The concept of addictive identity occupies a contested yet generative space within the depth-psychology corpus, designating the condition in which the self becomes organized around — and ultimately colonized by — its addictive object or behavior. Authors approach this configuration from divergent angles. Stephanie Brown articulates it most clinically: the belief in control over one’s substance use becomes the organizing principle of the entire personality, demanding ever more elaborate self-deception and producing a self whose coherence is fundamentally false. Bruce Alexander situates addictive identity within a sociological frame, tracing it to Eriksonian ‘negative identity’ — the self that coalesces around marginality and dislocation when positive psychosocial integration fails. Addenbrooke’s narrators illuminate the phenomenology from within: the ‘addict’ self progressively overwhelms once-valued aspects of personality, reducing the will and collapsing the ego’s cohesive function. Christina Grof, writing from a transpersonal register, argues that spiritual identity persists beneath the addictive self as an occluded but indestructible ground. David Schoen reads the addictive identity through Jungian analytical categories, particularly the Addiction-Shadow-Complex, which seizes ego-function and supplants authentic selfhood. Across these positions, the key tension is whether addictive identity represents a failure of development, a response to dislocation, an archetypal possession, or a distorted spiritual seeking — a tension that remains productively unresolved in the literature.
Our need to tell ourselves that we can control our addiction becomes the organizing principle for our lives; it dictates everything we say and every move we make.
Brown argues that the denial of powerlessness becomes the structural core of the addictive self, generating a false identity organized entirely around maintaining the fiction of control.
, A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety, and Radical Transformation, 2004thesis
Erikson was quite serious in his discussion of the relationship between prolonged failure of psychosocial integration among adolescents and what he called ‘negative identity’, which is essentially the same thing as addiction.
Alexander equates addictive identity with Erikson’s ‘negative identity,’ rooting it in the failure of psychosocial integration rather than in pharmacological compulsion.
, The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008thesis
Ben came to realise that once-valued parts of himself were being overwhelmed by the ‘addict’ self — to his detriment. In this powerless state, the ego, in terms of the will, may collapse and surrender.
Addenbrooke documents how the addictive identity progressively displaces prior self-structures, reducing ego-coherence to the point of collapse.
, Survivors of Addiction: Narratives of Recovery, 2011thesis
In a sense, your addiction becomes your higher power. Your spirituality is your unhealthy dependence. It is the one thing that is greater than yourself that you think you can trust.
Brown reframes addictive identity as a distorted spiritual structure in which the substance or behavior usurps the function of a transcendent organizing authority.
, A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety, and Radical Transformation, 2004thesis
No matter how concealed our spiritual identity remained during addiction, it was always there; we simply were not able to see it. It was shielded not only by the fact of our humanness but also by our behavior.
Grof contends that the addictive identity is a surface formation overlying an indestructible deeper Self, rendering recovery a process of uncovering rather than reconstruction.
, The Thirst for Wholeness: Attachment, Addiction, and the Spiritual Path, 1993thesis
This is a strong indication diagnostically that the person is still very much under the powerful control of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex, and probably has not successfully and effectively taken Steps One, Two, and Three of A.A.
Schoen operationalizes addictive identity through the Jungian category of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex, treating it as an autonomous psychic structure that supplants ego-directed selfhood.
, The War of the Gods in Addiction: C.G. Jung, Alcoholics Anonymous and Archetypal Evil, 2020supporting
The recollection and retelling of the story acts as a talisman of hope, an intrinsic part of a new identity as a non-drinker or non-user.
Addenbrooke frames recovery as the construction of a new identity narrative that explicitly supplants the addictive identity through testimony and memory.
, Survivors of Addiction: Narratives of Recovery, 2011supporting
At this point in the addiction process, others often observe what is known as the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde phenomenon — the fundamental personality change of the individual when they are participating in the addictive behavior.
Schoen uses the Jekyll/Hyde motif to illustrate the split in addictive identity between the social persona and the possession-state enacted during active use.
, The War of the Gods in Addiction: C.G. Jung, Alcoholics Anonymous and Archetypal Evil, 2020supporting
Becoming addicted is a developmental process. Many people believe that it happens quickly or that they were always addicted, even born addicted, and were just waiting to live it out.
Brown situates addictive identity within a developmental framework, resisting essentialist accounts and emphasizing the gradual ‘turn’ toward the addictive object as a formative process.
, A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety, and Radical Transformation, 2004supporting
They are neither vicious nor evil, but simply human beings struggling desperately to survive and maintain some sort of identity, blanking out awareness of the harm that they do as much as possible.
Alexander argues that addictive identity is fundamentally an identity-maintenance strategy deployed under conditions of extreme dislocation, not a moral or neurological pathology.
, The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008supporting
A woman often finds that she is alcoholic and that she is also coalcoholic, or codependent. As she walks her recovery path, she also pays attention to these identities.
Brown notes the multiplicity and layering of addictive identity structures within a single individual, complicating any singular account of the addicted self.
, A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety, and Radical Transformation, 2004supporting
Belonging to a group gave each of them a sense of stepping away from a home they were keen to leave behind. The cohesive element in each of these groups was the drinking or drug experimentation.
Addenbrooke traces the early formation of addictive identity to adolescent group belonging, where substance use furnishes the cohesive social identity that family life failed to provide.
, Survivors of Addiction: Narratives of Recovery, 2011supporting
Khantzian (2017) suggested that addiction is a means of coping with psychological pain due to deficiencies in emotion regulation skills, alternative coping skills, social relationships, and being properly medicated.
Dennett summarizes the self-medication hypothesis as a psychological backdrop to addictive identity, linking it to deficits in affect regulation and relational capacity.
, Individuation in Addiction Recovery: An Archetypal Astrological Perspective, 2025aside
He described himself as having two wills, or a conflicting will and habit. Thus, today’s inconsistency about whether or not addiction is ‘out of control’ has ancient, Christian roots.
Alexander historicizes the divided-will structure at the core of addictive identity, tracing its lineage to Augustinian theology and its residue in contemporary debates about agency.
, The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008aside