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Personal Responsibility
Jun. 5th, 2003 12:16 pmI got SLEEP last night. It was good sleep, too - the kind where you wake up in the morning and getting out of bed isn't so bad, even if it is really comfortable. I'm still a bit tired, which means I should try to go to bed earlier tonight, but I'm not in that exhausted, can't function state like I was yesterday.
Odin, that sucked!
But today it is the new and improved me, capable of making mistakes much faster and more impressively. In other news, our computer guy - L.C. - has a new nickname: Richie. I hate telemarketers.
I ran into an interesting article today on Bully Magazine that spoke about Alcoholics Anonymous and how it was a religious cult masquerading as a self-help program. While I was working with adults who had mental illnesses, I ran into AA rather a lot. We have a bi-weekly AA program and quite a few of the clients were alcoholics. For the first time, I ran into the 12 steps of AA and what I read left me deeply disturbed. It seemed like the focus of the group was to remove all of its members sense of self control by having them admit they are powerless and then submit their will to a higher power. This bothers me on a number of layers. Tim Hall wrote about the Five Myths of AA; I'm going to speak about what I view as the psychological ramifications of AA.
First of all, psychologically speaking and as far as we know so far, there are only a very few things that are legitimate psychological diseases and almost all of them involve trauma to the brain - not the mind but the physical brain. It is theorized that schizophrenia, dissociative disorders and personality disorders are all incurable, but it is equally likely that there are cures we just haven't stumbled onto yet or that we're refusing to acknowledge because we're so caught up in viewing psychology as pathology.
To me, alcoholism seems to be a manifestation of a certain type of personality - that of an addictive (or greedy) personality. The focus of the addiction is alcohol to alcoholics, but given the recent rise of '-aholics' including shoppaholics and sexaholics I think we can reasonably suppose that these have a common theme - that of wanting to escape pain or boredom via an external source. I think the fact that individuals can become addicted to such a variety of things (including alcohol, drugs, gambling, shopping, sex, eating) is an indication that the chemical makeup of the object isn't as important as the chemical makeup of our response to it, ergo the pathology, if it is such, is internal not external (for drugs such as cocaine and nicotine there is a physical component, though, which makes this problem much more confusing).
A long time ago, Freud postulated this thing called sublimation. Sublimation was the act of taking ones desires (lust, hate, greed) and channeling that energy through something else in order to function in society. So, lust would be sublimated into a complex series of mating rituals that eventually lead to monogamy. This works well if it is conscious. This works significantly less well if it is not conscious or if the social structure fragments, as it has now. I think all of this '-aholic' nonsense is a form of sublimation gone horribly, horribly wrong. When one feels lonely, one has a number of choices - call a friend or acquaintance, go out into public to meet someone, eat a gallon of ice cream. At some point, due to internal forces and external learning, the eating of a gallon of ice cream becomes the sublimation for feeling lonely, a pairing which is reinforced by the serotonin release in the brain in response to any chocolate in that gallon of ice cream. Eventually, one is overweight and still lonely; the problem hasn't been solved, it's only been sublimated - and sublimated badly. From a Jungian perspective, alcohol is a substitute for 'spirit' or religious feeling and food is a substitute for 'matter' or emotional matters (especially pertaining to ones mother; matter = Mater. Hehe.).
What AA seems to do by taking the self and the self's power out of the equation when dealing with alcoholism is set up its members to fail. According to Mr. Hall, AA's success rate is around 2%; I'm not particularly surprised. I knew a client who went to 3-4 AA meetings a week. He received only two dollars a day. He once took his two dollars, stopped at a liquor store and bought the cheap stuff and put it in his bag, went to an AA meeting and finally went home and drank! He had no reason to stop. He was being supported in his drinking, and it wasn't really his fault anyway, so even if he drinks it's 'all right.' At no point was this client at all invested in his own treatment, so of course it failed! And at every step of the way, the very people who claimed they were going to help him were reinforcing his status as a powerless individual.
Powerless individuals 'can't help themselves,' and so are set up to fail. In my opinion, it is only when one takes responsibility for every part of one's life and mind that one can subsequently improve in relation to the rest of the world. Of course, taking responsibility for things sucks, so most people understandably don't do it.
