Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 1 20

Bates
IDS Capstone
IDS4934-14Summer CW01
Friday, July 18, 2014

Final Research Project: Narrative and Personal Myth-

Making Within Alcohol and Drug Addicted Recovery
Communities

Section I - Introduction
Stories of personal transformation are universal, grabbing our attention, not letting go.

Interestingly, in recent years, personal transformation through the retelling of the protagonists
own story has become a major theme in works of literature, lm and music; in these, characters
dont change because of external events, but because they come to see themselves in a new
and different light they retell their own stories and in so doing, transform.

This storytelling motif personal transformation as a direct result of narrative recreation is a

reection of post-modern philosophys fascination with worldmaking and reication, and is the
major theme of Shrek, The Musical. In Shrek, every major character (including the villain) play
out this same plot, including the Storybook Creatures who open the musical, singing about
how they never get a fair shake:

Story of My Life, Shrek: The Musical

[Guard] (Spoken)
Alright, when I call your name step forward. Pinocchio, the puppet.

[Pinocchio] (Spoken)
I'm not a puppet, I'm a real boy.
(Nose grows and he laughs)

[Guard] (Spoken)
That's your patch of mud down there.

[Pinocchio] (Spoken)
Oh, dumped on a swamp. Man, I tell you sometimes being a fairytale creature sucks
pine sap.

[Pinocchio] (Singing)
Life is disappointing,
Woe is what I know.
Outed by my nose,
That's just how it goes,
For poor Pinocchio.
Story of my life,
Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 2 20
Always doomed to fail.
Cheated by a fox,
Swallowed by a whale.
That's the story of my life, oh yeah,
That's the story of my life.
(Story of My Life Cast)

As the musical draws to a close, each and every character retells their own story constituting
many stories within a single story and as a result, each knows happiness. They are
engaging, on stage, in narrative reconstruction.

Among psychologists and mental health professionals, the idea of narrative therapy or narrative
reconstruction is gaining momentum; among addictions researchers, it is an old topic, but one
little understood; among philosophers, it is a post-modern thought, accepted by some, denied
by others; among sociologists, it is still in the emergent phase. This simple idea is central to my
research paper: how retelling stories can help people (in my example, men and women
suffering from chemical addiction) to know happiness.

Section II - Background/History
Since its beginning nearly eighty years ago, Alcoholics Anonymous has assisted millions of
alcoholics in redening their life in such a way that they can reenter society. Similarly, Narcotics
Anonymous does the same thing for its members. Both societies are involved in assisting their
members to reformulate their life stories in such a way that hopelessness gives way to
optimism, that past events are recast in the light of living with a progressive illness (not as a
succession of moral failures) and that spirituality an unclear term, never claried plays
some part in the ongoing drama of life. These two groups have been studied widely, with mental
health professionals, philosophers, sociologists, and many others analyzing the recovery
process in an attempt to either supplant the twelve step method or to understand it better so
they can assist those in process achieve successful outcomes. This goal is important, for
among addicted and in recovery individuals, success is by no means guaranteed, as Ford
Brooks, Jan Arminio, and Kadie-Ann Caballero-Dennis write in "A Narrative Synthesis Of
Addictions, Surrender, And Relapse: Conrmation And Application:

for every person entering recovery, there are ample numbers who still suffer or
relapse despite monumental efforts to discontinue their use. This continues to
pose important questions for addiction counselors; What contributes to
relapse? and How can potential areas of vulnerability to relapse be
identied? (Brooks et al. 376)

As previously mentioned, one of the most interesting areas of inquiry to emerge in the last two
decades regards narrative formation, the theory that as people recovering from addiction re-
engage with society, they must (in order to be successful) learn to retell their stories to reform
their narratives creating stability where before there had been none. Leading researchers
have become convinced that somehow it is within this process, within this explanatory self-
narrative, that addicted persons are able to achieve and sustain long-term sobriety as Katerina
Flora writes in "Recovery From Substance Abuse: A Narrative Approach To Understanding The
Motivation And Ambivalence About Change:
Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 3 20
narratives allow each individual to unfold one or more explanatory schemas
concerning his or her recovery, giving meaning to the painful recovery process
and to the forthcoming successful or unsuccessful therapeutic result. (Flora 313)

This paper is an exploration of that process.

Section III - Justification of Interdisciplinary Approach
Narrative is an intrinsically interdisciplinary term, used in multiple disciplines and in multiple
ways. It can refer to the self/societally-constructed world (sociology), as narrative therapy
(psychology), narrative medicine (addictions therapy), world-building formation and
transformation (philosophy), and spiritual narrative-making (religion) among many, many others.
No single discipline can hope to provide a complete understanding of the process or its
application, none can even provide a universally applicable denition or circumscribe the entire
scope of the research problem. While we accept that a generally accepted denition is
impossible, for consistency, this study adopts Floras interdisciplinary denition:

A narrative contains facts that connect to a particular theme, unfolds in time, and
has a certain plot. A story is presented as a chosen sequence of specic facts or
circumstances that are more important or realistic than others. As the story
unfolds, the narrator is called on to choose specic information that advances the
story, as opposed to other information that will not. (314 Flora)

Since post-modern philosophy has had a tremendous inuence on each of the elds considered
throughout this research, it is important to note how that philosophy has contributed and
changed the fundamental approach of various disciplines and scholars to the idea of narrative.

