I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions 097443891X, 9780974438917

Citation preview

WITH

A

NEW PREFACE

BY THE

AUTHOR

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juticU 8 The Recovery Movement and Other

Self-Help Fashions

WENDY KAMINER book well worth savoring. It is should be required reading for every-

"I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional is a intelligent, witty,

a pleasure

to read.

.

..[it]

one interested in the state of our minds and culture. "San Francisco Chronicle

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2012

http://archive.org/details/imdysfunctionalOOOkami

WENDY KAMINER I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional

Wendy Kaminer ture.

writes about politics, law, and cul-

This book originated with an

on the same

subject for The

New

article

she wrote

York Times Book

Review and which generated an enthusiastic sponse.

The author of A

Fearful Freedom

Volunteering, she has also written for

The

New York Times, and The

denial.

and

The

re-

Women

Atlantic,

Village Voice. She

is

in

Other books by Wendy Kaminer

A

Fearful

Women

Freedom

Volunteering

I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional

I'm Dysfunctional,

You're

Dysfunctional The Recovery Movement and Other Self'Help Fashions

WENDY KAMINER Vintage Books

A

Division of

New York

Random House,

Inc.

VINTAGE BOOK- EDITION, APRIL

FIRST

1993

Wendy Kamintr All rights reserved under International and Pan

entJona Published

Random Hou»i-. Iiu Ni-u Random House oi nadi

division of :

1

York, and distributed

.

b>

published

hardcover

in

somewhal

different

Addison \Vesle\ Publishing Company Portions oi

hapter

(

,

Inc., in

"< hances Are, You're

I,

.1

in

limited, Toronto. Originally

(

m

American Copyright

the United States by Vintage Hooks,

in

form by 1992.

Codependent Too,"

"Conclusion," appeared in The Neu York Times Book Review, February 11, 19^0. Reprinted by permission. Chapter

and

v

'hapter

8,

d Parent Too,'' appeared in Theology Today, Fall 1991.

Many

oi the designations used bv

manufacturers and

distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks.

sellers to

Where

those

designations appear in this book and Addison- Wesley was aware of a

trademark claim, the designations have been printed

in initial

capital letters.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pubhcation Data

Kaminer, Wendv. I'm dysfunctional, you're dysfunctional: the recovery

movement and other

self-help fashions

/

Wendy

Kaminer.

—

1st

Vintage Books ed. p.

cm.

Originally published: Addison-Wesley, 1992.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-679-74585-8 1.

Self-help techniques

— United

I.

Title.

II.

Title:

[BF632.K36

I

— United States. Psychological Psychology — United States. 2.

States. 3.

literature

am

dysfunctional, you are dysfunctional.

1993]

92-50677

158-^ic20

CIP Manufactured 10

9

8

7

in the

6

5

United States of America 4

3

2

1

7b

my

brother Billy

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Preface to the Vintage Edition Introduction 1

1

Chances Are, You're Codependent Too: Recovery Books

9

2 Testifying: Television 3

29

Don't Worry, Be Happy: Positive Thinking to est

45

4 In Step: Support Groups 5

69

The Recovery Boutique: Workshopping

6 Stop 7

xi

God

Making Is a

Sense:

New Age

Good Parent Too:

Popular Theology

The

101

Self-Help and

119

Problem of Self-Help, Which the Author Has Conclusion:

No

Idea

How

Notes

167

Index

177

Political

to Solve

151

87

Acknowledgments

viding

and

Once again, I have Radcliffe College to thank for prome with an office and a Harvard ID. Thanks to Pat King

all

the

staff

people at the Schlesinger Library for their

and hospitality. Thanks to Barbara Haber for her good humor, conversation, and helpful review of my manuscript. Thanks to William McFeely, as well, for his thoughtful friendship

critique.

To Isay:

my editor, Amy

Gash,

my

agent, Edite Kroll,

and

to Jane

thanks, of course, for everything.

IX

Preface the Vintage Edition

to

Shortly after the hardcover publication of tional,

You

re

Dysfunctional,

I

dreamed

Vm

Dysfunc-

that Bill Clinton ap-

peared on "Oprah" and confessed he was codependent. "Hi, I'm

Bill,

and I'm addicted to

sex,

power, or junk food,"

imagined he'd say, explaining his alleged tencies,

and undeniable weight

gain, as

if

I

infidelities, inconsis-

the nation were one

large support group. It was easy to predict the twelve-step spin on what was considered Clinton's character problem: he is the

adult child of an abusive, alcoholic stepfather. His penchant for

seeking consensus and

compromise

ploy but a survival

acquired early on. His tendency to

skill

is

not

a cynical political tell

people what they want to hear represents no intent to deceive but a need to placate and please. His "slickness"

is

simply

a

codependent's need to be liked.

My dream about Clinton proved silly enough to almost come when shortly before accepting the Democratic nomination, Clinton discussed his dysfunctional family history. He didn't

true,

call

himself an

pendent, to

ACOA (Adult Child of Alcoholics),

or a code-

my great relief, but he did suggest that his childhood

experiences in an alcoholic to please. Soon,

home may have made him too

Al Gore was

testifying to the

son's nearly fatal car accident, and

eager

trauma of

his

Maureen Dowd of The New

XI

I'M

xii

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOl"RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

York Times was writing about our

"Real

men

first

post-therapy candidates.

don't get on the couch,"

a

Bush spokesperson

American

retorted, COUnterposing the older

tradition of stoic

self-containment and ceaseless activity against the newer tradi-

With

tion of testifying to psychic pains and chronic inactivity.

the Democratic confessionals, Republicans had a brief chance to run stability against neuroticism

John

Wayne

vs.

Woody

Allen.

Clinton shrewdly made only fleeting references to his child-

hood, revealing enough to make himself seem likable and one of us but not dysfunctional. But

addiction and abuse could

people

who

personal development

show debate

—

a

triumph over

log cabin story: still

dysfunctional family.

a

into a political culture. In talk

clear that

outdoor plumbing can

didn't have to endure

claim to have survived

A

was

it

become our new

movement was

being transformed

one of the presidential debates

member

—the

of the audience beseeched the

candidates to be sensitive to the American people's psychic needs:

We

are like children, he suggested, waiting to be nur-

tured and led.

What was most commentary

it

striking

elicited.

about

this

scribe themselves as adult children.

phor of the nation though

its

as a family that

failings

are

remark was the paucity of

We're so used

clear.

it

to hearing adults de-

We're so used

to the meta-

reigns unquestioned, even

Families are supposed to be

bonded by love and nations by justice. Democratic governance is collaborative where parenting is directive, and while we're stuck with our relatives, all

we choose our

the palaver about the debates,

that citizens in a participatory

I

political leaders.

Yet in

heard no one express dismay

democracy might

see themselves

as children in relation to their president.

This widespread public craving for authority was best expressed in support for Ross Perot. Clinton and Gore

may have

Preface to the Vintage Edition

xiii

been our post-therapy candidates, but Perot benefited most

from the personal development utilized the

I'm the guy

said;

tradition, to the extent that he

mystique of expertise. Hire

who

me and

I'll

fix this,

he

looks under the hood. Perot didn't need

As a self-made billionaire, he emAnthony Robbins and Werner Erhard

to issue policy statements.

bodied expertise, just as

do

—the man was

his message. Perot

was the positive-thinking,

personal development guru as presidential candidate; no won-

der he started a movement. I

began

Vm

Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional with an inter-

est in the desire to

that

seemed to

(My

be part o{ a movement, the desire to be led

me

at

the heart of the personal development

subtitle was " Self-Help and the While American mythology celebrates the common sense of Frank Capra's common man, the Ameri-

tradition.

first

working

Selling of Authority.")

can is

reality, reflected in

marked by

self-help

a

however

it is

who

defined at the

self-help industry

faith in experts.

books, tapes, and workshops

believe that there are experts life,

named

the perversely

tendency to put our

is

What

sells

the willingness to

can help us achieve the good

moment;

are reduced to merely technical ones,

existential

problems

which can be solved by

expert techniques. I

didn't actually set out to write a

book about

the recovery

—the proliferation of twelve-step groups, modeled

movement on AA, and

the self-help

books

that purport to treat a range of

some vaguely defined disease called ended up writing about recovery, among

arguable addictions and

codependency.

I

other personal development fads, because it

was everywhere. But

ment

as

simply the

I've

latest

it

was

there; in fact,

always viewed the recovery move-

incarnation of a tradition and ideol-

ogy that date back over 100 years.

The recovery movement was actually beginning to decline when Vm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional was published. (In

xiv

I'M

tact,

found

it

Book

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOb'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL a

much

friendlier reception than

were down; tor

sales

great

a

many

I

expected.)

experts, excepting

televangelist John Bradshaw, the lecture/workshop business was drying up. Since the early 1990s, there has been growing

uneasiness about our ever-expanding definitions of addiction

and abuse and our preoccupations with victimization. Personal

development movements have limited shelf

lifes

you don't hear much about

and

est

anymore

recovery might be close to expiring.

I

— for example, I

thought that

may, however, have

underestimated the experts. Personal development experts are expert

particularly

in

and exploiting trends, and

Spotting

movement in order to seized upon what suspect

they're slyly reinventing the recovery ride the backlash against will be the next hot

The commercial

it.

A

tew

I

personal-development concept:

resilience.

movement can be

potential for a resiliency

measured by public impatience with the notion that

Americans have been crippled by abuse.

all

virtually

In general,

popular

recovery literature doesn't recognize that people can be incredibly resilient, that not everyone

mistake, that

some even cope

is

traumatized by every parental

successfully with years of physi-

cal abuse.

Much

as

I

hate to testify,

I

guess

I'll

have to talk about father.

The stories my father me when was young about his childhood were often stories about abuse. My grandfather was a brutal, frustrated man whose

(He's given told

me

permission;

be

brief.)

I

main contribution cal

I'll

to the culture

was debunking the stereotypi-

notion that Jews don't drink and beat their families.

the shit out of me,"

beat

my

father's

fifteen

"He beat He

father used to say, matter-of-factly.

grandmother and

at least

one of

my

aunts as well.

My

childhood w as Dickensian; growing up poor, he began r

working started.

my

in his father's

They continued

and beat up

laundry

at

age six,

when

for nearly ten years, until

my grandfather and

the beatings

my father was

threatened to

kill

him, if

xv

Preface to the Vintage Edition

he ever

moved

laid a

hand on anyone

mother

his

my grandfather

My

into a

My

family again.

in the

father

new apartment, warning her not to take

back, but she always did.

would say he had a hard childhood, but if you suggested to him that it was traumatic, he'd look at you blankly. Once, I described him as a battered child in a story father

I

My

wrote for him on his seventieth birthday.

now and

that he'd turn to her

"You know, Miriam,

was

I

mother

then after reading

a battered child."

it

told

and

me say,

That was the

extent of his therapy. I

know

this

is

been expecting

anticlimactic.

me

I

know

to testify that

generational abuse. But

it

that

some

readers have

too was the victim of inter-

ended with

man who

contentedly married

I

my

father.

He's a wry,

plays the horses in moderation

and enjoys an occasional Scotch. He inherited neither addic-

What

tion nor brutality.

was extreme

My

mistrust of authority. rines during the

I

my

don't believe that

neither

do

I

consider

other stories like

it.

of child abuse and

it

power and an

father enlisted in the

Second World

would never have

that he

he took from his childhood instead

sensitivity to abuses of

War

merchant ma-

instead of the military so

to salute anybody. father's success story

entirely

anomalous;

only the

fittest

I

we

I'm not suggesting that

let

is

typical,

know

too

but

many

ignore the crime

survive. I'm simply point-

ing out that people interested in the effect of abuse ity

instinctive

development should study individuals

who are destroyed by it. know what made my father

on personal-

who transcend

abuse

would probably be him

as well as those

It

helpful to

strong and kept

humane.

Growing up with

my

father's story,

I

took for granted what

mental health professionals would

call

come."

larger social

until

I

I

never believed

failed to find

it

it

had any

in piles

and

its

piles of

"successful out-

importance

mass-market recov-

xvi

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

erv books. According to our

my

abuse,

and mine;

father

is

most popular

an impossibility:

good hypnotist could help me

a

literature

on

child

have invented his story

I

retrieve

my

buried

memories o( abuse.

Some recovery experts have ignored stories about people who survive abuse without benefit of a recovery program because o( their sincere belief that the stories are essentially untrue.

Some

experts ignore the stories because they're bad for

business. Experts create the

and workshops

demand

for their products

— books

— by convincing people that they're weak, not

pointing out the wavs in which they're strong. Inventing a

ubiquitous disease

—codependency —

creates a huge

market for

the cure. But in the next phase o( the reinvented recovery

movement, popular personal development experts

will

proba-

blv tollow the lead of academics and social scientists in the field

of mental health

who have been

studying the "protective fac-

tors" that help people cope with extreme deprivation and

Why

abuse.

defeated

is

some people manage

a

hot question

become

crises

by which others are

academic and

in

where

resiliency has

finally

beginning to echo in popular culture.

I

first

a

scientific circles,

very familiar word.

Today

it's

heard recovery experts talk publicly about resiliency

movement was beginning

early 1992,

when

come under

attack. Suddenly, experts

the recovery

efforts to help

people become

concede that

all

were talking about their

resilient.

Some have

the grace to

this resiliency talk represents the

stage" of the recovery

in

to

movement: the

first

"second

may have now we're ourselves. Some stage

focused on blaming and victimization, they say; getting strong

and taking responsibility for

simply assert that they've been talking about resilience along, disassociating themselves

from other experts who

all

tried

to convince us that we're sick.

Books

that prescribe techniques for achieving resilience are

Preface to the Vintage Edition likely to

be as

books

silly as

codependency.

Still,

that prescribe treatment steps for

resiliency

seems

a

more hopeful,

personal-development ideal than disease, and

(December

1992),

it's

more

Clinton was nothing

Bill

date,

if

xvii

at the

helpful

moment

tune with our political mood.

in

not a resilient presidential candi-

bouncing back throughout the primary campaign, and

if

voters are going to bear with his long-term plans for economic

recovery, they'll need to be very resilient indeed. Resilience probably requires a measure of stoicism, however,

and stoicism

is

ment culture.

In fact,

Stoicism

is

an underrated virtue in the personal developit's

considered a vice, or, rather, a disease.

associated with insensitivity and repression

out of touch with your feeling cally

Stoicism

is

a stereotypi-

masculine virtue in a culture that prefers a stereotypically

feminine

To

reality.

— being

frailty,

along with

prevailing

ideals

penchant for emotionalism.

its

the extent that the recovery

movement has helped change

of mental health,

it

also

represents the

feminization of popular culture.

movement are therefore somewhat redundant for women, many of whom have had considerThe

lessons of the recovery

able practice in submitting to higher their feeling realities.

powers and experiencing

(The recovery movement slogan "Think

with your heart, not with your head" merely updates a proverb I

remember from childhood: "Be

who

will

be clever.")

sweet,

Women were

young maid,

traditionally

those

let

deemed

inca-

pable of thinking with any organ but their hearts; reasoning, like

dominance, was deemed singularly masculine.

that these quaint notions haven't yet

clear

It's

been consigned to history.

