ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author shows how the author arrived at the notion that Sigmund Freud embarked upon the psychoanalytic voyage of discovery—as it were—under the influence of cocaine. Freud called it a 'magical substance'—a locution which should be interpreted as 'talking substance'. The author also shows how, in the present day and age, long after Freud awoke from the dreams into which cocaine had plunged him, his encounter with the drug enables psychoanalysts to revive a dimension of psychoanalysis which has been consigned to oblivion. Ever since the psychoanalytic religion became the opium of the analytic community, the dimension of laughing, gaiety—of desire in its rawest aspect—has been neglected. In addition, the allotrion lent to the beginnings of psychoanalysis a genuine touch of euphoria—a normal euphoria, indistinguishable from the drug-induced variety. Freud drew no distinction between the euphoria induced by coca, and the euphoria of 'normal well-being'.