Leading postmodern thinkers teach that humans are in a constant process of narrative-creation
and re-creation. Nelson Goldman and Ernest Becker are two of the most inuential of these
voices, arguably the co-grandfathers of narrative theory. Becker was one of the rst to claim that
human realities were (and are) self-created, writing in The Birth And Death Of Meaning: An
Interdisciplinary Perspective On The Problem Of Man that:

The world of human aspiration is largely ctions, and if we do not understand

this, we understand nothing about man. It is largely symbolic creation by an ego-
controlled animal that permits action in a psychological world, a symbolic-
behavioral world separated from the present moment (Becker 33)

A few years later, in Goodmans groundbreaking work Ways Of Worldmaking, he describes the
processes by which people create realities and narratives:

Much but by no means all worldmaking consists of taking apart and putting
together, often conjointly of composition and decomposition, of weighting, of
ordering, of deletion and supplementation, of deformation insofar as a version
[of the new world] is verbal and consists of statements, truth may be relevant. But
truth cannot be dened or tested by agreement with the world; for truths differ
for different worlds notoriously nebulous. (Goodman 12, 14,17)

Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 4 20

While Goodman and Becker greatly added to the discussion, a still more important theory of
postmodern thought was to come slightly later. This theory agrees that humans are in the
process of world-building, true enough, but what makes the world-building and the associated
narrative reconstruction so interesting is that the worldbuilders are intentionally unaware they
are doing so. Intriguingly, this theory notes that the inhabitants of the newly created world the
new narrative quickly forget the story now inhabited is one previously self-created. This
concept known as reication is one of the most important and relevant contributions of
post-modern thought to the question of narrative formation, especially within addicted
communities. as Peter L Berger and Thomas Luckmann note in The Social Construction Of
Reality: A Treatise In The Sociology Of Knowledge, writing that:

Reication is the apprehension of human phenomenon as if they were things,

that is, in non-human or possibly supra-human terms. Another was of saying this
is that reication is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they
were something else than human products Reication implies that man is
capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human woel, and further that the
dialectic between man, the producer and his products is lost to consciousness.
(Berger and Luckman 36-37)

Narrative formation has thus trickled down from philosophical ivory towers and inltrated
numerous elds across disciplinary boundaries.

The interdisciplinary foundation for this research paper is therefore the following: men and
women in our case, men and women in recovery from addiction are unaware that the
narrative structure imposed upon their lives has the power to create or deny potential for
happiness and fulllment, that the stories they tell themselves either contribute to or diminish
basic human ourishing. Nowhere is this relationship between narrative and outcome more
clearly seen than among those addicted to chemical substances, for a poorly formed narrative
can lead to jails, institutions, and even death.

Addiction is a subject studied by almost every major discipline: from biology to governmental
affairs, from criminology to sociology, from psychology to religion, it seems that everywhere one
looks there is yet another voice with a slightly different view, a new set of terms, a new set of
theories, a new set of, well everything. This research paper seeks to help those disciplinary
voices to sing in chorus, at least for a short while and perhaps only on a single topic.

But sing they shall.

Section IV - The Most Relevant Disciplines

The major disciplines I consider in this paper are psychology, addiction therapy, sociology,
philosophy, and religion. Among these ve disciplines, there is no single understanding of
narrative formation, even among the disciplinary masters of each; in fact, there is rarely broad
agreement.

Our pressing problem is, in part, because there is no consensus. For example, within
psychology, there is a broad understanding that some sort of spiritual experience is necessary
for recovery from addiction to have any lasting effect. Psychologists are happy to put together
Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 5 20
measuring tools to quantify self-reports (Hill and Pargament 3; Rowan et al. 81) but, strangely,
are resolutely loathe to dene this thing theyve determined absolutely necessary.

Further, Gabriel Segal has done excellent work studying the disease model of alcoholism and
addiction, unearthed major problems on both sides of the debate. In her work "Alcoholism,
Disease, And Insanity in the quarterly Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology Segal describes
one of the biggest challenges of quantication: some men and women t the diagnostic criteria
for a lifelong mental health disease, a progressive decline further down the slope towards
insanity and death and others people who had t the same criteria on a given date in their
past later? They simply dont.

Another example of disciplinary confusion: within sociology, spirituality is discussed at length

Spiritual but not Religious groups are the fastest growing segment of the religious population
and an area of endless fascination to Sociologists of Religion but no one has been able to lay
out a single denition about which there can be consensus, no single denition others within the
eld can agree on (Zinnbaur et al. 549; Chalfant 115). Such sociologists investigate the social
dimensions of addiction and crime as well as the twelve step groups that support the addicted,
but as far as investigating the spiritual narrative of the individual members of those groups? Not
yet.