Conventional feminist wisdom on women's dirTerent voice characterizes less analytic

women

as

than men.

more compassionate,

Some

Wilson Schaef, express contempt "male-identified."

relational,

recovery experts, notably for rationalism

and

Anne

by labeling

it

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOl"RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

xviii

I'm not suggesting that men, like

women, shouldn't be

couraged to understand and enjoy their emotional lamenting the notion that emotionalism comes

lives.

at the

en-

I'm

expense

Why can't the experts tell us to think with our hearts

of reason.

and our heads' I'm equally troubled by the persistent tendency

and feeling masculine and femi-

to label the realms ot thought

nine, respectively. But

we

power

the

— the capacity not to dwell too long sorrows

to put

TV

'.

er\

to talk about caring and sharing

good about themselves. self

so

difficult ideal to

a

is

should not be

much

my

But

and helping people

suggest that feeling

I

feel

good about your-

am. They

I

offer

sympathy and advice.

and I'm routinely accused of meanness for

movement

a

:

in a

primary moral imperative, and they seem

a

nicer than

offer criticism,

market

seems mean. Recovery experts appear on

it

;

in feelings,

aside.

But emotional toughness CultUI

stereotypes, while

"feminine" virtues, we might idealize the "mas-

idealize the

culine" as well

we must perpetuate

it

that allegedly helps so

many

disagreement with recovery experts

need to help people

is

I

criti-

people.

not about the

about the capacity of people

in pain. It's

to help themselves and their responsibility, at least, to think

about helping others. virtually

all

that a harsh a

I

see a lot of

word from

branding with

a

parent

a cigarette.

I

equation of drug addiction with

tendency to be compulsively

you may

The tive"

say, after reading a

more than

suffers

meanness

in the

message that

of us are weak, diseased, and helpless is

a serious

late.

meanness

weakness for

Some may

ice

at

suffering

like

in the

cream or

suffer as

a

much,

few recovery books, but no one

I.

regularly repeated assertion that "all suffering

is

fragile

form of abuse,

see a lot of a

— so

is rela-

the heart of recovery's self-centered meanness. All

is

relative only

doing the suffering.

From

from the perspective of the person which is a larger social perspective

—

Preface to the Vintage Edition entirely missing

from the recovery movement

grees of suffering;

we have

to take

who

deciding who's suffering more,

energy and resources,

when we

more money to shelters women? Do we limit Social

— there are de-

on the Solomonic job of has

more of a claim

fashion social policies.

men

for homeless

give

xix

to our

Do we

or battered

Security or welfare payments?

Should understaffed child welfare agencies pay more attention to children are raped?

who

It is, I

are yelled at by their parents or children

think,

acknowledge that incest

mere is

a

common

more

parental insensitivity. Instead,

who

sense, not meanness, to

pressing public problem than

meanness to exaggerate the

it is

emotional problems of middle-class adults in the name of helping victims of child abuse while ignoring the growing

of poor children and

when

the crisis in foster care.

movement was

the recovery

American children

living in

at its

numbers

During the 1980s,

number of

peak, the

poverty increased by more than

one million. Evaluating claims of suffering

and responsibility but even put

a price

on

is

not just a social welfare habit

a legal habit as well. In the civil law,

suffering, in fashioning

questionable practice,

I

agree).

we assume they

inflict.

(a

we grade

In the penal law,

crimes by degree, according to the degrees of ing

we

damage awards

harm and

suffer-

We consider the cruelty of a crime

(and the suffering of the victim) an important factor in sentencing, especially in

homicide

cases: the particularly

heinous na-

murder is a legal justification for imposing the death penalty; in some states, death penalty statutes practically require jurors to presume that some victims suffer more than

ture of a

others (in

my

view, a very questionable practice indeed).

Yet nothing makes people madder that I

am

we should imposing

judgmental

try to distinguish

my

—and

sensibilities

at

me

than

my

assertion

between degrees of suffering.

on

others, they say,

that's partly true.

I

am

being

But making judgments,

in-

xx

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE nYSFl'NCTIONAL

tormed judgments,

precisely what

is

grown-ups

in a

democratic

society have to do. I

can only

make

some

sense of this refusal to concede that

people sutler more than others by making reference to the cult victimization

of

and the perverse notion that compassion

means defining

suffering "inclusively" so that

wear the crown

of thorns.

among

today, particularly

multiculturalism, but

it

is

strains of victimism right functional,

hood

in the

ment. But

I

I

everyone gets to Laments about "victimism" abound

offered

right-wing critics o( feminism and

hardly

and

some

a

left.

partisan problem; there are In I'm Dysfunctional

,

You're

analysis oi the appeal of victim-

large as well as in the

recovery move-

culture

at

have

few, equivocal regrets about not having

a

critiqued feminist victimology in particular.

There have always been elements of victimism

movement, dating back

about

century anti-porn feminists,

150

years.

in the feminist

Late-twentieth-

like their late-nineteenth-century

underscore women's helplessness when they demand

sisters,

them from men (and to Amendment, which is considered a tool of

special censorship laws to protect

emasculate the First

male oppression). Today discussions about date rape and sexual

harassment also

some

reflect

as well as physical fragility

belief in

women's emotional

and some desire for

a little legal

chivalry. I

avoided discussing any of this

Dysfunctional partly because

dom, was

all

my

in

Vm

Dysfunctional, You're

previous book,

A Fearful Free-

about feminism, notions of feminine

frailty,

and

women's conflicting claims for special protections and equal rights. Working on Vm Dysfunctional, I enjoyed changing the subject.

But

I

also hesitated to suggest in public that feminists

were

making too much of routine sexual misconduct, when so many still made too little of it. (I completed Vm Dysfunctional,

people

— Preface to the Vintage Edition

You

Dysfunctional

re

summer of 1991, before the and the Mike Tyson and William

Kennedy Smith rape rape "hysteria," as age of

AIDS,

public awareness of date rape

hesitate to label

some

critics

the prospect of

Date rape

called terrifying.

Under the

trials raised

still

I

the

in

Thomas/Hill hearings and harassment.)

xxi

is

concern about date

of feminism do, because in an

unwanted sex can reasonably be not what

used to be.

it

rubric of date rape, however,

young women some-

—what the Victorians unwelcome advances—that

times include a range of sexual misdeeds

might have called

are far less griev-

ous than rape. Emerging feminist wisdom about date rape and harassment shares with the recovery movement the belief that suffering

is

relative,

because people are

fragile: a

as painful as an assault; every act of lechery

lent of rape.

Sometimes young women

testify to the

of being fondled by their dates (twenty years ago, all

been in

denial).

Older

women

rude word

testify to

is

the moral equiva-

is

"trauma"

we must have

having been "dis-

abled" by sexist remarks in the workplace. Fortunately, oversensitivity

does not infect

all

or even most feminist discussions

about date rape and harassment, but in some discussions, there is

a strain of naivete

that looks

more

Of course,

and an exaggeration of women's weakness

like femininity to

sexual harassment

is

me.

a serious, public

problem

an effective barrier to economic equality and a violation of

what should be

common

courtesy. But not every instance of

should routinely be considered traumatic, and tive standards

woman who I

feel

it

objec-

by which to measure harassment: not every

feels insulted

harassed. Date rape

That

we need

is

should be deemed to have been

real rape;

but groping

is

not.

my own concern about on my previous writings)

compelled to emphasize

date rape and harassment reflects the strength

(I'll

stand

of feminist victimology and

chill debate. Critically evaluating

its

tendency to

women's claims of

sexual

xxn

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOb'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

misconduct, ailing feminist concerns about these claims

me

public, labels

in It

twelve-step groups. All suffering

me

pains

common

is

in

Among some feminist

testimony of selt-proclaimed victims

circles, the is

"part of the backlash."

is

sacred, as

it

relative.

how much popular feminism has in movement today, thanks partly to completed Vm Dysfunctional, You're

to recognize

with the recovery

Gloria Steinem. After

I

Steinem published Revolution from Within, com-

functional,

bining personal testimony, inspirational tales, and an undis-

movement maxims. But if new brand of personal development

criminating selection of recovery

Steinem helped shape feminism,

its

movement

a

emergence was probably

has always played to

The recovery

inevitable.

women, and

it

has borrowed

from feminism an emphasis on self-esteem and

self-assertion,

along with the use of support groups to build a grass-roots

movement And The marriage

focuses on domestic violence.

it

of

feminism and recovery

is

exclusively

who

focus almost in particular

rind natural allies in recovery experts.

feminist

sumed

based largely on a

on pornography and sexual violence

shared ideology about child abuse. Feminists

movement

in the

They

risk implicating the

unsavory business of helping pre-

victims of abuse "retrieve" their buried memories by

hypnosis.

The growth of

a

memory-retrieval industry during

a

period

of hysteria about child abuse, ritual abuse, satanism, and por-

nography of a book.

is

a better subject for

I'll

simply point out the obvious

siderable potential for abuse

happy people

"60 Minutes" than the preface

are

when

—that

exposed to suggestive hypnotic techniques

designed to uncover their histories of abuse. that that

there's con-

suggestible, unstable, un-

If it is

possible

likely some victims of abuse do suffer from amnesia, many memories "retrieved" after twenty years are merely

imagined.

it is

Preface

The suggestion

that

we should not presume

abuse to be true seems, again,

have learned

family

life.

common

like

in the past year that

advocates and feminists

me

abuse and consider

Vintage Edition

to the

who a

all

it

testimony of

sense to me, but

I

some recovery

enrages

it

consider

xxiii

an endorsement of

collaborator in the "holocaust" of

This self-righteous certainty that any deviation from

recovery doctrine on abuse (or feminist doctrine on sexual

women and children is, from a An effective response

violence) reflects disdain for

policy perspective, surely self-defeating.

to the horrors of child abuse will be shaped by rational debate as well as

But

if

emotional outrage.

our discussions about abuse aren't entirely rational,

least they're

ubiquitous.

The recovery movement's obsession

with dysfunctional families

is

selfhood in academia and the

matched by

a

preoccupation with

of mental health.

field

most fashionable psychiatric diagnoses today sonality disorder

(MPD), which

is

said to be a

child abuse: abused children "disassociate" personalities to survive.

at

As an analogue

is

One

of the

multiple per-

consequence of

and form separate

to multiple personality

disorder, post-modern academics offer "multiple aspects theories" of selfhood, suggesting that

we

colony of competing voices. This

is

are each

our

own

multiculturalism

little

on the

smallest scale: the economic, ethnic, sexual, and racial alle-

giances that divide us as a society divide us as individuals as well.

Along with selves, high

preoccupation with diverse and divided

and low culture share an or, in its

Post-modern academics don't tives;

interest in testifying.

more exalted form, narrative, is endowed unique power to reveal the "authentic" self (or selves).

Testimony, with the

this

just study other people's narra-

they explore their own, as a

way of explaining or ground-

ing their theories.

The most frequently quoted and misunderstood

line in

Vm

IM DYSFl fNCTIONAL, YOl "RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

xxiv

and the

Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional

— was

erase

dition.

like to

I'd

Line

veiled reference to this academic testimonial tra-

a

When

described myself as

I

"skeptical, secular hu-

a

manist, Jewish, feminist, intellectual lawyer, currently residing

Iw

in the

League,"

was joking.

I

It

wasn't a very good joke

because tew people seem to have gotten

quoted OUt

of context.

tion of myself

was

I

As

explained,

I

but the

it,

line's

by popular,

listing the categories reviled

religious selt-help writers;

amused me

it

to realize

I

might be

accused of belonging to each of them. But, most o( categorical self-portrait satirized the tendency oi

academics to deconstruct themselves as ulate twelve-step group.

take such

all

ence;

I

is

this

they were in a post-

me

surprises

that people

several silly statements this past year,

A

book tour

is

heady experience,

you take

if

it

humbling experi-

a

actually tired ot hearing myself talk.

wind up It

made

oi them intentional.

also be a

all,

post-modern

statements so seriously.

silly

have, however,

I

not

still

It

if

always

descrip-

in offering this

A

book tour can

seriously.

You may

feeling like an expert.

frighteningly easy to

television

become an expert

in this culture;

and radio confer automatic authority.

puts you on the

air,

If

"Geraldo"

you must have something true and impor-

on do speak with some authority

tant to say. I'm not being self-effacing (and I've never been

"Geraldo").

On

or off the

air,

I

about the personal development tradition because it.

However,

I

I've studied

have never pretended to be an authority on

personal development per

I'm

se.

a writer,

not

a therapist. I've

studied the ideas of the personal development tradition and

considered its

its

general impact

on our

culture;

I

have not studied

effectiveness for disparate individuals (though

I

suspicions). I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional criticism, not psychotherapy.

not prescriptive.

It's

have is

my

social

intended to be provocative,

xxv

Preface to the Vintage Edition

For many readers, though, provocation

is

not enough. I'm

often criticized for not providing an alternative to the recovery

movement, which I

I

cannot and would not do. The notion that

should describe programmatic solutions to readers' personal

problems

anathema to me.

is

represents the transformation

It

of the writer's role in society from commentator or provoca-

problem

teur to

ment

solver.

tradition:

criticism

blame

I

we no

—we have only

What confounds me

this

longer

on the personal develop-

have

a

tradition

of social

social engineering.

even more than the demand that

I

offer

an expert blueprint for an alternative social movement are

Sometimes

requests for personal advice from individuals.

when

I

am

people ask

discussing I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional,

me

for help with personal problems:

How

do they

who've decided that they're codedo they manage their own addictions without joining twelve-step groups? (How do I find a good divorce lawyer? someone once asked.) Why do these people want my advice and how would they evaluate it? We are strangers. Why deal with friends or relations

pendent?

How

should they trust

most

critical

me

ularly teletherapy,

mous

to direct their lives?

of authors

I

have, in fact, been

who practice wholesale therapy,

partic-

presuming to diagnose millions of anony-

patients en masse. I've always thought that therapy,

Now, having

unlike politics, was a retail profession.

self-appointed personal development experts offer personal advice to millions of strangers,

I

who presume to am occasionally

accosted by total strangers seeking personal advice. In general,

I

have found

it

excoriated

Go

virtually impossible to talk

figure.

about

the personal development tradition without getting personal.

should of course have expected lives,

people expect

difficult

me

this; if

my

don't talk about their

my own. It is often me to convince an audi-

to talk about

and sometimes impossible for

ence that

I

I

critique of the recovery

movement

is

essentially

xxvi

not personal. (But, again, you can't separate the

political cal

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

from the personal

in recovery.)

are rendered in attacks I

was raised

in a

on mv character:

I

know

am

I

isn't

it

ties

I

in

is

I

crazy.

I

have no empathy for the dys-

possible to engage ideas without engaging alter

all,

pride themselves

wish we could engage ideas

wish we were recovery

icize the It

I

am mean; am

deep denial.

personalities (writers, voices). But

I

politi-

my book

Functional family (apparently the only func-

tional family in America), SO

functional; or

Often attacks on

less

in spite

threatened b\ debate.

It is

on having

of personali-

possible to

crit-

movement without condoning child abuse. some feminist ideas about pornogra-

possible to criticize

phy, rape, and harassment without condoning sexual violence. It

i>

even possible to

criticize

Alcoholics

dismissing the problem of addiction.

