On Apr 13, 2005, at 6:08 PM, Robert J. Chassell wrote:
The trouble I have with 12-step programs is twofold. ...
1. The "Admit you are powerless" clause, particularly in conjunction with the "Higher Power" idea.
30 or 40 years ago, Charles Hampden-Turner (in, I think, "The Delancy Street Asylum") said, if I remember rightly, that many people with addictions think of themselves as being able to overcome the addiction, but don't bother.
!!
That's really interesting. *Really* interesting.
Only after they have made a major psychological shift do they bother. One way to make such a psychological shift is to give up and recreate. An anthropologist would call it a rebirth ritual.
Or something like a charismatic case of being "saved" and getting baptized?
Also, Hampden-Turner made the point that the most likely people to make such a shift in the US culture of the time were people whose background was one or other form of Christian puritanism. That is because people in other US cultures tended to be more forgiving.
Of themselves and their faults, you mean, or of the "errant sheep" in their communities? (Or both?)
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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