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Narcissism and the potential for selftransformation in the Twelve Steps

Liz Turnbull

University of New South Wales, Australia

Alcoholism and its legacies of dis-ease can be understood psychoanalytically in terms of disturbed or pathological narcissism. The Twelve Steps programme of recovery provides the fragile self with the conditions for a ritualized rebirth through offering a community based on relations of reciprocity and a spiritual relationship to the Other. The holding environment of the group and the paradox at the heart of the relation to the Other are potent therapeutic elements. The Twelve Steps is an innovatory ethical practice of self-care drawing on a varied lineage of traditional philosophies and religions. In a philosophical anthropology, this innovation is an antidote to the estrangement and nihilism experienced by many in contemporary life. The interdisciplinary analysis uses the experience of participation in the Twelve Steps and examines the first three of the Twelve Steps as a way of exploring the connections between ethics, well-being and the social conditions of self-transformation.

Key Words: alcoholism • narcissism • nihilism • self-transformation • Twelve Steps programme • well-being

Health:, Vol. 1, No. 2, 149-165 (1997)
DOI: 10.1177/136345939700100202
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