ABSTRACT
This chapter is an in-depth look at addictions and their treatments. Using an ISP perspective, and it’s focus on the generative leading edge, the chapter expands on ideas originally conceived by the author and Richard Ullman in The Self Psychology of Addiction and Its Treatment: Narcissus in Wonderland (2006). A case example will also be included which focuses on a patient who was addicted to love. The treatment followed the progression of the patients’ initial resistance to the leading edge of the selfobject transference, and how through the understanding and interpretation of shame and vulnerability led to the unfolding of both idealizing and twinship selfobject transferences, activating the generative, leading edge of the transference.
