inscribed in the body: whoever you love, disappears. Protect yourself by not loving.

The adult analysand who was a suitcase child presents relational difficulties that precede their own migration. The trauma did not begin when they crossed the border—it began when their parents crossed without them.

Rerefences Özbek, T. (2021). The tale of those who went forth: On the inner experience of migration and forced migration. En K. White & I. Klingenberg (Eds.), Migration and intercultural psychoanalysis: Unconscious forces and clinical issues (pp. 91–107). Routledge.

Psychotherapy

1h

Book Now

Making home of the limit.

Babel was not punishment—it was the consequence of not tolerating limits. Making home of the limit is the only possible maturity.

Making home of the limit.

The tower of Babel promised heaven—and produced dispersion. The myth warns: omnipotence is paid for with fragmentation. Whoever builds up to the clouds ends up without ground. The longing for total understanding, for a single language, for fusion without remainder, collapses into multiplied confusion. Babel is not arbitrary punishment but structural consequence: whoever cannot tolerate limits loses all ground.

Gogolin proposes a therapeutic inversion: making the limit a home rather than an obstacle to overcome. Partial understanding is not the failure of total understanding—it is the only understanding possible between separate humans. The therapist who admits to not fully understanding offers more than one who feigns transparency. The gap between persons does not close; it is inhabited. Attempting to eliminate it produces the loneliness it promised to cure. Accepting it generates genuine intimacy between subjects who recognize their irreducible difference.

Clinical work with migrants teaches that no country will be a complete home—but a partial home is enough. The analysand who accepts Babel stops searching for a pre-linguistic paradise that never existed.

References Gogolin, N. (2021). Tolerance for non-understanding: Understanding and its limits – the confusion of tongues. En K. White & I. Klingenberg (Eds.), Migration and intercultural psychoanalysis: Unconscious forces and clinical issues (pp. 76–87). Routledge.

Psychotherapy

1h

Book Now