Only a total moron would choose to be miserable for a while in order to become a better person. ;)
( Good questions for today! )
Odin, that sucked!
But today it is the new and improved me, capable of making mistakes much faster and more impressively. In other news, our computer guy - L.C. - has a new nickname: Richie. I hate telemarketers.
I ran into an interesting article today on Bully Magazine that spoke about Alcoholics Anonymous and how it was a religious cult masquerading as a self-help program. While I was working with adults who had mental illnesses, I ran into AA rather a lot. We have a bi-weekly AA program and quite a few of the clients were alcoholics. For the first time, I ran into the 12 steps of AA and what I read left me deeply disturbed. It seemed like the focus of the group was to remove all of its members sense of self control by having them admit they are powerless and then submit their will to a higher power. This bothers me on a number of layers. Tim Hall wrote about the Five Myths of AA; I'm going to speak about what I view as the psychological ramifications of AA.
First of all, psychologically speaking and as far as we know so far, there are only a very few things that are legitimate psychological diseases and almost all of them involve trauma to the brain - not the mind but the physical brain. It is theorized that schizophrenia, dissociative disorders and personality disorders are all incurable, but it is equally likely that there are cures we just haven't stumbled onto yet or that we're refusing to acknowledge because we're so caught up in viewing psychology as pathology.
To me, alcoholism seems to be a manifestation of a certain type of personality - that of an addictive (or greedy) personality. The focus of the addiction is alcohol to alcoholics, but given the recent rise of '-aholics' including shoppaholics and sexaholics I think we can reasonably suppose that these have a common theme - that of wanting to escape pain or boredom via an external source. I think the fact that individuals can become addicted to such a variety of things (including alcohol, drugs, gambling, shopping, sex, eating) is an indication that the chemical makeup of the object isn't as important as the chemical makeup of our response to it, ergo the pathology, if it is such, is internal not external (for drugs such as cocaine and nicotine there is a physical component, though, which makes this problem much more confusing).
A long time ago, Freud postulated this thing called sublimation. Sublimation was the act of taking ones desires (lust, hate, greed) and channeling that energy through something else in order to function in society. So, lust would be sublimated into a complex series of mating rituals that eventually lead to monogamy. This works well if it is conscious. This works significantly less well if it is not conscious or if the social structure fragments, as it has now. I think all of this '-aholic' nonsense is a form of sublimation gone horribly, horribly wrong. When one feels lonely, one has a number of choices - call a friend or acquaintance, go out into public to meet someone, eat a gallon of ice cream. At some point, due to internal forces and external learning, the eating of a gallon of ice cream becomes the sublimation for feeling lonely, a pairing which is reinforced by the serotonin release in the brain in response to any chocolate in that gallon of ice cream. Eventually, one is overweight and still lonely; the problem hasn't been solved, it's only been sublimated - and sublimated badly. From a Jungian perspective, alcohol is a substitute for 'spirit' or religious feeling and food is a substitute for 'matter' or emotional matters (especially pertaining to ones mother; matter = Mater. Hehe.).
What AA seems to do by taking the self and the self's power out of the equation when dealing with alcoholism is set up its members to fail. According to Mr. Hall, AA's success rate is around 2%; I'm not particularly surprised. I knew a client who went to 3-4 AA meetings a week. He received only two dollars a day. He once took his two dollars, stopped at a liquor store and bought the cheap stuff and put it in his bag, went to an AA meeting and finally went home and drank! He had no reason to stop. He was being supported in his drinking, and it wasn't really his fault anyway, so even if he drinks it's 'all right.' At no point was this client at all invested in his own treatment, so of course it failed! And at every step of the way, the very people who claimed they were going to help him were reinforcing his status as a powerless individual.
Powerless individuals 'can't help themselves,' and so are set up to fail. In my opinion, it is only when one takes responsibility for every part of one's life and mind that one can subsequently improve in relation to the rest of the world. Of course, taking responsibility for things sucks, so most people understandably don't do it.
Only a total moron would choose to be miserable for a while in order to become a better person. ;)
( Good questions for today! )
