This paper, grounded on Psychoanalysis, aims at analyzing the issue of the addiction to drugs in contemporary adolescence, demonstrating how much the dimension of helplessness, with all its complexity, has been determinant in the current increase of this phenomenon. We’ll study the theme of helplessness on the background of the family, one of the institutions that, along with the other traditional institutions, is totally weakened and frail; the adolescent subjects emerge and develop in this field. Is the addiction to drugs one of the possible defensive responses in front of this situation of helplessness? These are some questions that guide our route, in which we’ll discuss the notion of psychical transmission, a notion that allows us establishing significant relations between the many elements involved in the issue we’re studying.
Drug addiction; adolescence; helplessness