AA in I'm Dysfunctional, have, since

Why

it

Anonymous

You're Dysfunctional, but

I

might as well

has been so vigorously defended in response.)

should

AA

(or

any other recovery program or personal

development movement or

political ideology)

be shielded from

debate? In addition to the imperviousness of so

advocates to criticism, the deference paid to is

striking.

It

suggest that

works

for

without

didn't actually criticize

(I

should not be

AA

is

not

a

a

AA

in the

media

breach of some social contract to

panacea;

some people and not

it is

a

treatment program that

others.

I'm often accused of denigrating religion, but while denigrate the recovery true.

I

AA

many

movement,

this accusation

is

I

do

not quite

Mary McCarthy that religion is good for good wish we were wary of what we hold sacred.

agree with

people.

I

just

Wendy Kaminer December 1992

Introduction

This

is

my

not a book about

self-esteem.

My

don't think

I

will get

critique of the recovery

fashions does not reflect it

it

my

surely reflects

my

or yours.

life

hold the secret to success or salvation.

It

It

does not

won't strengthen your

me on

"Oprah."

movement and other

self-help

personal experiences (although

temperament).

I

am

not and never have

been a convert to recovery or even an occasional consumer of popular psychology, religion, or wellness books. I have attended support groups only pant.

I

have read

and I was

rarely

self-help

as

an observer, not

books only

as a critic,

engaged by the books that

I

as a partici-

not as a seeker,

read (one hundred

Whether this makes my analysis more or less worthwhile depends on whether you value the authority of experience more or less than the authority of research and

or

so),

except as a

critic.

reflection.

Writing on the basis of research and reflection, not experi-

Anonymous, twelveI'm Wendy, and I'm a

ence, I'm writing counter to the Alcoholics step tradition currently in vogue. "Hi,

recovering alcoholic, overeater, drug abuser, shopper, or support

group junkie,"

I'd

be required to confess

ery book, offering advice. Instead

so although readers,

I

I

I

if I

were writing a recov-

have only opinions and ideas;

imagine myself engaging in a dialogue with

don't imagine that

we

my

constitute a fellowship, based

I'M

2

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

on shared experiences. Nor do I pretend to love my readers, any more than they love me and countless other strangers. Perhaps because

I

have never trusted or desired protestations

of affection or concern from strangers and mere acquaintances, I

have never been attracted to support groups.

that support groups offer

community, and

often said

It is

may

that

well be true.

sidered part of the

on

friendship,

if

for

community

too, so

A

it is

not necessarily based

mean bonds

and sad model

that build

twelve-step group seems a

community. Testimony takes the place of conversation.

Whether

sitting in circles or lined

with any of their

tact

attended, a at us

up

in rows, people take turns

monologues about themselves,

delivering

man

listeners.

testifying

Once,

rarely

at

making eye con-

AA

an

meeting

I

from the front row turned to look

while he spoke, scanning our faces, seeking contact. Like

everyone

else

My own

I

looked away; his behavior seemed inappropriate.

notion of intimacy does not include prurience

the exchange of secrets between strangers.

munity

is

shaped by an

and neighbors and not

members

But newcomers to meetings are con-

by friendship we

strengthen over time.

who

for people

attend the same group regularly and befriend other

ideal of

My

vision of

mutual respect between

a shared sense of courtesy

and

—

com-

citizens

justice,

but

love.

"Not

all

men

worthy of

are

love,"

Freud wrote, debunking

the religious ideal of unconditional love

movement

is

based.

1

God

on which the recovery we

loves us in spite of our flaws, as

must love each other, today's popular Protestant writers conmight say, the love that discrimiwhich Freud described, is a form of abuse. Like an Old Testament patriarch, Freud might be a model for an abusive, "shaming" parent. Although the literature about recovery from addiction and codependency borrows heavily from family systems theory and firm. Or, as recovery experts

nates,

Introduction

seems, at

first,

an offshoot of pop psychology,

deeply in religion. (Codependency

everyone

—

is

it's

3

rooted most

the disease from which

is

— alcoholics, drug abusers, shoppers, and sex addicts The ideology of recovery is the ideology More than they resemble group therapy, groups are like revival meetings, carrying on the

trying to recover.)

of salvation by grace. twelve-step

pietistic tradition.

The

religiosity of

the recovery

rhetorical appeals to a higher

fervor of ally

its disciples.

movement

power and

is

evident in

its

in the evangelical

When I criticize the movement I am usu-

accused of being "in denial," as

I

might once have been

accused of heresy. (There are only two states of being in the

world of codependency

—

recovery and denial.) People

who

belong to twelve-step groups and identify strongly as addicts often turn

on me with the

self-righteous rage of religious zealots

defending their gods. Yet

I

have no power over them and want none. I'm not ques-

tioning their freedom to indulge in any religion or self-help

movement. I'm not marketing a competing movement or exhorting them to do anything in particular with their lives. If they're happy in recovery, why do they resent and take personally the skepticism of strangers?

In

fact, I

don't intend

my

indictment of the recovery move-

ment to be an indictment of every recovering person or even a comment on the movement's role in their lives. It is impossible to know how everyone in it uses this movement, interpreting or screening to

its

messages to suit themselves.

know how many

and read

self-help

and

equally impossible

people are helped or hurt by individual

therapy.) Countless people

skepticism,

(It is

move

in

and out of support groups

books with varying degrees of attentiveness,

naivete.

Some

people say they've been helped

by twelve-step groups, some say they've been hurt, and many have probably been affected

indifferently.

4

I'M

This

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

is

not to minimize the popularity of the recovery move-

ment, which,

after

all,

is

what makes

it

worth reviewing.

Recovery gurus, such as John Bradshaw, have large and loyal followings; although sales of recovery

may have peaked, they

are

still

and codependency books

in the millions. But, in the end,

the testimonials of several million satisfied consumers are not exactly relevant to

my

not commenting on the movement or any other self-

critique. I'm

disparate effects oi the recovery

who

partake in

individual effects of any mass

movement

help program on the millions of individuals it.

How

could

I?

The

are impossible to quantify. I'm

o( the recovery

movement and

commenting on the ideology its effect on our culture.

In questioning the collective impact of self-help trends, I'm

making the unfashionable assumption, bound that

it

is

still

to irritate

many,

possible to talk about "our" culture in a

self-

consciously multicultural age. I'm assuming that Americans o( different races, ethnicities, religions, genders, degrees of physical ablement,

and socioeconomic

classes

by the same cultural phenomenon, such as

may be

affected

television, celebrity

journalism, confessional autobiographies, consumerism, and the preoccupation with addiction, abuse, and problem-solving techniques. Precisely affected by these

how each

phenomena

I

group, tribe, or subculture

is

leave to poststructural scholars

to decide.

movements always Americans they affect. Mainstream, books are generally written and published

I'm not assuming, however, that self-help

represent every group of

mass market

self-help

by whites and tend to target mostly white, broadly middle-class audiences. There are also,

no doubt,

historic racial divides in

the self-help tradition, reflecting racial divides in society.

own

reading of turn-of-the-century African-American

improvement

literature

My self-

and conversations with African-

Introduction

American scholars lead me American

5

is an Africanmore toward communal, than indi-

to suspect that there

tradition oriented

vidual, development; analogous self-improvement efforts

among

whites tended to emphasize the individual's progress up the ladder of success

and

salvation.

Given the legacy of

slavery

and discrimination, it's not surprising that African-American would focus more on "lifting the race." But diversity of opinion and ideals within racial and ethnic groups makes self-help

movements distinctly black or distinctly white, the tradition of community activism and volunteering cuts across American culture, and the larger self-help tradition involving personal and communal development is a it

difficult to label self-help

fairly pluralistic

one. Early twentieth-century African-American

Marcus Garvey and Father Divine adopted some classic positive-thinking ideals — both were proponents of New Thought, a loose collection of beliefs about mind power that leaders

emerged in the nineteenth century. Today, Oprah Winfrey a

most

The

effective proselytizer for recovery.

divide in the self-help tradition that interests

demographic cal:

(racial,

me

is

not

ethnic, sexual, or economic) but ideologi-

I'm distinguishing between practical (how to do your

taxes)

is

books and personal (how to be happy) books.

own

Of course,

sometimes the practical and personal converge: Saving money

on your

taxes

may make you

a

offer helpful, practical advice

cultural ideals of slimness

esteem. But tical,

on

some

if

happy person.

on how

A diet book may

to eat, while reinforcing

and promising

to boost your

self-

few books are purely personal or purely prac-

are clearly

more personal.

individual, personal, or spiritual

It is

a strong emphasis

development that connects

the self-help ideals I'm reviewing and composes a tradition. is

that tradition I'm critiquing.

priate guides to fixing

your

car,

It

How-to books may be approcaring for your pet, or even

6

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

organizing a political campaign.

They

are fundamentally in-

apposite to resolving individual psychic or spiritual crises and

forming an individual

The

identity.

self-help tradition has always

and conformist, relying

as

it

been covertly authoritarian

does on a mystique of expertise,

encouraging people to look outside themselves for standardized instructions

on how

to be, teaching us that different people

with different problems can easily be saved by the same techniques.

It is

anathema

to

independent thought. Today's popular

programs on recovery from various (and questionable) addictions actively discourage people from actually helping them-

misnomer for how-to programs formation.) Codependency experts stress that peo-

selves. (Self-help

in identity

ple

who shop

is

usually a

or eat or love or drink too

themselves by solitary exertions o(

will.

much cannot

Addiction

a disease of the will; believing in self-control

stop

considered

is

one of

is

its

symptoms.

That the

self-help tradition

is

rarely described in these

terms

— as conformist, authoritarian, an exercise in majority rule — is

power of naming.

partly a tribute to the

called self-help

How could anything

connote dependence? But the authoritarianism

of this tradition

is

cloaked most effectively in the power of the

marketplace to make

it

seem

freely

chosen. Choice

is

an Amer-

ican article o( faith (as the vocabulary of the abortion debate

shows; even antiabortion activists use the rhetoric of choice);

and we

exercise choice, or enjoy the illusion of

in the marketplace.

paste

our

We

and paper towels

own

desires.

We

it,

primarily

choose from myriad brands of tooth-

in the belief that they differ

and

reflect

choose personal development experts,

absorbing their maxims and techniques and making them

our own.

Introduction

7

With luck or good judgment, some readers find guides who are helpful or who at least will do no harm. The best self-help books are like good parents, dispensing common sense. Many more

are like superfluous consultants, mystifying the obvious

in jargon

and

"The

italics to justify their jobs.

first

step in dis-

mantling the kind of thinking that reinforces misery addiction is

to identify

Ph.D.,

what

announces

ties as secrets

best-selling

I

call

miserable thoughts!' Robert A. Becker,

in Addicted to Misery. 2 Experts package inani-

that they're generously willing to divulge. In the

Secrets

Men

About

Every

Woman

Should Know,

"why men don't 3 like to talk and have sex at the same time." The answer, she says, simply restating her question, is that "men have a more

Barbara DeAngelis clears up such mysteries as

difficult

time expressing themselves and simultaneously per-

forming a task than

women do." What is the basis for this bold

assertion about gender difference?

claim to expertise kind.

She

is,

There

is

only DeAngelis's

— her Ph.D. and special insights into humanthe author of

after all,

How

to

Make Love

All

the Time.

This earnest fatuity that you find in self-help books is what makes them so funny. That millions of people take them seriously

is

rather sobering.

We should be troubled by the fact that

the typical mass market self-help book, college-educated readers, eighth-grade education.

of so

many

is

accessible to

We should worry

consumed by many

anyone with

a decent

about the willingness

to believe that the answers to existential questions

can be encapsulated in the portentous pronouncements of bumper-sticker books. all

they really need to

Only people who

know

die very

young learn

in kindergarten*

Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten was the numamong college students for the 1989-1990 academic year. Fulghum was chosen as commencement speaker at Smith College in 1991 and offered an

ber one best-seller

honorary degree, to the horror of

at least a

few alumnae. 4

8

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

me an elitist for disdaining popular self-help and the popular recovery movement; but a concern literacy and critical thinking is only democratic. The popu-

Some

will call

literature

for

larity

of books comprising slogans, sound bites,

success

on

is

and the

failures

recipes for

bemoaned trend blamed

part of a larger, frequently

television

and

of public education and blamed

for political apathy. Intellectuals, right

and

left,

complain about

the debasement o( public discourse the way fundamentalist

preachers complain about sex.

Still,

to

complain

recently the fascination with self-help has

contribution to the

dumbing down

made

just a little

—

a significant

of general interest books

and begun changing the relationship between writers and readers; it is less collegial and collaborative than didactic. Today, even

critical

books about ideas

are expected to be prescriptive,

to conclude with simple, step-by-step solutions to whatever crisis

they discuss. Reading

This book

will

itself

is

becoming

a

way out of thinking.

not conclude with a ten- or twelve-point

recovery plan for the "crisis of codependency," or the "code-

pendency complex," or any other is

an easy way

yet discovered

to get people to think for themselves, it.

(The hard way

not what publishers

call

politician, I've always felt I

"self-help syndrome."

have no answers, to

I

If

there

haven't

book is prescriptive. As a writer and not a entitled to raise questions for which is

education.) This

offer instead a

point of view.

Chances Are, You're

Codependent Too: Recovery Books Instead of a self-help section, section called recovery, right called

New

Age.

It's

local bookstore has a

around the corner from the one

stocked with books about addiction,

psychic healing, and codependency

blamed

my

— the popular new disease

such diverse disorders as drug abuse, alcoholism,

for

anorexia, child abuse, compulsive gambling, chronic lateness, fear of intimacy,

and low

originally referred to the holics,

self-esteem.

Codependence, which

problems of women married to alco-

was discovered by pop psychologists and addiction

counselors during the 1980s and redefined.

Now

it

applies to

any problem associated with any addiction,

real or

imagined,

suffered

by you or someone close to you.

Now this amorphous

book sales, support groups, expensive treatment programs, and an annual recovery conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Codependency "has disease

is

a business, generating millions of

arrived," according to the First National

Conference Report

issued in 1989; experts laud recovery as a national grass-roots

movement.

1

10

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

Codepcndency

is

advertised as a national epidemic, partly

because every conceivable form o( arguably compulsive behavior is

classified as

rageholics, shopaholics, as

smart

choices about

are a nation of sexaholics,

and rushaholics. What were once

—

bad habits and dilemmas

plexes,

We

an addiction.

billed

Cinderella and Peter Pan com-

women loving too much and making foolish men who hate them — are now considered addic-

tions too, or reactions to the addictions of others, or both. Like

drug and alcohol abuse, they are considered codependent the self-help industry

eases.

If

mind

in the 1990s,

we

our capacity to defeat curative

is

any measure of our

are indeed obsessed with disease

and

codependency books

the

it.

All

power of faith, introspection, and abstinence.

ing after in America.

Almost everyone

—

dis-

state of

We want

stress It's

morn-

—

suffers

to be in recovery.

96 percent of

all

Americans

assert, and given their very broad we probably do. Melody Beattie, bestauthor of Codependent No More and Beyond Codepen-

from codependency, experts definitions of this disease, selling

denes, defines

codependency

as

being affected by someone 2

Who

behavior and obsessed with controlling

it.

