What members of Alcoholics Anonymous really believe

Many mental health professionals work with people who are members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or may benefit from AA attendance. This article provides practical information about AA that professionals can use to understand and work with people in AA. It is a summary of a survey of 187 members of AA as well as synthesising the literature on AA. Specifically, it describes what AA is, the twelve steps and principles that underlie them, common AA expressions and how they can be used in therapy, common concerns about AA, and how to get more information about AA. Implications of how AA's steps and language can be incorporated into therapy, how therapy can facilitate working the steps of AA, and how to address consumers’ (or professionals’) concerns about AA are addressed.     

Margarita Von Lüttichau: Intermediary between Jung and Bill Wilson

This paper details Von Lüttichau’s relationship with Carl Jung and Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), and her role as intermediary in the relationship between the two men. Her contribution within this mediator role has not been previously recognized but is an important factor in explaining how Jung became introduced to the AA 12-step format and validated the effectiveness of group work. After the Second World War, Von Lüttichau travelled between America and Switzerland and introduced the writings and ideas of Wilson and Jung to each other and acted as an intermediary between both titans. Jung gave Von Lüttichau extraordinarily detailed instructions on how the 12-step programme of AA could be applied to ‘general neurotics’. Von Lüttichau’s private papers provide a bridge between Jung and Wilson’s correspondence and help to piece together gaps in both Jungian and AA history.     

Unexpected Social Benefits of Alcoholics Anonymous for Older Women

The authors interviewed older women in Alcoholics Anonymous to explore the participants' most beneficial and meaningful experiences in the program. Findings suggested that these women obtained unexpected social benefits from their participation. These benefits are examined through the framework of Carstensen's ( 1993 ) socioemotional selectivity theory.     

Bridging professional and mutual-help: An application of the transtheoretical model to the mutual-help organization

The authors suggest that the mental health system of the nation could benefit by more fully embracing the idea of mutual-help (i.e., self-help), and this collaboration could be facilitated by the utilization of a well-established clinical theory to elucidate the psychological processes at work within mutual-help organizations. The processes of change of the transtheoretical model is offered as one potential framework. This well-established model has been used to help psychologists better understand clinical and professional phenemonena, but, to date, has been used less frequently with non-professional interventions. This article applies the ten processes of change of the transtheoretical model to mutual-help organizations, focusing on four groups, including Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Oxford House, GROW, and Schizophrenics Anonymous. The advantages of the transtheoretical model and its potential ability to act as a common language across clinical professionals and mutual-help organizations are discussed. In addition, advantages of bolstering the present mental health system using combinations of both forms of care along the recovery continuum are described.     

Uncovering Strengths of Children of Alcoholic Parents

Being a child of an alcoholic (COA) is neither a diagnosis nor a psychosocial death sentence. Neither alcoholic families nor COAs are monolithic. A variety of factors converge in developmental trajectories resulting in diverse individual outcomes. Supportive relationships with non-substance using parents and siblings and appropriate levels of parentification all may enable a significant proportion of COAs to enjoy high self-esteem, lack of problematic substance use, and good adaptive capability. Therapists and clients should refrain from looking at COAs through a deficit framework and instead should look for evidence of relational resilience in alcoholic families of origin. Such strengths-based assessments will increase therapeutic leverage with COAs seeking treatment for a range of presenting problems.     

Measurement invariance tests of the Impression Management sub-scale of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding

The Impression Management (IM) subscale of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (Paulhus, 1988) has been used as a proxy for common method variance in anonymous settings and as a cause of faking on personality testing in confidential settings. This study uses confirmatory factor analysis to conduct measurement invariance/equivalence tests (also known as multiple group analysis) on the IM subscale in a quasi-experiment in anonymous and confidential data collection settings. Using Brown’s (2006) bottom-up approach to Cheung and Rensvold’s (1999) model testing steps and Cheung and Rensvold’s (2002) statistical tests, the IM sub-scale was determined to have equal form, equal factor loadings, equal indicator error variances, equal factor variance, and an equal factor covariance in both 1-factor and 2-factor models in both data collection settings. Mean scale scores were significantly higher in the confidential group than in the anonymous group. These results suggest that using the IM sub-scale as a cause of faking and as a proxy for common method variance (CMV) is likely to be acceptable because the psychometric properties of the instrument are invariant across testing conditions.     

The Bottoming‐Out Experience and the Turning Point: A Phenomenology of the Cognitive Shift From Drinker to Nondrinker

The bottoming‐out experience (BOE) is commonly considered the catalyst to sobriety. A phenomenological study was conducted to gain an understanding about this occurrence for alcoholics. Results indicated two distinct experiences: the BOE and the turning point.     

Subjectification

For Martin Heidegger the death that comes singularly for each of us summons us to exist on our own and speak in our own name. But Gilles Delueze and Félix Guattari argue that it is a specific social machinery that summons us to speak in our own name and answer for what we do and are. This summons is a death sentence. They enjoin us to flee this subjectification, this subjection. They do recognize that the release of becomings in all directions can become destructive and self-destructive. There are several weaknesses in their conception.

Parental Communication of Responsiveness and Control as Predictors of Adolescents' Emotional and Behavioral Resilience in Families with Alcoholic Versus Nonalcoholic Parents

Interactions between parents and children establish norms for managing emotions and behavior, which are markers of resilience. This study examines how features of interpersonal communication between parents and children facilitate the resilience of children of alcoholic parents versus nonalcoholic parents. Parent–adolescent dyads (30 families of alcoholics, 30 families of nonalcoholics) were invited to participate in two videotaped interactions, which were then rated for parental responsiveness and control and adolescent emotion regulation and behavioral impulsivity. Parental responsiveness was positively associated with emotion regulation, and parental control was negatively associated with emotion regulation and positively associated with impulsivity. Moderation analyses point to several notable differences in the effects for alcoholic versus nonalcoholic families.