What happens
Frankfurt (1971, p. 12), as read in NOTE-545. The unwilling addict has two first-order desires, to take the drug and to refrain. He has a second-order volition that the desire to refrain be his will, meaning the desire that moves him. The craving moves him anyway, and he is “helplessly violated by his own desires”. The wanton addict, beside him, has the same first-order conflict and no preference about which desire wins.
Held fixed: both desires are his, and so is the higher-order preference. What varies is which desire is effective.
What it cannot show
Its standing is fictional, and it is a philosopher’s example. It shows that having a desire, or preferring it at a higher order, is not the same as its being effective. That is a conceptual possibility, and it is what CLAIM-047 uses. Whether identifying with the desire to refrain makes it “more truly his own” (p. 13) is Frankfurt’s account of ownership, THEORY-120, and the case does not settle it.