Wilson Schaef, author of the

When

best-selling

it

as "a disease process

is

—

whose assumptions,

lack of spiritual awareness lead to a

else's

Anne

Society Becomes

an Addict and Co-Dependence: Misunderstood defines

isn't?

Mistreated

y

and process of nonliving which beliefs,

progressive." 3

That some readers think they know what this means is a what George Orwell considered reduced expectations

tribute to

o{ language and the substitution of attitudes and feelings for

enough for Schaef to mean that codependency is bad and anyone can have it, which makes this disease look more like a marketing device. Codependency offers a diagnosis, and support group, to virtually anyone with a problem who ideas.

It is

can read or

listen to a tape cassette.

Chances Are, You're Codependent Too: Recovery Books

11

The publishing pendency,

is

industry, which didn't exactly invent codemaking sure that millions of Americans discover

Publishers ranging from HarperCollins to Prentice Hall to

it.

the religious press

Thomas Nelson have

or wellness books. Harper lists

San

special lines of recovery

Francisco, a leader in the field,

about eighty recovery books, some of which are published

in conjunction with the

Hazelden Foundation,

a treatment

center for chemical addiction. Sales can fairly be called phe-

nomenal. Although publishers'

sales figures are notoriously

unreliable

—

tion that

codependency books

they're likely to

be

inflated

—

there

is

no quesand

are extremely popular

profitable.

According to Harper's 1991

Melody

Beattie's

Codependent

figures,

No

joyed over one hundred weeks seller

list

and

its

top

sellers,

More, a paperback, has en-

on the New

York Times best-

of over two million. Beattie's Beyond

sales

Codependency has so

one of

far sold

over 500,000 copies. Harper San

Anne Wilson Schaef. Two of her books, Misunderstood — Mistreated and Women s Real-

Francisco also publishes

Co-Dependence: ity:

An

Emerging Female System

in

a White Male Society, have

each sold over 300,000 copies. Her 1990 Meditations

Who Do one

Too

Much has

for

Women

reportedly sold over 400,000 copies in

year.

Smaller publishers have also cashed in

on

this voracious

market. Health Communications, Inc., which specializes in

paperback codependency books,

lists

about two hundred

titles,

including some best-sellers. According to HCI's 1991 sales figures, its

top book, Adult Children of Alcoholics, by Janet

Woitetz, has sold over two million copies. Charles Whitfield's Healing the Child Within and John Bradshaw's Bradshaw On:

The Family and Healing

the

sold over 800,000 copies.

two million for 1991.

Shame That Binds You have each

HCI

anticipates net sales of about

12

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

What's striking about the innumerable codependency books

on the market (I've read about thirty-five) is their sameness. They may differ in levels of literacy and how they balance discussion o( codependency theory with recovery techniques. But

they describe the same syndromes in the same jargon and prescribe the

same cure

—

enlistment in a support group that

follows an overtly religious program, stressing submission to a higher power,

borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous. Code-

pendency books in a drugstore. lot

line the shelves like different

As one codependency publisher has said, "A why they're not happy." 4

of people are looking at

Their unhappiness begins ily,

brands of aspirin

codependency authors

tems theory explaining

home,

at

stress,

how

in the dysfunctional fam-

drawing heavily on family

sys-

individuals develop in relation or

reaction to their families. In the world of codependency, families are incubators o( disease: they

manufacture "toxic" shame,

"toxic" anger, "toxic" self-doubts, any

number

of "toxic" de-

pendencies, and a "toxic" preoccupation with privacy. (Secrets are "toxic," presidential daughter Patti Fair,

Davis confirms in Vanity

explaining her decision to write a

tell-all

book about her

Ronald and Nancy Reagan.) Codependency is blamed on bad parenting, or, put more dramatically, on child abuse, which makes it an intergeneraparents,

—

tional disease: child abuse

defined broadly to include any

emotional or physical abandonment or disrespect child abuse or anorexia surely part o(

our families.

No soap

opera

Codependency books discover the

and other forms of

codependency 's appeal.

many ways

is

We

—

self-abuse.

are

all

begets

This

is

fascinated by

more compelling than our own.

you back through childhood to which you've been abused and the

lead in

"negative messages" you've internalized. Exercises, quizzes, and

sentence completions, such as ing reality around

my

father

"I

have trouble owning

when

..."

assist

you

my feelin self-

Chances Are, You

Codependent Too: Recovery Books

re

and the obligatory

evaluation

13

"grief work." Discussion questions

following each chapter test your reading comprehension. (Most

of these books remind

me

of my grade school readers.) Medita-

and visualizations help you work through your stoppedup energy systems. With simple diagnostic formulas you can estimate your codependency score, your place on a worry index, tions

or your post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) average. You are

encouraged to engage in "journaling," keeping track of your

on

feelings

a daily basis.

books," are

own

filled

(Some codependency books, "work-

And

with blank pages.)

you can find your

pattern or syndrome in the usual assortment of case studies

pseudonymous and probably

that track

fictitious children of

abuse into adulthood. Readers are encouraged to reconstruct

own

their

pasts

by drawing family

trees

("genograms") charting

their legacies of abuse:

Grandfather was an alcoholic, mother

a compulsive rescuer,

and Uncle Murray weighs 270 pounds.

is

Father affairs

a sex addict, your sister

is

is

anorexic,

and you have

only with married men.

and jargon may be some sensible insights drama of family life. The trouble is that for codependency consumers, someone else is always writing the script. They are encouraged to see themselves Encased in

into

how

silliness

character takes shape in the

as victims of family life rather

They

are

autonomy; rarely

codependency literature offers few lessons autonomy that people may achieve. The self

at least,

in the degrees of is

viewed in isolation.

"We cannot have an stresses in

on

than self-determining participants.

encouraged to believe in the impossibility of individual

identity

his public television series.

beginning by a assertion,

all

alone,"

Bradshaw On: The Family, the 1988

only

relationship!' 5 its

1

"Our

reality

is

John Bradshaw best-seller

based

shaped from the

don't question the truth of this

relative importance.

by the larger cultural environment

Our

—

reality

our

is

also

shaped

race, religion,

and

14

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

— as well as by the weather.

socioeconomic status along the line we

still

become accountable

factors that

shaped us are moot.

this point,

it

under

gets buried

relationship charts.

The

If

Somewhere

for ourselves; the

codependency authors make

a pile o( family histories

that people are shaped by their families, as

if

family

always

life

ended the story o( character and never began it. For help movement, recovery is remarkably deterministic.

The

a self-

characters of children in dysfunctional families, which

supposedly include virtually

mined

and

experts teach, with an air of discovery,

early

on by bad

be deter-

families, are said to

all

relationships:

codependents are improp-

Codependents have boundary problems, confusion about where they end and others begin. "Growing up means accepting our fundamental aloneness," Bradshaw erly "individuated."

announces, 6 although no one side your support

is

ever alone in recovery; out-

group you're with God. But codependency

authors are often inconsistent; sometimes, sav

what sounds

right at the

as a goal in recovery, ing, given the

but

it's

like politicians,

moment. Individuation one that

is

is

they

posited

hard to imagine achiev-

premise that no one has an identity

all

alone.

I

suspect that improper individuation provides an excuse for recovering codependents

more often than proper individuation

provides a goal. Dysfunctional families sacrifice their to the family system, ists

to

Bradshaw assures

keep the system in balance!' 7

In our culture,

women

have long been assigned primary

responsibility for the family's emotional balance,

dency

members

us: "Trie individual ex-

is

and codepen-

often described as a feminine disease, or femininity

labeled a form of codependency.

Codependency

is

is

"women's

basic programming," Charlotte Davis Kasl writes in

Women,

Sex and Addiction, a rare, reasonably intelligent, feminist analysis

of addiction. 8 asserts in

As pop New Age

feminist

Anne Wilson

Co-Dependence: Misunderstood

—

Schaef

Mistreated,

"The

Chances Are, You're Codependent Too: Recovery Books non-liberated

woman and

the codependent are the same per-

son .... She gets her identity completely from outside

Many

15

herself."

9

of the codependents described in codependency books

are male, but

most of these books

interested in their

husbands and

are written for

women

—

fathers as well as themselves.

According to one publisher, the codependency market

is

85

percent female.

There are differing feminist perspectives on this mostly female phenomenon. Stressing that women should not be submissive and self-effacing, the recovery movement includes some popular feminist ideals. But calling femininity a disease obscures the fact that

many women

abuse by circumstance,

are trapped in

not weakness. They enter into abusive marriages unwittingly, out of bad judgment or bad luck, not masochism; they remain

because they can't afford to leave, perhaps because they've had less

than equal educational or employment opportunities or

because they have young children and no day care. Problems like

these are political as well as personal; they require collec-

tive as well as individual action,

and

objectivity, as well as

introspection.

But

if

the view of a nonliberated

to feminists

who

woman

see her as oppressed,

it's

as sick

is

anathema

balanced by a view

Codependency theory harbors some soft feminist ideals, often couched in New Age jargon: John Bradshaw describes a good relationship as one "based on equal-

of liberation as healthy.

ity,

the equality of two self-actualizing spiritual beings

nect at the level of their beingness."

Whatever

who con-

10

self-actualizing spiritual beings

may

be, however,

there are few of them in this culture, male or female, Bradshaw

Women

and others

agree:

are sick in

complementary ways, and society

are

not alone in their pathology. itself is

— to the arms race, the repression of emotion, tion of capital,

and enlarging the hole

in the

Men

addicted

the accumula-

ozone

layer.

These

16

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

addictions reflect what

is

o( masculinity

—

Wilson Schaef

asserts in

implicitly

—

Mistreated,

are talking

as the disease

As Anne

rationalist, "left-brain" thinking.

When

"White Male System" that estly reported in

condemned

Becomes an Addict, the

Society

rules us

is

addictive. 11

As

she mod-

her earlier book, Co-Dependence: Misunderstood

"When we

talk

about civilization

about the addictive process, we

we know

as

12

it."

This view o( codependency as a pervasive, institutionalized disease not only provides

possible audience

anic zeal.

viduals

Codependence,

and the nation.

diseases, experts

and

codependency authors with the widest

— everyone — but imbues them with messiIt

after all,

considered

is

fatal, for indi-

and other

causes cancer

stress-related

warn, as well as environmental pollution

war.

society

If

and everyone

in

it

is

addicted, self-destructing,

infected with left-brain rationality, then people in recovery are

the chosen few, an self-actualizers

elite

minority of enlightened,

if

irrational,

with the wisdom to save the world. Schaef con-

firms that the only people

who

can help cure our addictive

system are those "recovering from

its effects."

13

Experts themselves must thus admit that they're recovering

and codependency books tend to be at least confessional, following a model of the expert as patient

codependents partly

taken from

from

just

too,

AA:

"Hello!

My name

about every addiction

is

Carla and

known

Wills-Brandon perkily reveals on the Is It

Sex.714 Personal

I

am

recovering

to humanity," Carla

first

page of

experience with addiction

is

Is It

Love or

said to be as

important a credential as professional degrees, partly because the therapeutic profession ticing" codependents.

itself is said

to be a nest of "prac-

Lynne Namka, author of The Doormat

Syndrome, warns you to choose a therapist psychological problems than you do."

15

"who has

fewer

Chances Are, You're Codependent Too: Recovery Books

These predictable confessions provide

at

most

17

a fleeting ap-

pearance of an egalitarian relationship between expert and

One

reader.

selling advice that the other

is still

and

like to recite their professional

carefully include

and

M.A.'s, M.S.W.'s,

Ph.D. Experts

who

any

Ed.D.'s

initials after their

abound, joined by the occasional

have none, invoke the moral authority

we grant victims by confessing their respect we grant "survivors." In the if

addictions, as well as the 1990s, everyone wants to

survivalhood were the only alternative to

"QUAKE SURVIVOR RELOCATES

victimization:

New

'humanistic' male," a personal ad in the

Books explains. '88,

my

"I

may

pendency," people in recovery

"I

seeks

York Review of

survived the subway strike, the

husband," T-shirts proclaim.

first

creden-

names: M.D.'s,

decline to cloak themselves in professional

expertise, because they

be a survivor, as

buying, and

forma identification with other recovering

despite their pro

codependents, experts tials

is

summer

of

survived code-

boast, like figures in a

New

Yorker cartoon cocktail party.

The

process of recovery

—

it is

not an event, experts repeatedly

explain

—

style"

supposed to bring rebirth.

is

child"

Or

bring more than survival. Its

goal

is

The

recovery

"life-

healing your "inner

— the wounded child who took refuge from deprivation

and abuse us

may

in

some

recess of

perhaps the inner child

an eternal

Inner Child,

child!'

an

your is

soul.

the soul:

"We

all carry

within

Jeremiah Abrams writes in Reclaiming

eclectic collection of essays

within that are alternately engaging, prehensible.16 Inner child theory

of Jung,

New Age

chology,

and psychoanalytic

is

about the child

trite, silly,

an

the

and incom-

equally eclectic

blend

mysticism, holy child mythology, pop psytheories about narcissism

and the

creation of a false self that wears emotions without experienc-

ing them.

18

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

Codependency, which includes narcissism, along with most other disorders,

often described as a failure to

is

true childlike dren." a

It

self.

some

are

feel,

or a failure

Addiction "masks" true feelings and the

to feel what's true:

Codependents are considered "adult chilmore like Scrooge than Peter Pan, all have

Tiny Tim within. Inner children are always good

—

innocent and pure

the most sentimentalized Dickens characters, which

people are essentially good and, most of

Ted Bundv had

a

child within. Evil

all,

— like

means

redeemable: Even

—

merely a mask

is

that

a

dysfunction.

The

therapeutic view of evil as sickness, not sin,

codependency theory

in

—

it's

not a

strong

is

and brimstone

fire

the-

"Shaming" children, calling them bad, is considered a primary form of abuse. Both guilt and shame "are not useful as a way ot lite," Melody Beattie writes earnestly in Codependent

ology.

So

More. "Guilt makes everything harder.

ourselves."

Someone should remind

17

for people

who

to be grateful

if

.

.

.

We

need to forgive

Beattie that there's a

name

and shame: sociopaths. We ought makes things like murder and moral cor-

lack guilt guilt

ruption "harder." It's

not quite

fair,

however, to accuse Beattie and other code-

pendency experts of moral

relativism, since they distinguish

between healthy and unhealthy behavior. Outside

a

church

and sin may more marketable than

or court of law the difference between sickness

be merely semantic. Sickness, however, sin:

readers

who

find

it

satisfying

as the victims of disease evil.

is

and

useful to be diagnosed

would probably resent being

Inner child doctrine assures us that no one

everyone can be saved. view of

evil

What

looks at

is

first like

turns out to be religious instead:

and dramas of inner

a therapeutic

Codependency

theory replaces the Freudian subconscious with pulses

called

unforgivable;

its

unholy im-

conflict with the peaceful,

happy

Chances Are, You're Codependent Too: Recovery Books

no one

vision of a child within. Because

is

inhabited by

or "unhealthy" urges, because inside every addict

yearning to be

This

free,

19

is

evil

a holy child

recovery holds the promise of redemption.

religiosity distinguishes

codependency

from

literature

the predominant personal development and relationship books

of the 1970s and early 1980s. Prototypical books such as Colette

How

Dowling's The Cinderella Complex and Dr. Joyce Brothers's to

Get Whatever You Want Out of

spiritual,

—

health

on

Life focused

on mental, not

happiness, self-confidence, love, and

Codependency literature combines the pop psychology and pop feminism of these books with New Age spiritualism and, most of all, some traditional evangelical ideals. Addiction and recovery look a lot like sin and redemption. Addiction is often described as success in the temporal world, not salvation.

enthrallment to a

false

god; recovery leads you to the true.

suffering associated with addiction

and

it

is

prepares you to serve: "Without

my

suffering,

not be able to bear witness," John Bradshaw writes.

