Substances psychotropes, substances du diable ?
Résumé
Psychotropic Substances, Devil Substances? From an historical perspective it is possible to outline a picture of the imaginary associated with the use of psychotropic substances in Western world. Although this specific imaginary is often very negatively connoted, is it actually an imaginary of evil?In the long run, depending on prevailing paradigms, we can detect two major interpretations: a religious paradigm in which the use of psychotropic substances is demonised as an archetype of evil; and a medical paradigm, associated with the emergence of modernity, which imposes a similar demonization, yet otherwise perceived under the terms of deviance and/or pathology.
