The tenets adhered to by Alcoholics Anonymous – include the belief that alcoholism is a disease; that alcoholics have lost all power over alcohol; that, for an alcoholic, loss of control follows from the first drink; that total abstention is the only way to treat the disease.
There are two problems with this package of assumptions:
the first is that they aren’t necessarily true,
the second is that the ‘disease model’ emphasises the similarities between the afflicted
this is at the price of their more interesting, and perhaps more significant, differences.
Go to any AA meeting, as Chirstopher Hitchens has it, and listen to a host of banalities, so confidently aired, in dingy Church basements across the land,
But before going it might be a good idea to read Bouvard and Pécuchet, Flaubert’s satire on the indiscriminate accumulation of half-digested knowledge. Because that is what you will hear, half-digested knowledge.
But all this is to miss the point.The point being that however flawed the knowledge is, the community of people getting together and supporting each other Works, It is is the 'group' therapy that works.
And the AA programme is the so so bandage around the wound which serves little real purpose and
can be disbanded in time as it plays little real purpsoe in the healing process..
There are two problems with this package of assumptions:
the first is that they aren’t necessarily true,
the second is that the ‘disease model’ emphasises the similarities between the afflicted
this is at the price of their more interesting, and perhaps more significant, differences.
Go to any AA meeting, as Chirstopher Hitchens has it, and listen to a host of banalities, so confidently aired, in dingy Church basements across the land,
But before going it might be a good idea to read Bouvard and Pécuchet, Flaubert’s satire on the indiscriminate accumulation of half-digested knowledge. Because that is what you will hear, half-digested knowledge.
But all this is to miss the point.The point being that however flawed the knowledge is, the community of people getting together and supporting each other Works, It is is the 'group' therapy that works.
And the AA programme is the so so bandage around the wound which serves little real purpose and
can be disbanded in time as it plays little real purpsoe in the healing process..
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