18

I

would

Sin can

be the low road to redemption, as Jimmy Swaggart made

Many

codependents take a

disorders, as It is

if

The

purposeful and purifying,

clear.

familiar, confessional pride in their

every addiction were a crucible.

not surprising that codependency theory has been em-

braced by a new generation of self-styled "Christian therapists."

Thomas Nelson,

the religious trade press, publishes a series o{

codependency books clinic, a

in conjunction with the Minirth-Meier

Christian psychiatric clinic in Texas. Instead of a generic

higher power, the Minirth-Meier authors write about strongly suggest that everyone also tend to

is

promote traditional sex

nism: abortion

is

political causes are

God and

better off with Jesus.

a sin; mothers

roles

and condemn

who become

clear).

femi-

involved in

engaging in abuse (the ways in which the

very broad definitions of child abuse can be used against

become

They

women

But despite the overt Christian bias oi these

20

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

books, they

are, in

dependency

literature,

much

substance,

case studies, analyses of family

life,

and

Because codependency theory

tion.

like putatively secular co-

using the same jargon to present the same

is

attitudes toward addic-

codependency; they simply adopt

to adapt

The

In this last to

codependency

disease of

be reborn; and

it.

probably millennium

in recovery,

everybody

how much

No

fever.

matter

how

acquisitive

ingested, or sex acts

corruption enjoyed, you're

innocent: the divine child inside you

by the worst o( your

is.

and the

in the narcissistic 1970s

no matter how many drugs you've

performed, or tially

have

decade of the twentieth century, everybody wants

bad you've been 1980s,

is

and

essentially religious

essentially Christian as well, Christian therapists don't

is

still

essen-

always untouched

sins.

This relentless optimism drove

me

to Kafka, that incorrigibly

unrepentant codependent, and to some old-fashioned preaching.

God

issues a lot of negative messages (thou shalt not's),

Rabbi Harlan

Wechsler reminds us in What's So Bad About

J.

Guilt?, a sensible, ality.

Use your

if

and

ration-

make moral judgments and

devise

avuncular, defense of conscience

intellect to

constructive punishments for yourself suggests:

if

Of course,

daily

there's

justice.

mations is

like

others, he heretically

your husband leaves you for a younger woman,

"berate him, punish him,

ment

and

God

"You

and make

no revenge

issues

his

in recovery,

life

miserable." 19

and

little

Old Testa-

only cloying positive messages

are lovable."

Chanting affirmations

an important recovery technique. So

is

—

affir-

to yourself

visualizing

—

imagining yourself happy, spiritually "whole," or as your inner child.

"Energy follows thought," Lynne

Namka

reports in

The

Doormat Syndrome. "You actually become what you think." 20

Chances Are, You're Codependent Too: Recovery Books "Picturize,"

Norman Vincent

of Positive Thinking,

leave you, picture

suggested,

and

him

to receive."

He

commanded

If

in

The Power

your husband wants to

sitting happily in his favorite chair, Peale

he'll stay.

This

is

positively magical thinking,

"what the mind profoundly expects,

but, as Peale said, 21

Peale

back in 1952.

21

it

tends

advised readers to develop a "happiness habit"

by repeating happy thoughts to themselves

Imagine your-

daily.

succeeding and you will, like The Little Engine That Could. Codependency authors don't seem quite as materialistic or oblivious to social injustice as Peale (who believed all problems were failures of attitude), nor do they say recovery will be easy. But they owe him much — the reliance on simple, universally applicable techniques to facilitate individual change and the self

belief in

automatic behavior,

mations.

The promise

like

the daily recitation of

of a recovery "lifestyle"

is

that

affir-

we need

not remain victims of our families; the wounds of childhood

Codependency authors share with Peale the conviction that happiness, health, and spiritual well-being are available to everyone, requiring only faith and obedience to need not be

fatal.

technique.

Recovery, after

all, is

not an act of

will.

Willfulness

is

what

causes addiction; abdication, not continued assertion of the will, is its cure. ("I

took back

my

will," I

once heard a recovering

alcoholic say, explaining a lapse back into drinking.) step in recovery

is

is

first

admitting that you are powerless over your

addiction and incapable of willing your step

The

way

to health; the next

surrendering your will to a higher power.

self-surrender, the recovery

movement

is

Demanding

essentially religious,

not psychotherapeutic, and most closely resembles nineteenthcentury revivalism, with a

little

Imagine the slogan of recovery

and submit

—

Christian Science thrown

in.

— admit that you're powerless

as a political slogan,

and what

is

wrong with

22

I'M

this

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

movement becomes

participatory democracy.

That

clear. It

is

only a

hardly a slogan for a

is

little less

troubling as a

slogan for a quasi-religious movement, particularly in light of the recent history o( cultism in this country. I'm not suggesting that recovery

is

a cult

(it's

or that recovery experts are

do seem brook

too disorganized for that)

incipient Jim Joneses.

to enjoy the adulation o( their followers

much

tempered by the submit to

to

a

few

many are probably sincere, relatively They stress that the mandate to submit

givers.

fact that

the concept of a higher power

man and woman

presented as a very personal one: every

better

A

and don't

dissent, but

benign advice is

much all

his or her

own image

of

than submitting to somebody

God, which else's.

is

is

gets

no doubt

But in fashioning

view of ourselves as passive or active, dependent or autono-

mous, how we imagine our gods may be

how we imagine our

relationships with

less

them

important than

—

as submissive

or collegial.

Recovery experts would also claim that the message about submission

is

not intended to absolve people from taking

responsibility for their least partly true.

own

recovery,

and that

is

probably

at

Getting over a genuine addiction or any

destructive behavior pattern obviously requires individual moti-

vation and self-discipline. of self-surrender

be

fairly

It is

also true that the religious ideals

on which the recovery movement

is

based can will

and

to the early 1800s,

was

complex, as numerous disputations about free

salvation show.

Modern

revivalism,

which dates back

partly a revision of rather depressing

and

essentially un-

American Calvinist notions about predestination and the inahumankind to save itself. The first popular nineteenth-

bility of

century this

revivalists,

notably Charles Grandison Finney, rejected

notion that people are merely the passive recipients of grace

or damnation: they can actively court salvation by opening

Chances Are, You're Codependent Too: Recovery Books their hearts to

of

God and

converting. Revivalism introduced ideas

human agency into the drama of salvation. 22 But if every man and even woman had a role were the

revivalist preachers, like Finney,

ers

23

stumping the country

in the play,

stars. Itinerant

preach-

facilitated conversions, purposefully

and manipulating people's emotions, drawing on their instincts about crowd psychology. God's salesmen, they knew

exciting

how

to advertise effectively.

book

for aspiring preachers

revival techniques."

Finney even published a how-to

—

a "professional

Revivalism was a relatively egalitarian passed established churches and focused relationship with

handbook of

23

God. Recovery

also

is

movement that byon the individual's

usually extolled for

its

egalitarianism; advocates claim that support groups provide nococt,

nonauthoritarian alternatives to traditional therapy, is

an individual journey. But

it is

not a journey you embark

ing that recovery, like salvation, it is

on

not an autonomous one;

alone.

The

ual salvation

irony of revivalism is

and recovery

is

that individ-

sought through submersion in a crowd.

Recovery hasn't quite given us back old-time a kinder, gentler,

stress-

religion;

it

offers

nonjudgmental god. Experts eschew stern and

fearsome preaching; in their theology, denial

come to damnation. They often

is

the closest you

criticize overt, strict authori-

tarianism in church or in the home. Disapproving, rulebound parents breed "toxic" shame; disapproving, rulebound preachers

breed "toxic"

faith, as

do

New Age

gurus, cult leaders,

and

other purveyors oi "false" faiths. (Religion can be toxic too, the experts warn.)

Codependency

experts practice a very soft

authoritarianism in their books, playing model parents for adult

children to follow out of love

Like most

and

trust,

not

fear.

modern ad campaigns, the recovery movement

seems noncoercive. People aren't usually agitated or manipulated in

obvious ways; the roles of the crowd and the expert are

24

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

subtler than thev are in revivalism.

Consumers

are free not

buy codependency books, and they determine

to

own

their

degrees of participation in support groups, which are generally to an anonymous public. No one is required to speak, and direct responses to anyone's testimony or comments on anyone else's problems are generally discouraged. The groups

open

are

supposed to be nonjudgmental, and you are supposed to about vourself.

talk onlv

codependents describe their

Yet, listening to recovering

gles in the

you hear the voice of the crowd. language

is

part of

what holds

a

Of course,

which

its

speaking a

common

group together, and one meas-

ure of the success of any cultural to

strug-

same jargon and the same prefabricated phrases,

phenomenon

is

the extent

language enters the vernacular. You knew the

counterculture had peaked, for instance,

when

middle-aged,

middle-class people started talking about the far-out things they

were

into.

Today, people on line at the supermarket talk about

their dysfunctional families.

Maybe it is possible to use someone else's jargon to convey own thoughts. Maybe the jargon shapes the thought. But

your if

the relationship between language and thought

it's

clear that recovering

specialized language but often say the in the

own I

same popular

is

a mystery,

codependents not only use the same

same

things, partaking

attitudes toward addiction, abuse,

and

their

victimization.

guess

dence of

it is

its

possible that their unanimity of opinion

truth or, at least,

works?" I'm often asked.

A lot of people

u (

By

say they've

saved

of recovery, and

if

my

that's

"Why

is

evi-

question what

their fruits ye shall

found the answers

know

them.")

in recovery, as

and what experts might call a lifesome declare in dramatic defense true I'm happy for them.

well as support, self-esteem, style system. "It

its utility.

life,"

Chances Are, You

Codependent Too: Recovery Books

re

25

But without questioning their right to choose their gateways to salvation,

I

can question their judgment

as well as prevailing

claims about the general efficacy of twelve-step groups. really

knows

how

just

well recovery works. People

No one

who

helped by twelve-step groups

may have been helped by

treatments and sets of beliefs,

and the

rates of disease

are

other

actual success or failure

model treatment programs,

like

AA,

have been

credibly questioned by other "experts in the field." 24 But you don't have to be a therapist, M.D., or any other certifiable expert

drug or alcohol abuse and other bad behaviors to wonder

in

about a society in which people are so eager to

call

themselves

addicted and abused.

Whether alcoholism

an inheritable disease or a learned

is

is a controversy about which I have no opinion. (I do doubt, however, that absolutely everyone who drinks habitu-

behavior

ally

or in excess

is

indisputably addictive, I've

Some drugs are Anonymous meetings

the victim of her genes.)

and the Narcotics

attended clarified for

me

the uses of support. (What

occasionally heard recovering addicts describe

some

includes for

some

is

support that

Smoking may be addictive but many have given up cigarettes by exer-

active intervention.)

people,

tions of will, without the aid of any program.

Some

people

shop, have sex, or twirl their hair compulsively, but it's

helpful to convince

them

Practicing overeaters, shoppers, are

I've

I

eat,

doubt

that they're powerless to stop.

and

twirlers, like

drugs addicts,

even warned against trying to stop eating, shopping, or

twirling

on

their

own: a

belief in self-control

is

a

symptom

of

codependency and the "perfectionist complex." Exaggerating every foible, bad habit, and complaint, taking our behavior

out of our control, and defining us as adult children, recovery

encourages invalidism. Calling the recovery process self-help doesn't change the

way

it

tends to disempower people.

26

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

an odd program

It is

in self-esteem that rewards people for

calling themselves helpless, childish, addicted,

and diseased and

punishes them for claiming to be healthy. Admit that you're sick

pute

and you're welcomed into the recovering persons fold; disit and you're "in denial." Thus the search for identity is

perversely resolved:

your bad behaviors and unwanted

all

become conditions of your smokes, you are

nicotine addict. Instead of a

a

sometimes depressed, you be addictive too, we're

The

feel-

who person who is

being. Instead of a person

are a sadness addict. (Feelings

can

told.)

popularity of these diagnoses reflects, in part, a natural

— codependency — over the

prefe rence tor a treatable disease

undefinable sense o( unease from which everyone must sometimes

suffer.

Codependency

experts stress that disease

is

"dis-

with the ersat: profundity of adolescents discovering that

God

is

dog spelled backward; but unlike the adolescents, the

experts miss their point. Identifying codependency with what

some might consider the human condition only undercuts the claim that it is a discrete dysfunction from which people may recover.

Labeling

all

their

problems symptoms oi

disease, people in

recovery find not only the promise oi a cure but an external

cause for what

them — the dysfunctional family (and Codependency experts assert that

ails

families in particular). tically

everyone

is

broadly enough to

a

their

prac-

victim of child abuse, defining abuse

make

the assertion true.

Who among us has

ever enjoyed or could ever provide always perfect parenting?

The

unwillingness to tolerate,

much

less

table conflicts

and imperfections of family

in adolescents,

but

it is

tiresome in adults.

to address serious patterns of abuse.

that every parent

makes

laugh

life It

When

at,

the inevi-

may be poignant

also

impedes

efforts

the minor mistakes

are dramatized, or melodramatized,

the terrible misconduct of

some

is

trivialized. If child

abuse

Chances Are, You're Codependent Too: Recovery Books is

27

every form of inadequate nurturance, then being raped by

same general class as being ignored or not help with your homework. When everything is child

your father getting

is

in the

abuse, nothing

There

is

is.

something niggardly and mean-spirited

in the passion

with which some recovering codependents point to themselves as victims of abuse, laying claim to the

Children of Alcoholics

(ACOAs)

crown of thorns. Adult

are like

suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, offensively. 25

themselves perspective

Holocaust survivors,

John Bradshaw

writes

Recovery gives people permission always to put

first,

on

partly because

it

them

doesn't give

their complaints: parental nagging

equal of physical abuse and deprivation,

much

less

a sense of is

not the

genocide;

No

vague intimations of unease are not the same as cancer.

one seems say,

to

count her blessings in recovery.

"Some people

suffer

more than

I."

For

I've all

heard no one

the talk about

sharing and caring, in recovery there's more evidence of

self-

than compassion.

pity

The failure to acknowledge that there are hierarchies of human suffering is what makes recovery and other personal development fashions

That

is

yourself

mean

"selfist"

and

narcissistic, as critics charge.

not, however, a failure of individualism.

and considering your

existential

Thinking

for

autonomy does not

and the understanding that other people's problems may be more pressing than your own. The selfism of recovery is more a failure of community; at least it reflects a very shallow notion of community, which is not a group of people going on about themselves in losing your sense of place in society

the belief that they're quires

and will

all

equal in their pain.

