This is a literature review research. It aimed to produce a psychoanalytical semiology of passion in Greek Antiquity. the central hypothesis which compares “passion” to “addiction” and “toxin” was discussed. The following aspects were analyzed: 1st- The senses and the etymological origin of passion in Aristotle. We have highlighted passion here, in a broader sense, as “the fact of undergoing an action passively” and, in a restricted sense, as “the fact of suffering a painful action passively”; 2nd- The senses of passion in Plato. We have accentuated here, in a general sense, “passion-sensitive as the fact of undergoing an action passively” and, in a specific sense, “passion as blindness to reality”, as a “sensorial illusion” and as “submission to an action coming from the outside world onto the body”; 3rd- Would the paradoxical sense of passions in Plato remain from the Renaissance, especially in Descartes and in Freud? and 4th- Would the Platonic “phármakon” be the semiological origin of the “toxic” and paradoxical senses of passions in general?
Passion; Addiction; Toxin; Greek antiquity; Psychoanalytical semiology