The disciplines this paper focuses on each have in common a post-modern fascination with
narrative and narrative creation as a discovery of meaning. I am investigating the relevant
issues, the interaction and potential integration of key theories, and the ways and means by
which narrative creation can promote both an initial adoption of a recovery lifestyle and the
sustaining of that lifestyle over an extended period of time.
Section V -Literature Review Insights
From Psychology:

"The Experience Of Addiction As Told By The Addicted: Incorporating Biological

Understandings Into Self-Story.

An interdisciplinary team worked together to write the rst article reviewed for this paper; "The
Experience Of Addiction As Told By The Addicted: Incorporating Biological Understandings Into
Self-Story, published in Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry. It was authored by Rachel Hammer of
of the Mayo Medical School and of Seattle Pacic University along with M. J. Dingel of the
University of Minnesota; J. E. Ostergren, and K. E. Nowakowski, both of the Mayo Clinic
Biomedical Ethics Research Unit; J. E. Ostergren, of the School of Public Health at the
University of Michigan; and nally B. A. Koenig, of the Department of Social and Behavioral
Sciences at the Institute for Health and Aging, at the University of California.

The researchers were attempting to discover how self-narrative changes and alters
when the narrators are exposed to formal theories about their condition. Their interest
revolved around the many ways that addiction is understood (as a brain disease, as a
social-constructed illness, as a psychological, physiological problem, as a sin a moral
Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 6 20
failure of the deepest variety and in terms of the AA model, the adaptive/
constructionist model). In the process, the researches wanted to

explore how people who are addicted view their addiction against the
framework of formal theories intended to explain their condition.[adding]to the
cultural stock of stories that narrate the problem of addiction (Hammer er al.
714)

To accomplish this, they interviewed 63 people at ve treatment centers. This was

followed by close narrative analysis. Though the researchers were aware that utilizing
test subjects indoctrinated by their rehab into a disease model would tilt their research,
they proceeded anyway and rectify the situation (to an extent) by nding

treatment sites varied in their approach to substance use. Most offered a

combination of group or individual therapy sessions and pharmacological
treatments, including methadone and drugs such as acamprosate and nicotine
replacement therapy. Several programs used audiovisual aids or treatment
strategies that emphasized the biological components of addiction. One used a
brief educational lm that highlighted the disease model of addiction; a second
treatment site included a large display of living zebra sh used to study the
genetic basis of nicotine addiction. ( Hammer et al. 719)

Their main curiosity was in how patients buy into the narrative model taught at their
respective rehabs, rather than how patients build their own (the adaptive/ constructionist
model). This portion of the research yielded predictable results. When patients were not
given the opportunity or support in forming their own narratives of what happened and
why, they merely adopted the philosophical stance of their treatment center:
Treatment centers employ their own dominant narratives in explaining addiction,
and clients frameworks for understanding addiction are shaped by the language
and ideology of their treatment milieu. Our participants who spoke of addiction
with a genetic/biological understanding were primarily, but not exclusively, under
treatment in two treatment centers that explicitly teach a biological model of
addiction as part of treatment.Or to the contrary, if focused inordinately on the
psychosocial narrative, a treatment center may overwork to re-author a personal
narrative or improve the quality of family dynamics as the solution for addictive
behaviors, and possibly underestimate the extent to which the substance use has
re-authored the physiology of the patient. (Hammer et al. 729)

However, this was not a long-lasting narrative and rarely was sustained once the patient left the
rehabilitation center. To the researchers surprise, they discovered that while the treatment
patients receive at a given treatment center does highly contribute to the style of narrative that
they assume, it is by no means the only contributing factor, nor necessarily the most important:

People bear templates of DNA and experiences alike whereupon the epiphenomena of
their unique biochemistries, cultures, and willful souls are entangled. Just as geneticists
and molecular biologists labor to witness the patterns and anomalies written in the
Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 7 20
libraries of genomic testimony to being, so clinicians and therapists witness the motif and
novelty in their patients accounts of illnessaccounts told, imaged, and
assayed. (Hammer et al. 730)

All of this leads the authors to suggest research and treatment professionals stop attempting to
nd a grand, unied theory of addiction and move towards narrative-based medicine, one in
which the patients OWN understanding of their condition is the basis for ongoing interaction. In
other words, they suggest addiction professionals adopt the adaptive/ constructionist model of
used in Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous.

What Is Narrative Therapy And What Is It Not? The Usefulness Of Q Methodology To

Explore Accounts Of White And Epston's (1990) Approach To Narrative Therapy.

The second paper reviewed for this project was not interdisciplinary, but rather written by a team
of clinical and research psychologists composed of Jennifer Wallis, of Berkshire Healthcare
National Health Service Foundation Trust; Jan Burns, of the Department of Applied Psychology,
Salomons Campus, Canterbury Christ Church University; and Rose Capdevila, Faculty of Social
Sciences, The Open University.

