The Addictive Personality and “Addictive Trigger Mechanisms” (ATMs): The Self Psychology of Addiction and Its Treatment

doi:10.4324/9780203778555-13

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The Addictive Personality and “Addictive Trigger Mechanisms” (ATMs): The Self Psychology of Addiction and Its Treatment

ABSTRACT

Building upon our previous work (Ulman and Paul, 1989) on addiction, we offer a refined and expanded version of our theory of the self psychology of addiction and our approach to the self-psychological treatment of the addictive personality. In support of our revised theoretical conceptualization and therapeutic approach, we offer two new treatment case histories-the cases of JoAnn and Joe.