Emotional ontologies: Paradigm shifts in drug addiction treatment in a therapeutic community in Italy

A paradigmatic shift in drug addiction treatment took place in a therapeutic community in northern Italy over the last 30 years, moving from a ritual model to a person-centred one. While both models can be interpreted as devices for re-shaping subjects who, through drug addiction, are experiencing a deep biographical crisis and are in need of reaching their deepest emotional level, the underlying ‘emotional ontologies’ – i.e. the role, place and sense of emotions – are quite different. This local change can be put into relation with wider anthropological changes affecting Western societies over recent decades.