The researchers were seeking to understand how the oft-contested eld of narrative therapy
and medicine were practically utilized. They surveyed hundreds of practitioners and came to the
conclusion that there exists no dominant model, no pervasive understanding to analyze,
probably, they theorize, because:

Research into narrative therapy is at a comparatively embryonic stage. Few studies exist
that would be considered as good evidence for the effectiveness of narrative therapy
within the traditions of therapeutic outcome research. Some of the reasons for this may
relate to the type of research valued by narrative therapists and problems with positivist
evidence-based research. ( Wallis et al.488)

The working denition for narrative therapy they conclude with will be the basis for
understanding throughout the rest of the paper, but it is important to note that even when good
researchers attempt to understand how psychologists understand narrative therapy, they come
up confused at best. This article demonstrated that within the discipline of psychology, different
researchers have come to a confused blend of conclusions. Some are convinced that stable
narratives are important and that narrative-based therapy plays some part in effective treatment.
The working denition we will follow is:

ways of understanding the stories of peoples lives, and ways of re-authoring these
stories in collaboration between the therapist / community worker and the peoples
whose lives are being discussed. It is a way of working that is interested in history, the
broader context that is affecting peoples lives and the ethics or politics of this
work. (Wallis et al. 488)

However, these ideas are not universal. Wallis and her team unearthed the uncomfortable
reality that all who practices narrative therapy have a slightly (or vastly) different way of doing
so:
Narrative therapy and how it is carried out remain unclearly dened, which limits studies
of the efcacy of this approach (Wallis et al.486).This study also illustrates a pluralism
Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 8 20
that has inuenced the debate around what is narrative therapy for some time.(Wallis et
al. 495)

The authors do little more than prove no one is entirely sure what they are doing when they
engage in narrative therapy. Therapists and social workers have so many different ways of
understanding their treatment modalities that cohesiveness within the single sub-sub discipline
is impossible.

Recovery From Substance Abuse: A Narrative Approach To Understanding The

Motivation And Ambivalence About Change.

The last article written from a mainly psychological approach comes from Dr. Katerina Flora, a a
clinical psychologist, professor and researcher at the Panteion University of Social and Political
Studies in Athens, Greece.

Flora interviewed 46 clients (a relatively tiny sample) at a single rehabilitation facility outside of
Thessalonica, Greece and then two people analyzed the data, searching for trends, interpreting
it with a great deal of subjectivity:
Analysis centered around the structure, plot, and main concept of the narrative, with
particular attention paid to tone, any pauses, the arguments developed, and the general
tenor with which the interview was conducted. (308)

In all this, Floras operating philosophy is that narrative is deeply involved in adaptive/
constructionist interaction. On this, Flora writes that:

The primary function of narrative is to turn disorder into order. By telling a story, the
narrator tries to organize the narrative to convey a message; that is, the meaning of the
story. The actual process of putting things in order is completed through organizing a
series of events in a plot. (Flora 307)

The author illuminates the central role of narrative transformation in long-term, stable sobriety,
proving that:
narratives allow each individual to unfold one or more explanatory schemas
concerning his or her recovery, giving meaning to the painful recovery process and to
the forthcoming successful or unsuccessful therapeutic result. (Flora 313)

While Hammer et al. provided us with a working denition of narrative therapy, Flora provides us
with a working denition of Goodman-style, worldbuilding narrative:
A narrative contains facts that connect to a particular theme, unfolds in time, and has a
certain plot. A story is presented as a chosen sequence of specic facts or
circumstances that are more important or realistic than others. As the story unfolds, the
narrator is called on to choose specic information that advances the story, as opposed
to other information that will not. The main goal is for the clients to discover for
themselves through conversation the hopes, desires, and so-far-unidentied potential
hidden in their past stories the revision of the stories and the lives of people. (Flora
314)

Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 9 20

From Addictions Research and Studies

"A Narrative Synthesis Of Addictions, Surrender, And Relapse: Conrmation And

Application."

The authors come from the disciplines of education (Brooks) and psychology (Armino). Prior to
their research, they conducted a thorough literature review of extant material before embarking
on their study, a standard narrative analysis with multiple levels of double-checking for accuracy
and agreement. This research had two working assumptions: the individual narrative is always
in the process of change (because people dont stay the same) and, like Flora, they assumed
the postmodern concept of narrative construction rather than reection of objective truth:

We elected to illuminate the experience of surrender via narrative research partly

because it assumes that people are always in the process of change. Surrender too
assumes change. Also, we selected this methodology as it is appropriate for listening to
previously silenced, oppressed, and ordinary voices that we believe people with
addictions are. Narrative researchers, make themselves as aware as possible of the
many, layered narratives at work in their inquiry space. They imagine narrative threads
emerging. Aspects of these layers include how speakers construct events through story
telling; they do not simply retell events. ( Brooks and Armino 379)

The authors did not present contrary positions or refute possible objections. Instead they
focused on one type of addiction narrative to the exclusion of all others. This biased
understanding of addiction resulted in only one kind of narrative being considered, one the
authors termed the grand narrative, proving that identity development and associated narrative
transformation are necessary ingredients in long-term recovery, writing that: What is helpful for
clinicians to realize is how powerful the cognitive distortions are and the impact it has on identity
and self-worth (Brooks and Armino 386).

All of this is important, the authors contend, because the adaptive/constructionist model
indicates narrative-building as an important part of stability in recovery:

For those who chronically relapse, the narratives illustrated how the unconscious aspect
of denial returns so insidiously and surreptitiously so as to not be detected by the
addicted person. ( Brooks and Armino 387)

"De Profundis: Spiritual Transformations in Alcoholics Anonymous."

