Alcoholics Anonymous and Contemporary Psychodynamic Theory

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Abstract
AA’s success rests on its ability to establish and maintain abstinence. This basic and essential accomplishment has tended to detract from the fact that AA is successful in good part because it is a sophisticated psychosocial form of treatment that addresses human psychological vulnerabilities that alcoholics and others share related to problems of self-regulation. The “character defects” that AA addresses are related to attitudes about self and others that are embodied in character traits and styles that make interdependence, experience, and expression of feelings and self-care problematical and difficult. AA confronts these “defects” by effectively advocating surrender, acceptance of a Higher Power, and challenging human self-centeredness. In its insistence on openness, support, sharing of experiences, and mutual concerns, AA imaginatively employs group psychology to address vulnerabilities in self-governance and problems in regulating feelings and self-care. After a successful psychoanalytic treatment a patient is definitely less neurotic (or psychotic) but perhaps not necessarily more mature. On the other hand after a successful treatment by group methods the patient is not necessarily less neurotic but inevitably more mature. Enid and Michael Balint (1972)

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