Community

re-

an awareness of inequalities, the desire to correct them,

faith in

your capacity to do so

—

faith that the

can sometimes be a force for good, not

shriveled heart of a disease.

"The

will

is

human

just the blackened,

the most dis-eased part

28

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

of any adult child's co-dependence" practically

everyone

is

That recovery

is

writes, 26

and

many

will in

order to recover, which

possibilities for willful,

extolled by

munity and condemned by

its

moral actions.

advocates as a paradigm of comindividualism

critics for excessive

only measures our confusion about individualism and nity.

as a

It

since

supposed to be an adult child, practically

everyone must surrender the doesn't leave us with

Bradshaw

also reflects a pervasive fascination with

primary source of

identity.

commu-

victimhood

Acted upon, put upon, and

always aggrieved, adult children, the victims of their families, arc hardly

models

for individual or

communal

action. Yet this

emphasis on the essential helplessness o( the individual has perverse appeal.

It

offers absolution

and no

instead of imposing the capacity to act, to sympathy, support,

The phenomenal

and

accountability,

and

confers entitlements

reparations.

success of the recovery

two simple truths that emerge to talk

it

movement

in adolescence:

all

about themselves, and most people are

reflects

people love

mad

at their

parents. You don't have to be in denial to doubt that truths like

these will set us

free.

Testifying: Television

Recovering substance abuser Kitty Dukakis once called a press conference to

and request

announce her descent

respect for her privacy.

It

band's defeat in the 1988 presidential race,

newsworthy than the marveled only briefly

into alcoholism

was shortly

after

her hus-

when she was

less

pearls adorning Barbara Bush's neck. at

the spectacle of a

woman

I

seeking

and public confession of an addiction. Some people, especially famous and formerly famous ones, seem to enjoy their privacy only in public. Now You Know, Kitty Dukakis called her book, in case you cared. privacy in a press conference

Still, all

millions of readers

who

don't care about Dukakis

the other recovering personalities

curious,

I

who

guess. Confessional autobiographies

celebrities are publishing staples

and

write books are

by second-string

(and where would the talk

shows be without them?) Ali MacGraw exposes her sex addiction

and the

lurid details of her marriage to Steve

McQueen.

Suzanne Somers chronicles her life as an ACOA. Former first children Michael Reagan and Patti Davis reveal their histories of abuse.

hope my book

will

help others to heal," the celebrity

diarists are likely to say.

Or

they assure us that writing their

"I truly

books was therapeutic (and But the

if

they pay

celebrities don't really

me

to read

them,

I

will).

have to explain the decision to

29

30

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

go public. In our culture of recovery we take their confessions for granted. Talking

someone

gesting to is

form o( abuse.

a

Story, you're

stunned

about yourself that she

If

is

"part of the process." Sug-

talking too

is

you cant feign

much about

interest in

supposed to maintain respectful

silence. In recovery,

she's survived

where everyone

some holocaust of family

herself

someone

else's

or, better yet,

gets to claim that

life,

everyone gets to

testify.

The

tradition of testifying in court, church, or the market-

God, or the public good is a venerable one would not impugn. But it is also a tradition I'd rather

place tor justice, that

I

not debase bv confusing testifying with advertisements for yourself

or simple plays for

movement combines

sympathy and attention. The recovery the testimonial tradition that serves a

greater good, like justice, with the therapeutic tradition in

talking about yourself

from the

maybe

is its

own

reward.

It

also

borrows

revivalist tradition of testifying to save

others: in recovery, even the

most

which

liberally

your soul and testimony

trivial

is

sanctified.

I'm not

impugning therapy or

people would keep

them

religion either, but

are

and

abuses,

beyond the scope of this book. But therapy was con-

ceived as a private transaction between doctors (experts

wish that

off the streets. Religion has, of course,

a complicated, controversial history of public uses

which

I

and

clients) or

between groups of

seekers of psychic well-being. Testimony

was

and

patients

patients, clients,

public.

By blurring

the distinction between confession and testimony, recovery

transforms therapy into a public process too. People even do it

on TV. Most of

us

do love

always regarded for

it

to talk

about ourselves, although

as a slightly illicit pleasure or

by the hour. Etiquette books dating back over

gently

admonish readers

I've

one you pay a century

to cultivate the art of listening,

Testifying: Television

assuming that, unmannered

and

ple are braggarts

bores. Success primers have always stressed

power who him with your

in

to impress

women

you

get ahead: Listen raptly to

loves talking

about himself

perspicacity. Listening

is

have always known. Flirting

a

is

in order

form

a useful

Dale Carnegie advised, sharing with

of flattery,

most peo-

in their natural states,

that listening skills will help

someone

31

men what

way of

listening.

women talking.) For women who were socialized to listen, uncritically, talking too much about themselves may feel like an act of rebellion.

(Feminism

is

Maybe Kitty Dukakis felt liberated by her book. Personal development passes for politics, and what might once have been called

whining

is

self-absorption

now

is

exalted as a process of asserting selfhood;

regarded as a form of self-expression, as

no

creative acts involved

if

interactions with the world. Feminists

did say that the personal was political, but they meant that private relations

between the sexes

reflected public divisions

of power, that putatively private events, like wife beating, were public concerns.

was

They

mean that getting to know yourself

didn't

sufficient political action.

Consciousness raising was supis women talking, women talking only

posed to inspire activism. Feminism is

not

women only talking and

not

but

it

about

themselves. Talk shows

and the elevation of gossip

demia, where gossip

is

now

to intellectual discourse

postmodern phenomena. In

are, after all, postfeminist,

text, poststructural scholars

aca-

scour

history for the private, particular experiences of ordinary "un-

empowered" people; and talk a lot racial,

what

like

denizens of daytime

TV, they

about themselves, deconstructing their

own

also

class,

or ethnic biases in perverse assertions of solidarity with are

presumed to be other

entirely subjective selves.

talk shows, ordinary people, subject of

find their voice.

Men and

mostly

On

tomorrow's scholars,

women

distinguished only

32

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

by various and weird

infidelities or histories of

drug abuse and

overeating get equal time with movie actors, soap stars, and

the occasional hair

Now

stylist.

everyone can hope for sixty

minutes o( fame, minus some time for commercials. I

never really wonder anymore

why

people want to talk about

themselves tor nearly an hour in front of millions of strangers.

They

tind

it

"affirming"; like trees that

not sure that they exist that as

when no

I

one's watching. I've accepted

postmodern human nature.

and pride with which they

in the forest, they're

fall

reveal,

do wonder

I

on national

can't help thinking of as intimacies

—

the eagerness

at

television,

sexual

and

what

digestive

disorders; personal conflicts with parents, children, spouses,

wonder even more

lovers, bosses,

and best

intensity with

which the audience

Why

bored?

aren't they

friends.

It

I

may be

that listening

price they pay for their turn to grab the say, offering criticism

at the

listens. is

simply the

mike and have their

or advice, just like the experts. But they

seem genuinely intrigued by the

essentially

unremarkable

details

of other people's lives and other people's feelings. Something in us likes soap operas, like

I

know, but watching the

talks

watching "Dallas" or "Days of Our Lives." The guests

particularly articulate, except

is

not

aren't

on "Geraldo" sometimes, where

they seem to be well coached; they rarely finish their sentences,

which

Most

trail

off in

aren't artful.

on

vague colloquialisms, you

know what I mean? They

guests aren't witty or perceptive or even telegenic.

They

if

you saw them

supermarket instead of on TV.

line at the

I'm not sure

are the people you'd ignore

how we

got to the point of finding anyone

else's

confessions, obsessions, or advertisements for herself entertaining. I'm

not sure

why watching

other people's

became fun; the appeal of "America's Funniest eludes me. But television

it's

home movies

Home

Videos"

clear that the popularity of "real people"

— talk shows and home videos — has

little

to

do with

33

Testifying: Television

compassion and the desire to connect.

on the subway turns telling

you her

tale,

If

an average person

to you, like the ancient mariner,

you turn away or nod and hope she

not just because you fear she might be crazy.

on camera, you might

tale

If

she

stops,

tells

Watching strangers on

listen.

starts

her

televi-

even responding to them from a studio audience, we're

sion,

disengaged of

and

— voyeurs collaborating with exhibitionists in rituals

sham community. Never have

about people for

whom

many known

so

they cared so

so

much

little.

A woman appears on "Oprah Winfrey" to tell the nation that Oprah and the expert

she hates herself for being ugly. her about self-esteem and the

The

attention. it,

feel

I

woman

painful

is

and

I

suspect, regards her

self-proclaimed ugly

show

woman

is

is

I

think, in their

pathetic,

as a

and watching

kind of public

service.

appearing on a segment

about our obsession with good looks. values pretty people over plain,

she

basks,

diminished.

Oprah,

The

spectacle

talk to

We

Oprah

live in a society that

explains;

and maybe

exploring a legitimate public issue, by exploiting a pri-

vate pathology.

Daytime TV, however,

is

proudly pathological.

a recovering sex addict shares a story of incest

On "Geraldo"

— she was raped

by her father and stepfather; her husband and children are seated next to her

on the

stage.

This

is

family therapy. (The

family that reveals together congeals together.)

Her daughter

— a man and a woman, "professional and personal partners" — explain

talks

about being a lesbian. Two sex addiction experts

and

offer

commentary on

sex

and

love addictions. "It's not

a matter of frequency," they say in response to questions

how

often sex addicts have sex.

Anonymous

about

addicts call in

M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

with their

own

make

sex to

boring and

tales,

mvselt

lurid: "I

one

better,"

feel

do

specifically use

Who

caller confesses.

1

doesn't.

members of his audience

Geraldo, his experts, and the

address

the problem of promiscuity with the gravity of network anchors discussing I

8

Sllb-Saharan famine.

If

were a recovering person,

I

might sav that they're addicted to melodrama. In

fact,

Geraldo

show on people "addicted to excitement — drama, danger, and Belf-destruction" — people who create crises for themselves. He otters us a self-evaluation tool — eleven ques-

does

a

whether you're

tions "to determine

you

mad

get

at

soap opera queen."

other drivers on the road?

your problems with

make

a

addicts oi us

a lot all,

you

talk

about

of other people? Questions like these

as experts

symptom

tience in traffic a

Do

Do

must hope. Labeling impa-

of disease creates a market for the

and Joy Davidson, the expert/author who identified the "soap opera syndrome" for us is here on "Geraldo," peddling cure;

her book.

The audience is intrigued. People stand up to testify to their own experiences with drama and excitement addictions. With the concern of any patient describing her symptoms, one

woman

says that she often disagrees with her

good reason. Someone

No one

suggests to

else confesses to

Davidson that

cerns and frustrations of daily

overdramatizing recovery,

is,

we might

life

husband

calling the

mundane

symptoms of the

well, overdramatizing. In the

say that

Davidson

is

for

no

being a worrier. con-

disease oi

language of

an enabler, encouraging

her readers to indulge in their melodrama addictions, or we

might say that she too

man

is

a practicing

melodrama

addict.

does point out that there are "people in the ghetto"

don't have to fabricate their crises. But point, she successfully eludes

the ghetto are

real,

it.

if

Davidson

Yes, she admits,

but what matters

is

One who

gets the

the crises in

the way you deal with

35

Testifying: Television

them. As

Norman Vincent

have only to develop

Peale might say, people in crisis

happiness habit.

a

Meanwhile, on daytime TV, middle-class Americans are busy

and

practicing their worry habits, swapping stories of disease

controversial eccentricities. Here

is

sampling of "Oprah":

a

Apart from the usual assortment of guests worry, or have sex too

much, there

their sons' girlfriends (or try to), sisters sisters'

boyfriends,

sons,

women who

their

husbands

women who

sleep with their best friends'

sleep with their husbands' bosses (to help

men who

get ahead),

women who

and men and

who eat, drink, shop, who sleep with who sleep with their

are fathers

hire only pretty

women,

date only interracially. Estranged

couples share their grievances while an expert provides on-air counseling:

"Why

are

you so

he chides the

himself,"

sometimes the to get in

to

sit

in

don't you

Couples

wife.

women cry, and

touch with their

The chance

afraid to let

"Why

her?" he asks a husband.

feelings

oi viewers

impossible to know, but

it's

him speak

else's

part

is

interviews the

on hand

are helped

them

their self-esteem.

therapy session

When Donahue

who

at

for

each other,

glare at

and build up

children oi prostitutes, he has an expert

how they feel. The number

let

the expert keeps advising

on someone

o( the appeal o{ daytime TV.

your anger out

to

tell

them

by these shows

clear that they're a

boon

is

to several

— publishing, therapy, and, oi course, recovery. Commercials often in to the shows. A segment on food addiction industries

tie

is

sponsored by weight-loss programs:

ing. It's

"It's

not what you're

eat-

what's eating you," the ads assure anxious overeaters.

Shows on drug and alcohol abuse centers, set in sylvan glades.

Standing by

the pitchmen are soft and just a

might be

are sponsored

little

by treatment

on

trees,

— elegaic;

they

lakes, leaning

somber

selling funeral plots instead of a recovery lifestyle

enhanced

self-esteem.

and

36

I'M

On

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

almost every show, someone

most forms

self-esteem;

to get

around

to

misconduct are said to be indicative

of

On every other show,

of low self-esteem.

The audiences

addiction.

bound

is

someone

talks

about

You

usually speak fluent recovery.

can talk about your inner child or your grief work on "Oprah"

and no one step

will ask

1

[to overeating],' a

and people nod.

No one

addicted

Onstage,

[to food).

man

asks,

"What do you mean by

still

I

follow a twelve-

program chat helps me deal with the disease concept, the

addiction

or

U

you what you mean.

"What's

addiction?"

never be

I'll

a panel of recovering

vowing never

to diet again.

ourselves," they say,

in the

a twelve-step

Oprah

program?"

testifies too:

"I'm

free."

food addicts,

"We have

and Oprah

audience announces,

all

women,

is

to allow ourselves to love

agrees. "I'm never

going to

weigh another piece of chicken." Tired of "seeking control," these

women want

gle to lose

value, but sity

it,

it's

and

to accept their weight, not constantly strugI

useful,

wish them luck. Beauty

and what has been labeled

—

or really bad skin

on "Oprah" make lives

may

clear.

is

lack moral

beastly

the

women

much

of their

a painful liability, as

They've apparently spent

— obe-

embarrassed by their bodies; now, in recovery, they talk

about the "shame" of

They

fatness.

find

some

self-esteem in

victimhood. They aren't gluttons but "victims of a disease process."

Being

fat

is

not their

not about self-control," one

fault.

woman

recovery that dispenses with

But the next day, riages, is

some

Recovering from obesity says, voicing

will. "It's

when Oprah

about

the ethos of

self-love."

does a show on troubled mar-

sort of therapist, Dr.

