‘Speak to the Mother to Understand her Son’: An Hypothesis of Intervention with Drug-Addicted Patients

Abstract

This paper is based on clinical observation in a Drug Addition Unit within a public health service. It describes therapy which focuses on psychotherapeutic intervention with the parents of young, drugaddicted patients, enabling those patients to re-elaborate emotions which would be difficult for them to accept, if they were faced with them directly. In synergy with the treatment of the son and through out-patients' activity, the parents become an integral part of the cure within the group, which is voluntary and with other ‘anxious parents’, allowing the recognition and elaboration of some aspects otherwise difficult to reach. Three clinical examples illustrate this.