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We know that there are many reasons to want to travel. to travel the world. The desire to discover new places, the desire to escape from routine life to a remote part of the world and even for the chance to find a new job in a different city than the one you live in. even for the chance to find a new job in a different city than the one you live in. All of these reasons have to do with wanting to get to know a different city or town than the one you live in, but there are also pathological behaviors for wanting to travel the world. the world.
In this last decade, the main reasons many of us choose to travel is to take a well-deserved vacation after an exhausting year of work. But did you know that some people have an uncontrollable need to get away from where they live? Did you know that there is even a term for this kind of obsession? Obsession?
The term in question is "dromomania". The word, which is no longer used today, refers to a psychiatric pathology of the compulsive traveller observed at the end of the 19th century.
In 1887, Philippe Tissié, a student of Jean-Martin Charcot, was the first to study the case of a patient who had spent his life travelling the world. This pathology was named "dromomania" after dromos, an ancient Greek term meaning "to run". After a premonition, captivated by the name of a place, he steals some money and runs away unconsciously," explains Tissié. Then he wakes up a few days later, amnesic, in such and such a town in France, from where he is taken to Bordeaux France from where he is taken to Bordeaux France from where he is taken to Bordeaux France. There, under hypnosis, he is told of his unconscious tribulations.
Today we speak of "wanderer's neurosis" or "dissociative fugue" with a more or less unconscious and amnesic character. unconscious and amnesic. "It may correspond to a psychotic decompensation psychotic decompensation," explains psychiatrist Luis Pintor. The patient is delirious: he believes himself to be the object of persecution or feels invested with a mission. Proof that travel is not insignificant and can make the head spin," he says. and can make the head spin, between 15 and 20% of repatriations are motivated by a psychiatric emergency.
Scientific studies indicate that travelling brings happiness because it allows us to have pleasant experiences and memories. pleasant experiences and memories. Here are some symptoms you may experience if you are a travel addict:

  • Pack your suitcase 10 minutes before you leave for your trip.
  • You are always thinking and planning your next trip.
  • You prefer to dream of traveling the world instead of buying a house and starting a family.
  • You always find coins from other countries in your drawers and carry some in your wallet.
  • You have a corkboard map of the world with all the places you've visited and the places you're going to see.
Going back to the term dromomania, it can be confused with travel addiction, but it is not. travel addiction, but they have nothing to do with each other. Dromomania is called travel fugue or dissociative fugue. And it refers to dissociative amnesia, also known as psychogenic amnesia, the main symptom is the inability to retrieve biographical memories. In most cases, a loss of identity is observed. Dissociative disorder is sometimes explained as a defense strategy against a stressful situation, recalling a traumatic childhood situation. The amnesia due to lack of date in these cases can be a psychopathological index. psychopathological index. Recovery is possible and often spectacular. The contextual index (action, place, emotion) can lead to the recovery of a similar scene recovery of a similar scene (or of all memories), which comes out of the lost time, preserving the lost time, preserving the richness of the autonomy and sometimes even accompanying the ecmnesia, even accompanying the ecmnesia, even accompanying the ecmnesia.


Is it possible for travel to go from being something fun to an obsession?

In principle, travelling is something that should make us happy, something that we feel like doing to get away from the routine, as we have already mentioned, it doesn't have to be a problem for us. What happens is that when a person who travels because they don't feel comfortable with themselves, they decide to travel as a way to escape from reality. reality.

Travel can be "addictive" to the point of obsession. Many people have risked everything in life to travel, making their life a competition in which the goal is to go literally everywhere. Only they themselves can conclude whether their motivation is bragging about having been to more places than anyone else or the loss of a sense of reality or migratory suffering.

At this point, isolating oneself as a person can lead to an incessant feeling of dissatisfaction and disillusionment. of dissatisfaction and emptiness, family, work or personal conflicts, as well as the feeling of not being personal conflicts, as well as the impression of not finding oneself.