Alyssa Forechimes is professor of Psychiatry at University of New Mexico and a practicing

psychologist with expertise in empirically supported clinical treatment. Her research focuses on
behavioral treatments for addiction including motivational interviewing and other brief
interventions; effective methods for disseminating and teaching evidence-based behavioral
treatments for addiction, mental health, substance abuse, and health care providers. In De
Profundis, Forechimes is analyzing the process that twelve step programs provide their
members for attaining narrative self-transformation.

Forechimes doesnt spend much energy or ink considering those who deny the reality/ efcacy
of the spiritual experience. For the author, is enough that the addicted person believes. She
Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 10 20
assumes that the goal of narrative medicine, therapy, and analysis is to help the addicted
person to reformulate their life story through adaptive/constructionist means, preferably through
the mechanism of twelve step recovery groups.

This process, which Forechimes claims is absolutely vital for stability in recovery, she has has
named De Profundis; latin for out of the depths. She describes it as both a process and an
explanation:
The sequence offered describes how spiritual transformations transpire. The sequence
begins with hitting bottom, recognition of inability to control the problem. A feeling of
contrition follows, describing not only sorrow for the present state, but also desire for a
new way. The nal step is the act of surrendering ones will to a higher power. The de
profundis sequence sets the process of spiritual transformation in motion, offering
stabilization to sobriety. (Forechimes 511)

In all this, Forechimes is not attempting to prove that the spiritual narrative described in the De
Profundis Sequence is objectively true, but rather demonstrates through case history and
interview that it must be believed to be true for the alcoholic/addict in recovery to maintain
anything like long-term sobriety. It is yet another example of narrative formation and reformation,
with acceptance. She pulls the disparate threads of the psychologists already discussed
together, writing that:

A.A. teachings acknowledge that alcohol recovery is not dened by abstinence; recovery is
dened by a transformed and sober life. Perhaps spiritual transformations are the distinguishing
factor between abstinence and sobriety.... These discrete, life-changing spiritual-transformation
experiences deserve to be understood more completely because they seem to reveal the
innermost workings of what makes A.A. such a successful program. Sobriety is intertwined with
spirituality in a way that necessitates a spiritual transformation for successful recovery. In a
profound realization, one recovering alcoholic admitted, I came here to save my ass. And then I
found out it was attached to my soul. ( Forechimes 516).

From Philosophy and Religion

"Taking Mentality Seriously: A Philosophical Inquiry Into The Language Of Addiction And
Recovery."

Allison Mitchell, writing in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, takes the opposite view of
Forechimes. She is a philosopher with a strong interest in Wittgenstein and narrative formation,
though I could nd no other credentials. She is included in this portion of the research for the
sake of intellectual honesty. My own bias became apparent quickly while reviewing her
contribution for she seems to demonstrate a lack of understanding about both the mechanism of
addiction and the process of addiction therapy. She steadfastly refuses any process that
involves either a De Profundis-style search for narrative reformation utilizing a spiritual
approach, nor the surrender and adaptive/constructionist approach suggested by Armino and
Brooks.

Instead, she assumes a moral/ cognitive orientation of full responsibility, writing that:
the thought and behavior involved in drug dependence is associated with a
certain pre-theoretic conception of the self that nds philosophical expression as
Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 11 20
a grossly simplied form of materialism. Addicts tend not to take mentality
seriously: They do not understand themselves as minded beings capable of self-
awareness and development through intentional action. Recognizing the practical
implications of accepting this philosophically unconvincing view, I argue,
encourages a modication of self-conception that is instrumental to the process
of recovery from addiction. ( Mitchell 211)

This, of course, is a gross misunderstanding of addiction as a mental disorder and reveals a

bias against twelve step programs. That bias becomes clear when she reaches the conclusion
of her paper, in which she suggests that the recovery community develop their own system of
twelve step programs that eliminate the need for the De Profunids sequence, surrender and
spirituality in general, though she admits such programs are practically effective (Mitchell 219).

Why revise something that is practically effective? Because, she writes, that even if it is
unclear that such things are workong, it is better that other, unproven, untested opportunities are
tried (as long as they dont include elements she nds objetctionable:
Consider the following reasons we may want to proceed with such modication:
First, revising the language of the twelve-step process will enable us to develop
an alternative picture of rehabilitation and thereby appreci- ate the multiplicity of
possible recovery routes. Second, twelve-step programs leave little space for
individual creativity in the modication of self-conception; they picture the
addicts nature and then attempt to persuade those individuals to accept the
aptness of that picture. (Mitchell 220)

Had Mitchell focused on gaining greater understanding of narrative through Wittgensteinian

analysis, much could have been gained, her world could have been a valuable source of insight
were it not for her insistence that:

If we accept the same starting point as the twelve-step programs, we may

gesture toward an alternative picture of recovery that does not require the
renunciation of autonomy or agency and need not invoke the notion of a higher
being. ( Mitchell 221)

Mitchell tells us more about herself and her own refusal to accept anothers narrative than
she does about either narrative therapy within addictions recovery or the meaning-making
power of narrative.

