Non-observance thérapeutique et addiction, deux manifestations de l'impatience

Abstract

What has addiction in common with the non-compliance of a patient to his doctor's recommendations? This paper suggests that addiction and the patient's non-compliance to treatment - which are often associated - are homologous phenomena: common mechanisms do both define and partly explain them. Within this conceptual framework, various forms of addictions and noncompliance to long term therapies can be described as the expression of particular relationships that individuals have to time, which prevents them from giving the priority to the future, both in the short term when they have to choose a smaller sooner over a larger later reward, and in a more distant dimension when they have to imagine their future because of a limitation of their temporal horizon.