Ron, advises a

woman who

self-conscious about her small breasts to have implants.

berates her unfaithful

husband

quest for a better body, for her self-esteem,

and

"is

for

He

not supporting her in this

own

good, for the sake of her

to help save their marriage: her

was one of the reasons he strayed. That a

poor self-image

woman

with small

37

Testifying: Television

breasts can't be expected to improve her self-esteem without

implants

is

apparently evident to Dr.

on the show. No one questions to-love-herself I

digress,

Oprah, recovering

Ron and everyone

else

wisdom, not even learning-

his

dieter.

but so do Geraldo, Donahue, and Oprah. Talking

about these shows,

I

find

it

hard to be entirely coherent, and

coherence would not do justice to the kaleidoscope of complaints, opinions, prejudices, revelations,

and celebrations they

comprise: Geraldo discusses celibacy with a panel of virgins

and Helen Gurley Brown. "There

are

no medical risks associAdopted children and

ated with virginity," a doctor assures us.

their biological parents as well as siblings separated

from birth

on "Geraldo" ("Reunions of the Heart: Finding a Lost Love," the show is called). "Welcome long-lost brother Brian," Geraldo commands, to wild applause, as Brian emerges from backstage, and in a TV minute people are hugging and sobbing on camera as they did years ago on 'This Is Your Life." I want someone in the audience to ask them why they're not having their reunions for over

twenty years meet, for the

first

time,

but I already know the answer. "We want to share and joy of this moment," they'd say. "We want to inspire other people from broken families not to give up the search." I suspect that the audience knows these answers too. Clapping

in private,

the love

and crying (even Geraldo

is

teary),

reached for and touched,

they offer support and validation:

"It's

how

hurts,"

you've

all

been healed of your

a real blessing to see

one

woman

in the

audience declares. Geraldo makes a plea for open adoption, grappling with an issue, Occasionally,

I

I

guess.

admit, the shows are instructive in ways they

intend, not just as portraits of popular culture.

Donahue's

seg-

ment on grandparents who are raising the children of their drug-addicted children manages to be dignified and sad. He talks to

obese children without overdramatizing their struggles

38

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL (Donahue

or exploiting them.

and shrewd

likable

is

good with

testimony illuminates an

in a while, the

racially segregated

kids.)

in the midst of her silliest

Oprah seems

shows, and, once

issue:

date rape or

proms.

new journalism — issues packaged in anecdotes that may or may not be true. As an occasional, alternative approach to news and analysis, it is affecting; as the predomiThis

is

the

nant approach,

we

generalize from our

We

abstractly.

TV and

not just

is

it

are personalized,

lose

own

or

trite

but stupefying.

If all

our capacity to entertain

someone

else's

issues

ideas, to

experiences, to think

substitute sentimentality for thought.

shows certainly didn't invent the new journalism

talk

are hardly the only abusers of

it.

But they are emblematic

of the widespread preference for feelings over ideas that

is

and other personal development moveno coincidence that the two trends — talk shows

celebrated by recovery

ments.

It is

and recovery like

The shows

often seem

shows.

Accusing I

have fueled each other.

orchestrated support groups; the groups seem like rehearsals

for the

is,

—

know,

shows of not providing

talk like

nuclear family. said of

Once,

u

He

I

I

of issues

wrestles with the obvious," a friend

an especially boring pundit, and

with TV.

critical analysis

accusing "Ozzie and Harriet" of idealizing the

just

wanna

I

don't

mean

once

to wrestle

testify too.

appeared on the

u

Oprah Winfrey" show.

six alleged experts participating in

what was

I

was one of

billed as a "debate"

on codependency. Joining me onstage were two againstcodependency allies and three for-codependency opponents. (The two sides were driven in separate limousines and kept in separate rooms before the show.) Oprah was more or less pro-

39

Testifying: Television

codependency too

— someone said she had just returned from — and the audience seemed

one of John Bradshaw's retreats

with evangelical twelve steppers.

filled

jump

"Just

Don't wait to be called on," one of Oprah's

in.

people told us

when

she prepped us for the show. "You

you want us to interrupt each other?" nodded. "You want us to be

She nodded

lines?" a large,

again.

really

mean

woman

asked; the

I

rude and step on each other's

"You want us

to act as

if

we're at

unruly family dinner on Thanksgiving?" She smiled

and said, "You got it!" I had a good time on "Oprah." Being chauffeured around in a limo and housed in a first-class hotel, I felt like Cinderella, especially when I got home. I liked being on national television, almost as like

much

as

my mother

unruly family dinners, but

I'd

liked

never

watching me.

call

I

also

what goes on over

the turkey a debate.

The

trouble with talk shows

more than

is

that they claim to

entertain; they claim to inform

dominate the mass marketplace and help

and

do so much

explain.

make

it

They

one that

is

inimical to ideas.

on Being on

That's probably not a startling revelation, but appearing

you

a talk show,

"Oprah" was fair

amount

are hit hard with the truth oi

still

a shock,

so.

I

I

watch a

of talk shows and understand the importance of

speaking in sound bites, although

doing

it.

although not a surprise.

know

that talk

I

don't always succeed in

show "debates"

are

not usually

coherent; they don't usually follow any pattern of statement

and response. They don't make

sense.

The

host

is

less a

moder-

ator than a traffic cop. People don't talk to each other; they

don't even talk at each other. wasn't surprised in."

I

when Oprah's

They

talk at the camera.

assistant told us to "just

So I jump

expected the show to be chaotic (the experience exceeded

40

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

What

the expectation).

I

did not expect,

and should have, was

the audience's utter lack o( interest in argument; they wanted

only to exchange testimony. I

at

had nothing

to say to the studio audience

the camera too — because

—

and talked

had no personal experience with The most popular "expert"

I

addiction and recovery to convey.

on our panel was the most melodramatic: Lois, a recovering codependent from Texas, declared repeatedly, in response to nothing

("What

Once

in

disease?

91

"Mah

we asked, added

or twice she

to be born!

On

particular,

Ah

daytime

was

talk

a

parents died of this disease!"

in vain.)

mah life!" "Ah was not supposed

"Recovery saved

cryptically,

mistake!" as the audience applauded.

shows

a

"debate" generally consists of a

parade of people onstage or in the audience stating strong per-

some

sonal preferences with frequent references to

searing per-

sonal experience. "Does too!" "Does not!" people say, debating

whether the recovery movement helps person and

I

just

want

to say that this

us.

"I'm a recovering

movement

saved

my

on "Oprah" declared. "I would movement!" You can't argue with a testimonial. You can only counter it with a testimonial of your own. ("Does too!" "Does not!") Testimony has no value as argument. You can't even be sure of its value as testimony. Is it true? What do people mean when they say that they are addicted? Addicted to what, at what cost? What do people mean when they say they've been abused? Are they talking about emotional or physical abuse? Was it life,"

members

be dead today

real

of the audience if it

weren't for this

or imagined? Were they beaten by their parents or ignored?

"What

are

you

all

recovering from?" one

of Oprah's audience asked repeatedly

proclaimed recovering persons

But

if

say that

you it's

man

in the

and

in vain as self-

testified.

can't evaluate or argue with testimony,

beside the point.

back row

How

you can

one hundred people

in a

Testifying: Television

studio audience

much about and

cess

its

feel

about codependency doesn't

impact on the culture, or even

cludes analysis.

What was its

tell

us very

general suc-

with individuals. Testimony often pre-

failure rate

on "Oprah" was

its

41

striking to

me about

the audience

collective inability or unwillingness to

think about recovery in any terms other than the way

made them feel. To the a cultural phenomenon

own

experiences: "It

one

else."

extent that they at

all,

worked

it

in the halls of

it

as

for

me. So

it

is

will

work

for every-

contagious.

You even

academe. Teaching college freshmen,

quickly discovered that issues that

it

they simply universalized their

Testifying, as a substitute for thinking,

find

commented on

my

were dramatized

I

students were interested only in

— in fiction, memoirs,

or popular

on "Donahue" and docudramas, they found mere discussions of ideas "too dry and academic." You can't

journalism. Raised

even be academic in academia anymore. Instead of theory, they sought testimony.

Among graduate students and been in fashion

for several years.

professors too, subjectivity has

The

diversification of student

populations and concern for multiculturalism have for subjective experiences tives.

Fashions in literary

search focus

made respect

and points of view political imperaand legal theory and historical re-

on knowledge

as a matter of perspective, disdain-

ing the "pretense" o{ objectivity. Scholars get to talk about

themselves. Theory

is

nothing but testimony.

I'm not suggesting that the dead white males

sway and

set standards

who once

held

had The Answer or that a multiplicity and theory isn't welcome.

of perspectives in matters of politics

Nor am

I

suggesting that analysis should

somehow be

from experience. I'm only suggesting the obvious

and experience need to be balanced. There jectivity worth trying to acquire.

divorced

— that analysis

are degrees of ob-

42

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

should be needless to say that individual preferences are

It

not always the best measures of what

is

generally good.

A

tax

money may still be generally unfair. movement is not analogous to the tax

provision that saves you

Of course,

the recovery

code.

not imposed on

It

is

demands

us.

It

and debate.

deliberation

is

not a public policy that

I

don't want to gloss over

the difference between public acts and private experiments with

personality development. Indeed,

I

want

to highlight

A self-referential evaluation of a self-help movement ably

and, to some extent, appropriate.

inevitable

referential evaluation of public policies is

is

prob-

A

can be disastrous.

disturbing about watching the talk shows

it.

is

self-

What

recognizing in

discussions of private problems a solipsism that carries over

What you

into discussions of public issues.

what you

feel

see in the political arena.

and formulate

cials

policies

about ourselves.

depressing

on our War,

We

us.)

good

mm Y

We

on "Oprah"

choose our elected

basis of

how

offi-

Carter's biggest mistake was in

Vietnam was

self-help

is

they make us

even evaluate wars according to their

self-esteem:

like a

(Ji

on the

see

a

effect

downer. The Persian Gulf

program, cured us of our "Vietnam

syndrome" and "gave us back our hopes to do with Chevrolets.

pride," as

General Motors

Norman Schwarzkopf and

Colin

The nethandsome young

Powell satisfied our need for heroes, everyone said.

works stroked us with video montages of soldiers, leaning

on

tanks, staring off into the desert, wanting

done" and go home. By conservative

to "get the job

estimates,

150,000 people were killed outright in the war; the

who

will die

from

damage may be essary,

sider

it

incalculable.

Whether

whether or not the victory was a great success

Fourth of

July.

The

because

it

or not the war was necreal,

is

how

it

we shouldn't con-

gave us parades and a proud

culture of recovery

moral measure of a war

number

and environmental

disease, deprivation,

is

makes us

insidious:

feel

now

the

about ourselves.

43

Testifying: Television

"Try and put aside your

own

experiences in recovery and

on "Think about what the with addiction "Oprah." fascination the way

means

it

makes you

to us as a culture.

feel,"

I

suggested to the audience

Think about the political implications and submit to a higher

oi advising people to surrender their will

power." People in the audience looked at in the limo,

one of my copanelists

(against

me

blankly. Later,

codependency) shook

head at me and smiled and said, "That was a PBS comment." Some two months later I showed my "Oprah" tape to a group o( college friends, over a bottle o( wine. None of them is involved in the recovery movement or familiar with its programs his

or jargon. Listening to six panelists

and

a studio audience

pete for air time, in eight-minute segments between cials,

commer-

none of them thought the "Oprah" show made any

Like the

man

in the audience

who

asked,

"What

com-

are

sense.

you

all

recovering from?" they didn't have a clue. "You have to think

with your hearts and not your heads," a for-codependency expert exhorted us at the end of the show, as the credits rolled.

Don't Worry, Be

Happy: Positive

Thinking

to est

For more than two hundred years self-help experts have

been discovering the being, for the is

first

secret to wealth, health,

older than the republic

improvement tant

lives.

and

spiritual well-

time: America's fascination with self-help itself.

In the colonies, Puritan

literature told readers

Soon Ben Franklin was

in the secular sphere. In the 1800s,

how

telling

self-

to lead godly, Protes-

them how

books on

to succeed

etiquette, feminin-

homemaking, sexual purity, and success guided men and women through an increasingly complicated, industrialized ity,

world. Popular fiction was equally didactic: the prominent

nineteenth-century women's magazine Godey's Lady's Book fered moral tales

on female

virtue

sought spiritual guidance. Before

and family

New Age

of-

Both

sexes

there was

New

life.

Thought, an amorphous collection of beliefs about the power of

mind and

spirit to

transcend mere material

realities

(and

Norman Vincent Peale, Werner Erhard, and Shirley MacLaine there were Mary Baker Eddy, founder

generate wealth). Before

45

46

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

of Christian Science, and

Napoleon

hopeful author of

Hill,

Think and Grow Rich. In the self-help universe, anything rich, thin, healthy,

and

and the willingness is

is

anyone can be

possible:

with

spiritually centered

faith, discipline,

to take direction. This pragmatic

optimism

supposed to be singularly American, and we tend to be

proud of the that

we

we

self-help tradition as

are

as

enamored o( the notion

are a country of people forever inventing ourselves.

The how-to phenomenon does

reflect a

democratic belief in

the individual's capacity to overcome circumstances of nature

and

—

class

but only through adherence to systems that are

devised or discovered by experts.

only the

will, to a

qualified acceptance of

tion acknowledges

system

an expert's advice.

some democratic

them by encouraging people not

many

movement

self-help

If

ideals,

the self-help tradi-

it

also

undermines

to think for themselves or to

The

consumers

is

potentially dangerous

demonstrated by the

sheer silliness of the most popular and historically resilient

help ideal

—

is

not a higher power, and un-

if

question the possibility of panaceas. gullibility of

recovery

of personal developments that encourage

latest in a line

surrender of

The

self-

positive thinking.

"The happiness habit is developed simply by practicing happy Norman Vincent Peale assured America in 1952 in

thinking,"

The Power

of Positive Thinking,

and, forty years greatest

later,

which sold millions of copies

remains in print. Peale declared that the

problem facing Americans was "lack of self-confidence"

(expert revelations about self-esteem are hardly new). Peale con-

ceded that "there this

life,"

may be such

but he doesn't

really believe in

he admitted the possibility of

(

bad breaks' in them, any more than

a thing as the

social injustice.

1

Thus the secret to success is simply believing you'll succeed and putting faith in Jesus. How do you shed your doubts and become one of the faithful? The "ultimate method for having

Don't Worry, Be Happy: faith

is

Faith

Positive

Thinking

47

to est

simply to have faith" Peale announced in an earlier book, the Answer. 2

Is

becoming

What

the "scientific" technique for

is

Make

a happy, prosperous person?

thoughts and replay them to yourself

daily.

a

of happy

list

"While dressing

or shaving or getting breakfast say aloud a few remarks such as the following,

That

'I

believe this

is

going to be a wonderful

" day.'

"affirmation therapy" or "the technique of suggestive

is

articulation," repeating

aloud "some peaceful words. Words have

profound suggestive power," Peale confirms. Simply saying the

word

"tends to induce a tranquil

tranquillity

What niques

is

is

most striking about Peak's

They

scientific.

and you.

"picturize."

Most of

life.

any more than maxims and com-

all,

are simply

mands: Happy thoughts ensure a happy

Pray, or "prayerize,"

Imagine what you want and

all,

will

it

come

to

don't worry.

Avoid "worry conversations," Peale advised. to eliminate

3

secret, scientific tech-

that they are not techniques at

they are secret or

state."

from conversations

to produce tension

all

and annoyance inwardly.

number of worry words

in

"It

important

is

negative ideas, for they tend .

.