"The Truth Will Set You Free, Or How A Troubled Philosophical Theory May Help To Understand
How People Talk About Their Addiction.

Patricia Ross is Clinical Pharmacy Specialist in Ambulatory Care and Anticoagulation

Management; Adjunct Assistant Professor, at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy,
and writes widely on issues of philosophy and medicine. Her contribution also appeared in
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology.

The author is critiquing a view commonly held: that a story told indicates a story believed,
commonly known as the Wittgensteinian Analysis, such that:

Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 12 20

every act of self-expression, whether it is verbal or written narrative, reveals
something about the conceptual framework with which the author is working.
Thus, one can learn about the author of a narrativeone can acquire a sense of
how that individual conceives of him- or herselfby looking at the language that
is employed to talk about and describe him- or herself. ( Ross 228)

She challenges the view based on the fact that much of the language used in narrative
expression is assumed from culture and environment, and is used sub- and un- consciously.

Whereas some attempt to teach addicted individuals to see themselves (to tell their story, their
narrative) through the lens of strict material philosophy a view that says the material world is
the only real one, behavior is explainable in mentalistic terms, etc Ross is interested in
nding the stories addicted people are already telling themselves. This interest comes from
Ross assumption that right knowledge does not indicate right action.

The rst aspect relies on the belief that conceptual changebelieving the right
thingswill change ones behavior. But this is a problem that is considered in
great detail in moral philosophy, as well as being a well-studied aspect of human
psychology. In particular, empirical research has shown that beliefs (either
currently held beliefs or newly accepted beliefs) do not necessarily provide
motivation for action.Counseling intervention that relies entirely on altering the
prejudice individuals beliefs is ineffective. (Ross 230)

Ross agrees with Martin Weegman and Ewa Piwowoz-Hjort; she believes that narratives are
written backwards, not forwards. Powerful, life-changing narrative structures are formed after
the events: behavior comes before conception, not conception before behavior:

It seems that only when the addiction is not in control of ones life that one can
begin to alter ones self-conception, especially in terms of autonomy. Thus, any
intervention that requires a conceptual change before a behavioral change
seems doomed to failure. Therapeutic intervention must rst stop the behavior,
and as a result of that begin to develop a different self-conception. ( Ross 231)

In this, Ross is communicating the same ideas as many of the psychologists and all of the
addiction researchers, just using different words. She is saying that narratives are constructed
and that through this process of worldbuilding, the addicted person can adopt a new way of
living, one without the use of alcohol or drugs.

"Refuat Ha-Nefesh URefuat Ha-Guf: Spiritual Dimensions Of Addiction Recovery.

Richard L Eisenberg was a rabbi for 25 years before switching careers and devoting himself to
drug and alcohol recovery counseling. His work is scholarly and peer reviewed, with multiple
references from Jewish religious thought and society, addiction treatment, the source texts of AA
and NA, and philosophy.

Though Eisenberg is somewhat biased (he recounts the story of how his brothers addiction
played a key role in his career change) he attempts to integrate Jewish religious thought with
the philosophical tenants of AA, NA, and recovery therapy. As such, his paper is intrinsically
interdisciplinary.
Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 13 20

Eisenberg contrasts sharply with thinkers in the vein of Allison Mitchell, who believe that the
purpose of addictions therapy is to correct the incorrect thinking of alcoholics and addicts,
moving them from the idea that they dont have control over their substance abuse to a new
model which says they do. This educational model is parallel to the moral model, which
Eisenberg describes as:

The moral model of addiction can be understood as the belief that people abuse
alcohol [and other drugs] because they choose to do so. This approach implies that
chemical dependents, by abusing drugs, are choosing an immoral path that causes
harm to themselves and the people within their familial, social, and professional
networks. The moral model causes negative and unproductive attitudes toward the
addict. A well-meaning family member or friend might say, Youd be sober if you only
tried harder. This type of statement reects an attitude that places blame and moral
judgments upon the addicted person. it is my view that our attitudes about addiction,
as long as they remain morally based, weaken our ability to be truly helpful to chemical
dependents. This holds true for family members, friends, and professionals alike.
(Eisenberg 95-96)

Eisenberg adopts an interdisciplinary approach, believing that: Understanding chemical

dependency as a biopsychosocial phenomenon also helps frame the way we apply Jewish
concepts and values to our discussion of addiction recovery (97). This is key. He expands
denitions and concepts, so that one can be understood in the light of the other.
Eisenberg identies four important concepts from the Jewish religio-spiritual tradition to frame
and understand concepts from the twelve steps of recovery. The author believes that it is in
learning to tell the story of addiction and recovery through this new language (using new words
with altered and expanded denitions) that integration and ultimately, greater health and
success is found. The last two paragraphs of his essay demonstrate how he accomplishes this
herculean task in his own interdisciplinary effort at seeking answers:

