Discourses of behavioural addiction, normalisation and techniques of governmentality in inpatient substance abuse treatment

Abstract

The concept of addiction has expanded in recent decades to include diverse behaviours in addition to addiction to specific substances. Hence, the understanding of what constitutes normal behaviour and what constitutes addiction has been constantly changing. Substance-abusing clients are typically seen as having additional behavioural addictions, which manifest during their substance abuse treatment. In this article, we study the constructions of normality, deviance and the techniques of governmentality, produced by the discourses of behavioural addiction found in interviews with workers in an inpatient substance abuse treatment unit. Five identified discourses–psychological, disease, sociocultural, family and normalizing–differ from each other as regards to what is understood as addictive behaviour as opposed to normality and how it is explained; normality can be construed, for example, as the balance between internal emotions, health and adequate parenting, which may be beyond the reach of those addicted. What is considered a behavioural addiction is questioned in the normalizing discourse. Discourses also differ as regards to the techniques of governmentality and in the ways individual responsibility is understood.