A therapist I know treats people who are addicted to shopping. The advice he gives them is to put their credit cards into a big bucket and freeze them. Then the chunk of ice that contains the cards is stored in the freezer. Whenever patients are tempted to make a spontaneous purchase, they are forced to invest a lot of time and effort into unfreezing the cards. While they do that, the urgent desire to make a purchase might subside.
This technique worked very well until a patient of his told him the following story. She experienced a profound desire to shop, took the chunk of ice with the cards from the freezer, ran into the garage, grabbed a wrench, ran back into the house, and demolished the piece of ice. Just smashed it to smithereens.
The patient was a small, skinny woman, yet her desire to shop was so powerful that she destroyed a huge piece of ice within a minute.
Psychoanalysis, in the meanwhile, can help one address the root causes of shopaholism (alcoholism, workaholism, etc.) instead of dealing only with the symptoms.
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