Finally, the deep humility that comes from ones feelings of powerlessness
over the drug, over other people, over changing the pastis the emotional
predisposition that leads to enlightenment. Walking humbly with God is the way
the person recovering from addiction or co-dependency retains a hold on
Eternity. This trust in turn engenders faith, hope, and love. The person of faith
enters the gates of Eternity, the light of spiritual truth, through his disposition of
humility. It is no different for those of us who are in recovery. As we are
continually reminded of our powerlessness in Step 1, we develop the need to
fully trust in our Higher Power in Steps 2 and 3, a trust that keeps us fastened in
the Now and deters us from dwelling on a troublesome past and an uncertain,
possibly worrisome future. One day at a time, we nd that our faith, hope, and
love of God and one another keeps growing. As we journey along the road of
recovery, we know that the disease of addiction no longer has power over us;
rather it is the power of the Eternal that sustains us, strengthens us, bears us
through our days of darkness and lovingly carries us into light, faith, and
serenity. (Eisenberg 103-104)

Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 14 20

Eisenberg is himself a case study in narrative reconstruction and reformation, in worldbuilding
and reication: he has redened the limits of his existence and history using the language of the
helping profession and within the connes of his chosen spirituality.

It was quite beautiful.

From Sociology
"Naught But A Story: Narratives Of Successful AA Recovery."

It is appropriate to end this disciplinary exploration within the eld I am most comfortable:
sociology.

Authors Martin Weegman, an addictions professional and psychologist at Queens Mary

Hospital and Ewa Piwowoz-Hjort, a sociologist at Sundbyberg University in Stockholm, Sweden,
base their research style and methodology from a viewpoint an interdisciplinary space
between three disciplines: Sociology, narrative psychology, and addiction treatment and
medicine. They describe their methodology as as:

Interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) performed on nine transcribed

interviews of participants who were continually sober from alcohol/drugs for a
minimum of nine years (abstinence mean = 14 years). The method was used to
discern themes and identify the concepts of recovery [that the]participants had
found helpful. (Weegman and Piwowoz-Hjort 273)

The authors make a number of assumtions. They assume that all humans are meaning making,
story making animals and that those stories have the power to alter individual enjoyment of life,
that those stories are in the constant process of revision, and that revising process can be
facilitated through the adaptive/constructionist model of therapy:
Narrative psychology suggests that such appraisals are not merely cognitive re-
adjustments or epiphenomena, but help to make up people, so to speak,
implicating subjects in new forms of identity and trajectories. Narrative
approaches can consider not only the individual, idiosyncratic story but how
stories deploy and incorporate pre-existing discursive resources and traditions.
Hence, such approaches are a potentially strong analytic resource, allowing an
in-depth understanding of both the idiosyncratic and culturally constructed
aspects of a persons story and self-account. (Weegman and Piwowoz-Hjort 274)

Once again, we witness proof that humans write stories backwards - the maps are formed after
the events that they describe:

Most participants spoke to a distinction between admitting problems around their

drinking and lives and an emotional, attitudinal shift which involved a deeper
process of acceptance. Paradoxically, for these people, it could be said that they
were becoming alcoholics in the act of stopping, which enabled them to re-
appraise their pasts. In describing a kind of gateway to recovery, one person re-
construed her rock bottom from a negative, cracking-up experience into the
positive beginning of my experience. (Weegman and Piwowoz-Hjort 277)
Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 15 20

In their conclusion, Weegman and Piwowoz-Hjort explain their discovery: stories and story
formation, of narrative construction and reconstruction demonstrated by addicts and alcoholics
are typically more extensive and elaborate than in the non addicted population. This greater
level of sophistication may provide a valuable glimpse into the myth-making process:

Life stories express a sense of who we are, of identity in the making, the where
we have come from to the where we have got to [the narratives] are
revisable and tell a great deal of our connections or group-self, to those
sustaining others and networks upon who we depend. Previous research has
addressed the link between coherence and recovery The stories thus suggest
that in order to get going on the way to recovery, people need to form a credible
model of their problems, which can be used to guide their attempts at recovery.
(Weegman and Piwowoz-Hjort 280)
Section VI - Identify conflicts
Within Psychology:

It is evident that, as far as disciplinary unity is concerned, mental health researchers have
arrived at the greatest number of conicting conclusion and subsequently proposed an immense
number of conicting theories. This is due, in part, to the evolving nature of the discipline and in
part on the multivariate nature of the disease, effecting (as it does) the individual on physical,
emotional, psychological, mental, and societal levels. Some mental health professionals
though by no means all have noticed the following as signicant: the most consistent
members of long-term recovery have some sort of spirituality at the center of their narratives,
though there is no consensus on how this preferred state can be facilitated and no generalized
acceptance that spirituality (whatever that means) is to be desired or sought. The mental health
researchers considered stress the wide variety to be found in narrative formation and
subsequent analysis, coming to the conclusion that there are lots of stories being told and as a
result, are unable to chart a course forward:

Experiences are the human conduit for afliation, and though in this paper the
experiences as told by the addicted may seem disorderly or in disagreement with one
another, perhaps this is an important aspect of addiction that should not be glossed over
in favor of a unied framework. Addiction is protean, such that if we try to reduce its
character to one nameable form, with one unied theory, we will have failed to address
it in its entirety. (Hammer er atl. 732, italics added)

Within Sociology:

Within the discipline of sociology, disagreements are few because research is scant. However,
the small amount of work that has been completed supports a theory of narrative construction
that sees positive attributes in formerly negative situations, sees the addictions professional as
one who helps the addicted to formulate a new way of seeing the past of recognizing within
past events a glimpse of an alcoholic/addict history and generating hope for the story by
recasting the patient in the role of hero as opposed to victim. Sociologists, of course, can always
nd someone within the eld of psychology/psychiatry to be in conict with.

Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 16 20

Of course they can; the entire discipline is suffering multiple personality disorder on this issue.

Within Philosophy/ Religion

Like Psychology, within the ranks of philosophers, one nds a multiplicity of voices. This is to be
expected, as the essay by Allison Mitchell demonstrates. The eld is full of researchers and
thinkers more concerned with the ethics of suggesting a higher power and a spiritual way of
thinking about their stories than the efcacy of doing so. Indeed, a good example is Mitchells
essay; a third of her paper devotes itself to why she feels addictions professionals should
eschew a successful approach in order to avoid ideas she nds distasteful. Other Philosophers
and religious leaders have no such qualms and focus on the universal nature of spiritual journey
narratives, agreeing with most of their fellows, most sociologists, and again, a segment of the
psychologists.
Section VII - Common Ground
Addictions research was not listed in the previous section because in terms of disciplinary
conict, there is not much internal/ external disagreement. Why? Addictions Research is
inherently an interdisciplinary eld, with voices from the other disciplines already considered,
present and speaking with one another.

Within the ranks of Addictions Research we nd the beginning of what might be termed
interdisciplinary common ground: agreement that narrative re-formation is an important part of
long-term recovery (a therapized version of Goodmans worldmaking), an assumption that these
narratives need to contain elements of victim-to-victor transformation, as well as a signicant
spiritual element. This is not to suggest that there is no conict.

Addictions Research begins with an acceptance of the disease model of addiction and an
acceptance that for whatever reason the twelve step model of narrative transformation works.
When other disciplines challenge either the rst or second assumption, conicts arise, in part
because Addictions Researchers are more familiar with the efcacy of both systems of thought
and are boots on the ground, utilitarian in their outlook.
Section VIII - Interdisciplinary Understanding
Two things became clear during the research process:

While broad agreement exists that narrative reconstruction is important, the ways and means
people go about doing so is little understood and for this reason, any further research must
begin by looking to this vital issue. It is clear that all people (both within and without the
addiction community) are involved in retelling their stories; how do they go about doing so? The
disciplinary approaches of Narrative therapy, narrative medicine? These elds of inquiry are
sure to yield interesting results that could then be incorporated into a broader schemata. The
primary disciplines must do more research before secondary interdisciplinary study has much
chance of being effective.

Likewise, it is clear that twelve step programs in some unidentied way facilitate narrative
reconstruction. Some call the process adaptive/ constructionist interaction/therapy, though that
designation is neither clearly dened nor widely accepted.
Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 17 20

Here, an entire range of things are yet to be found and studied. How do the twelve steps of AA
or NA contribute to (or force) the reconstruction of narrative and thus, identity? Is it the process
or the community or some combination of both? Do rehabilitation facilities support or interfere
with the process and in what ways? These are areas of study that would need to be explored for
any signicant interdisciplinary contribution to be found.

What this paper has made apparent is that narrative reconstruction can lead to wholeness, can
lead to healthy lifestyles, can lead to human ourishing and successful relationships. For by
transforming our stories, we in some unknown way and by some unknown mechanism
transform ourselves.

Conclusions
We began by considering Shrek, The Musical.

It will be remembered at the beginning of the plot, every major character in Shrek is suffering
because how they are understanding their own stories Shrek is convinced that ogres cant be
happy because thats just the way it is, Fiona is convinced that the only real romance is the one
that conforms to the picture that she has been told and has believed, the storybook creatures
are convinced that they are doomed to a life of suffering because thats what fairytale creatures
do; We wish upon a star

The last scene of the musical is a demonstration in Goodman-style worldbuilding, in narrative

reconstruction and in retelling; Shrek doesnt have to be lonely. Fiona doesnt have to have
Prince Charming. The storybook creatures dont have to accept abuse.

All of this happens comedically and naturally through a process of challenge and adaption
to new circumstances. Within the lyrics we can easily nd a beautiful picture of narrative
reconstruction.

Goodman would have loved it.

This is My Story, Finale to Shrek, the Musical

[Fiona]
I waited all my life, lived it by the book,
Now I know that's not my story.
You take me as I am, love me as I look,
Standing here in all my glory.

I am sweetness, I am bratty;
I'm a princess, I'm a fatty;
I'm a mess of contradictions in a dress.
I am sassy, I am sappy;
When I'm with you I am happy;
This is my story.

Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 18 20

[Shrek]
You laugh at all my jokes even though they're crude,
You don't mind that I'm not classy.
We make a perfect pair, radiant and rude,
So in love and much too gassy.

[Both]
We are ogres, we are scary.

[Cast]
We are donkeys, we are hairy.
We have bold and brand new stories to be told.
We will write them, we will tell them;
You will hear them, you will smell them.
This is our story.

( Cast This is Our Story)

Narrative and Myth-making Bates of 19 20

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