---Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> Alec Ramsdell wrote:
>
> >the "addict" identity
>
> I don't know much about this, but something bothers me about framing
people
> as damaged, "recovering" but never recovered. Is there any critique
> of/alternative to this?
It bothers me too, and it's a cornerstone to the med model. Once in treatment all of a sudden one's past changes. Events, behaviours, memories, are all lined up under a master addict narrative, as slipshod as that narrative may be. Retroactively one was born an addict. It's an operational way, I think, of giving the subject some footing.
There's something known as Rational Recovery, which doesn't involve the spiritual trappings of AA. I'm not sure if it involves the essentialized addict. At this point in my reading I still think of Sedgwick's Foucaultian reading in "Epidemics of the Will" in _Tendencies_.
Alec _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com