Alcoholism and the Archetypal Past,
Thune
CE, Journal
of Studies on Alcohol, Vol.38 (l), 75-88, 1977
“Summary. The stereotypic A.A. member ' s life story becomes a model of his past and a model for the reanalysis and re-education of his life.
Basic
to any rehabilitation effort, whether medical, psychological or
sociological, is a series of assumptions about the nature and
structure of "therapy. " These assumptions define the
project to be undertaken and the goals to be sought, which, in turn,
are grounded in more fundamental presuppositions about the structure
of reality, the nature of the self, and the meaning of behavior. And
as suppositions, they tend not to be explicitly formulated by
participants nor recognized by observers; rather they normally are
taken as "given" or in the "order of things.''
It
is no accident that the therapeutic program of Alcoholics Anonymous
challenges the conventional medical, psychological and sociological
concepts of causation, and that it ignores the findings and questions
of specialists in these fields. Its roots lie less in the sciences
than in such nonpositivist, quasirevivalistic, "transcendental"
efforts as the Oxford Group Movement. To attempt to understand A.A.
on an analytic and positivist model obscures its uniqueness.”
“Conclusion
A.A.'s
"treatment," then, involves the systematic manipulation of
symbolic elements within an individual's life to provide a new vision
of that life, and of his world. This provides new coherence, meaning
and implications for behavior. While the processes which have been
discussed above clearly occurred in the groups investigated, the
literature indicates that similar patterns exist in other A.A.
groups. Indeed, any alcoholism treatment program must successfully
demonstrate to the alcoholic that he is an alcoholic, or, more
exactly, it must succeed in allowing the alcoholic to demonstrate
this fact to himself. This seems possible only if the alcoholic
himself can discover a new past to confirm what ultimately must be a
self-diagnosis. I suggest that even in systems operating according to
principles different from A.A.'s, one of the therapeutic requirements
is the presentation of a new model which defines self and world.
These suggestions, however, should not be taken as contradictions
of the conclusions reached by other analytic perspectives. Rather,
they are intended to provide phenomenological perspective which
complements other perspectives such as those offered by medicine,
sociology and psychology. It is the summation of these different but
clearly complementary perspectives, rather than academic arguments
over which is true or which is formally or logically prior, that will
lead to a more complete understanding of alcoholism and the
mechanisms of therapy.”
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