ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to give prominence to one of the functions which characterises psychical activity more than any other: the cognitive ability of the mind. According to Melanie Klein, the early impulse to penetrate the maternal body, with all its charge of oral and cannibalistic primitivism, is not merely an expression of primitive sadism, but also, the expression of a precocious "epistemophilic instinct" on the part of the infant. The internet has been used, and continues to be increasingly used, because of the undisputable gains it procures to satisfy people’s drives or their epistemological drives. Neglecting a single causative trigger is to be avoided for fear of it becoming a risk factor highly predisposing to a recurrence of disease, something that often occurs in addiction. As happened with substance addiction, evidence has come forward that, in internet addiction, stimuli received are able to induce modifications of certain areas of the brain.
