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Re: 12 step programs

Posted by mi nación malvada on October 12, 2004, at 0:52:19

In reply to 12 step programs, posted by Cass on September 27, 2004, at 17:40:24

Cass, thanks for your kind words on that other page. I am familiar with 12 steps programs and have reviewed meta-analysis of most of the research that measured the efficacy of those programs in comparison to other approaches for behavioral modification among people damaged by alcohol consuumption. The meta-analsis suggests they are not very effective - certainly not as effective as more direct interventions by trained professionals.

That does not mean they are not effective for some people. In a book about treatment of alcoholism from Johns Hopkins University, an author concluded, rather frankly, that the programs work as a sort of "surrogate addiction."

The role of faith in 12 steps groups is not addressed in the Johns Hopkins text.

I would suggest the groups work primarily by providing social support, which, if we are extremely honest, is nothing different from crowd dynamics and peer pressure. It's simply a matter of choosing which peers one will allow to apply pressure.

Systems of faith tend to serve as binding agents for groups. AA has drawn a loose enough definition that faith can be general and vague, but still requires submission to group authority, vicariously, through submission to authority of a "higher power".

The "higher power", in my understanding, serves to identify an authority beyond the human realm; a realm which most of us -- if we are honest --recognize to be infected by arbitrary, often capricious authority. The 12 step programs don't require that we identify this higher power as anything more than our own inner voice - what is important for the operation of the group is collective surrender. Whatever is this "higher power" we embrace, it serves to legitimize the authority of the group, whose primary authority in turn is in the area of pressuring us to behave in a certain way.

Now, I read the warning against so-called agnostics and atheists discussing faith on this page. But the person who wrote those prejudicial phrases embraces a belief that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of god." My faith is not much different - my faith holds that our language, and our linguistic constructs, are grossly imperfect and never nearly as coherent as we pretend them to be. My faith holds that my rationale and my language is no more coherent than that of a bug, and expects to find no better rationale among any of my language-weilding human peers. That my faith belittles the integrity of my language tends to serve and adore (obligatory worship here, so F.O. doctor) the flow of life that existed before humans deigned to name everything and tried to fit all of reality into idealized categories. My faith holds that my life matters nothing at all and that life itself has no inherent meaning whatsoever. It's probably not a very good religion for nation-building but if I am going to have faith, I want it to be in something I can truly honestly believe.


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poster:mi nación malvada thread:395948
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20040914/msgs/401959.html