.

reduce the

your conversation .... [worry]

is

4

simply an unhealthy and destructive mental habit." To suggest that

some

personal, political, or social problems might be worth

worrying about misses

Peale's point: the

is

a negative state of mind.

is

only to praise "I

it:

recommend emptying and

mother of all problems

call Peale's

an empty mind

writes. "Definitely practice

insecurities, regrets,

To

the

is

mind

philosophy mindless

a receptacle for faith.

at least twice a day,"

emptying your mind of fears,

guilt feelings."

He calls this

he

hates,

a "process

mind drainage .... fear thoughts, unless drained off, can clog the mind and impede the flow of mental and spiritual power." 5 Today we tend to imagine the brain as a computer,

of

actively processing information; Peale

chen sink, with

God

as the

thought of it

plumber:

as the kit-

48

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

Picture let

the worry thoughts flowing out of you as you would

all

water flow from a basin by removing the stopper. Repeat the

following affirmation during this visualization: "With God's help I

am now emptying my mind

insecurity."

Repeat

mv mind

now emptied

rity."

is

of

Repeat that statement

picture o( vour

God

thank

mind

filled

all

all

anxiety,

anxiety,

five times,

help,

with

all fear, all

you from

fear.

sense of insecua

mental

Then go

Then

to sleep. 6

it

is

faith:

"God

is

now

with peace, with calm assurance. all

harm.

God

some

filling

God

is

now protecting my loved me to right decisions. God

is

all harm. God is now guiding me through this situation." 7

Peale indulged in

believe that

I

you have emptied your head,

ones from will see

"

meanwhile holding

Say aloud such affirmations as the following:

mv mind with courage, now protecting me from

sense of

all fear, all

then add,

being emptied of these concepts.

as

for thus freeing

Once, with God's ready to be

o(

this slowly five times,

rhetoric about "assuming control"

but what he offered was advice on how to abdicate God. Like a parent of children who never grow up, God is watchful, interventionist, always on call. No details of your life are too small for his attention; no decisions need be of your

life,

control to

in

your hands alone.

fronted

and

resolved;

No

problems or conflicts need be con-

you have only to ignore them.

prescription for automatic behavior

—

and prayer — may deprive you of free they absolve you of the anxiety that goes with it. affirmations

Forget your troubles Peale's

in

and

philosophy sung.

which

a smile

is

just

He

and

defiant,"

and we might

will,

but

be happy. We're used to hearing

invokes a world of cheery artifice

your best umbrella, and climbing every

mountain, you never walk alone. "His optimism tary

Peale's

regular recitations of

is

too volun-

William James complained of Walt Whitman, 8

say the

same of

Peale,

who borrowed

liberally

Don't Worry, Be Happy: Positive Thinking

49

to est

from late-nineteenth-century positive thinkers, proponents of

"mind

cure." Critiquing the

who

mind-cure leaders of his day

preached "the all-saving power of healthy-minded attitudes"

and warned against the "misery habit" James described the popularity of mind-cure principles that long preceded Peale:

One

hears of the 'Gospel of Relaxation,' of the 'Don't

ment,' of people

when

who

dressing in the morning, as their motto for the day.

and more and more people

it to be bad form make much o( the ordinary

are recognizing

to speak of disagreeable sensations, or to

inconveniences and ailments of

Com-

be forbidden in many house-

plaints of the weather are getting to

holds;

Worry Move-

repeat to themselves, 'Youth, health, vigor!'

life.

9

utility of mind cure, recognizing that "the movement has been due to practical fruits," while he questioned what we might call its selfism: like the recovery movement, mind cure concerned itself only with individual,

James respected the spread of the

not

social, health.

But most of

all

of positive thinkers to account for

James stressed the

which

evil,

genuine portion of reality." 10 Evil was merely a tion, according to believers in

down

to

bad

mind

is,

lie,

cure. Peale

after

failure all,

"a

a mispercep-

might put

it

attitudes.

Don't worry, be happy.

If it is difficult

ple successfully obeying Peak's orders,

what might happen primary goal, democracy

they did.

sider

if

a

itself is

to imagine

it is

If

many

peo-

frightening to con-

conflict avoidance

a secondary one, not to

is

men-

tion the justice that sometimes follows conflict resolution.

The

marketplace of ideas becomes a marketplace of maxims. Peale promises peace of mind, but

and the

it is

the dull peace of the docile

willfully oblivious.

Peale presented a vision of "consciousness trying not to be

one of positive thinking's most incisive critics, Donald Meyer, has observed.11 "Always express willingness to conscious,"

50

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

accept God's

will," Peale stresses.

he willing to take what

what you ask

tor."

God

Thinking

"Ask

for

gives you.

It

you

positively,

what you want but

may be

better than

get to abdicate

both

God: "He guides your mind so that you do not want things that are not good for you or that are inharmonious with God's will." 12 Thinking positively, you may even

judgment and

will to

abdicate desire. It is

an to is

do

was not addressing

clear that Feale

The

so.

men and women

with

shaping their worlds or faith in their capacity

interest in

who emerged from

prototypical male

the organization

man

his

book

of the 1950s, conformist, eager to learn

the rules, anxious about his place in the hierarchy; the protoI

woman

was

his wife.

What

Peale promised

ascension in the corporate world; he promised

could marry

well: faith

1950s: a a

("God runs

is

to

him

You have

and those

a very attractive

face.

You must have

hang

your hair fixed up also

Like

add

God,

marked the

on how

to find

is

if

be .

soft .

.

lips

together. ...

.

.

.

dane, practical uses. off, it will

his

I

think lines

perhaps you could get

—

it

floaty.

might help to get

Then you might

perfume. 14

not above attending to all

appointment.)

you got those too-firm

Perhaps

a little. It's a little

a little sweet-smelling

Peale

late for their

a little softness, a little tenderness,

a little better.

Indeed, the point of

marry you

person

lines are too firm to

that dress to

for advice

way of pressing your

a very firm

out of your

as well

gently chastised for her "domineering attitude."

(She reproached Peale for arriving

you would be

that they

beauty parlour"). 13 Peale

a

rigid delineation of sex roles that

woman who comes

husband

men was

enhances beauty, he confirmed,

as professional expertise

promoted the

women

anecdotes

Not only

will

it

is

details.

that faith has

mun-

advance your career or

improve your golf swing and rid you of

aches and pains. "From 50 to 75 percent of present-day people

Don't Worry, Be Happy: are

Positive

Thinking

to est

51

because of the influence o( improper mental states on

ill

their

emotional and physical make-up," Peale reports, only a

little

nonsensically. 15

11

'Do you know,

isn't

I

am

theoretical after

"Bill,"

beginning to

all,'

"

one o(

realize that Christianity

Peale's satisfied customers,

supposedly remarks. (All of Peale's conversants sound

alike; that

is,

they sound

science, Bill explains.

like Peale.)

"We have

Christianity

at this

an applied

solved a problem according

to well-defined spiritually scientific principles.

of the terrible mistake

is

I

shudder to think

we would have made had we not gone

problem according

to the

formula contained in the

teachings o( Jesus." 16

What was

the problem they solved?

for the presidency of his

Bill

had been passed over

company. What was the

scientific for-

and God's would be able to fit in with the new administration and give more effective service than before." 17 What was the outcome of this experiment in prayer? mula prescribed by

and the

blessing

Bill

Jesus? Peale's prayer for guidance

plea that "Bill

was soon promoted to president

Faith

all.

the alchemy oi Peale's system; faith

is

that spawns success

goes with

after

it.

If

and the

nothing

else,

is

the "science"

spiritual well-being that

supposedly

The Power of Positive Thinking

offers

a lesson in the technique o{ writing a best-selling self-help book:

Promote the prevailing preoccupation of the time sition of either wealth or health perative.

—

as the

— the acqui-

primary moral im-

Package platitudes about positive thinking, prayer, or

affirmation therapy as sure-fire, scientific techniques.

"Think and grow rich" Napoleon The Power

of Positive Thinking,

seller in its

day and

is still

Hill wrote in 1936. Like

Think and Grow Rich was a

in print.18

It is

tape cassettes, which I've seen advertised

"Learn the

best-

even available on

on

late

secrets of the fabulously wealthy!" the

night TV.

announcers

proclaim, while you ponder pictures o( MasterCards

and 800

52

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

Grow

telephone numbers. Think and

Weight Loss

Magic on late night (Not Available Molt Otf founds While You Sleep! is

a lot like the

Belts, also advertised

in Stores!) that

Napoleon

Rich

Hill

promised to reveal Andrew Carnegie's "magic

formula" tor getting dieds of well

rich. Hill

claimed to have "analyzed hun-

known men" who had "accumulated

fortunes through the aid

o\

coy about stating precisely what that secret

little

been

directly

when

is

it

are ready,

for

and searching a

son

the secret

for

"It

is

a

has not

hunt,

sight,

pick

it

a test

where those 19

up."

Hill's

who

book

of the reader's per-

to receive the truth.

not so hard to grasp: "desire can be

is

transmuted into gold.

is

left in

may

it,

.

,

.

riches begin with a state of mind."

That message, intertwined with thinking tycoons,

is:

seems to work more successfully

oi treasure

and worthiness

sistence

it

merely uncovered and

thus becomes

Still,

named,

their vast

the Carnegie secret," but he

the

gist

inspirational tales of positive

of Hill's philosophy, which seems

too good a parody of American materialism to be true. You

must "truly

desire

money

sion," Hill declared,

so keenly that your desire

adding that America owed

its

is

an obses-

freedom to

men's obsession with wealth. "The benefactor of mankind capital!"

And,

as the publisher's preface to Think and

is

Grow

Rich suggests, achievements in the world of capital bring "rich spiritual satisfaction." Hill's

and

achievement was to present greed not

spiritual

itself

20

good but

just as a social

as the science of success.

into gold (as desire

is

"transmuted" into

Greed turns

its

"monetary

equivalent"), Hill explained, through a scientific process involv-

ing the magnetic forces of thoughts, mixed with emotions,

and

through the mind's capacity for "attracting vibrations which

harmonize with that which dominates the mind." 21 Weird physics:

Don't Worry, Be Happy:

Our

Positive

Thinking

53

to est

become magnetized with the dominating thoughts in our minds, and, by means with which no man

brains

which we hold is

"magnets"

familiar, these

circumstances of

life

attract to us the forces, the people, the

which harmonize with the nature of our domi-

22 nating thoughts.

Faith

is

When

the magic ingredient of this mysterious process: faith

is

picks

stantly

equivalent,

blended with thought, the subconscious mind

up the

vibration,

and transmits

it

translates

it

into

its

in-

spiritual

to Infinite Intelligence, as in the case

of prayer. 23

How

do you find

lieved that faith

faith? Like

Norman Vincent

Peale, Hill be-

was acquired automatically through the

recita-

tion of affirmations, repeated instructions to the "subconscious

mind," or "autosuggestion." 24 In this world, you don't even need the will to believe, just the wish. Hill

is

worth quoting

at length,

not because any of his

state-

ments makes sense but because none of them do; virtually impossible to satirize, he need only be quoted. We could dismiss

him

as a crank,

if

only he hadn't attracted so

many

readers;

if only the "theories" he advanced hadn't already enjoyed con-

siderable credibility in

which was "thoughts weren't

still

New Thought

are things";

being recycled by

if

circles,

one motto of

only those same theories

New Age

entrepreneurs

Werner Erhard, founder of est, who admits a debt Hill. Hill

like

Napoleon

has reappeared most recently as the nominal coauthor

of Think and for the black

Napoleon

Not

to

Grow Rich: A Black Choice, a 1991 self-help book community by Dennis Kimbra, a lecturer for the

Hill Foundation.

just a get-rich-quick

in fact, hardly a

scheme

tract that reflected

for late night television — — Hill's book was a quasi-religious

scheme

at all

some widely accepted,

if

not quite main-

54

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

The goal of autosuggestion and control of your own subconscious mind was linking up with God, or, as Hill stream, ideals.

Him, Infinite Intelligence. (God was mind, proponents mind cure declared.) According to Hill, God was also a

called

o(

could be "induced to aid in

Infinite Intelligence

capitalist:

transmuting desire into concrete, or material, form." 25 Carnegie's secret

was getting

God on

his side.

Like most self-help authors, Hill makes rhetorical concessions

He

to the ideal of self-control.

talks

about mastering your

fate

by mastering your mind; but his notion of mastery seems mostly a

ot self censorship:

matter

ing bad thoughts

thinking it is

is

you have to stop yourself from think-

and becoming

"failure conscious." Critical

not just devalued by positive thinking philosophers;

condemned

as a barrier to

God and

success. Distinguishing

between proper and improper thinking,

Hill, Peale,

and other

mind-cure proselytizers were selling thought control, through

we might

"autosuggestion," not the free play of intelligence

associate with self-actualization* Preaching self-hypnosis, Hill

and

way

Peale assured readers that they could sleepwalk their

to wealth.

That

is

hardlv what you'd

call

the Protestant ethic. Displacing

the ideal of moral willfulness with the promise of wish

ment, positive thinking, or mind cure has always been

fulfill-

at

odds

with the liberal Protestant tradition that imagined success,

achievement, and mastery of the environment as conscious acts of

will.

That

reflected

an

tradition, not self-help

movements

like

mind

cure,

ideal of self-invention. Liberal Protestantism's belief

in the efficacy of individual will

and individual action may have

helped rationalize some of capitalism's abuses by exaggerating the capacity of the poor and disenfranchised to help themselves,

but

it

also

encouraged a belief in

*Abraham Maslow's work on

self-actualization

social reform.

is

discussed

It

is

worth

on pages 56-60.

Don't Worry, Be Happy:

Positive

Thinking

noting that mind cure, which denigrated

we

exist

without

concerned with his or her

it,

will

55

to est

and imagined

was, as William James noted, not at

social

ills

all

or with the individual's relation to

community. Christian Science, the most widely

known, still prospering offshoot of mind cure, was a church with no charitable endeavors, Mark Twain observed, in a scathing critique of

I

it:

have hunted, hunted, and hunted, by correspondence and other-

wise,

port.

yet got upon the track of a farthing that the upon any worthy project .... No charities to sup-

and have not

Trust has spent

No, nor even to contribute

to.

One searches

advertisements and the utterances of that

it

its

in vain the Trust's

organs for any suggestion

spends a penny on orphans, widows, discharged prisoners,

hospitals, ragged schools, night missions, city missions, libraries,

old people's homes, or any other object that appeals to a

human

being's purse through his heart. 26

When and

will

is

devalued, so are action, independent thought,

social relations.

We become

atomized automatons, chanting

affirmations, or the sayings of some expert that sense. "In reality, the

more

so-called matter resembles

in Science

book. 27

essence, mortal mind, the

belief,"

Mary Baker Eddy

and Healthy her revelatory and supposedly

As Twain

and more

explained infallible

observed, "She has a perfectly astonishing

talent for putting

words together

in

such a way as to make

successful inquiry into their intention impossible." 28

hasn't stopped believers from quoting her. as

little

closely error simulates truth

its

impotent error becomes as a

make very

But that

Conceiving of God

mind

mind, and not

will,

Christian Science and

conceived of

men

not as God's self-determining offspring

ally

cure gener-

with the potential to progress but as complete, self-enclosed "individualizations" of

God. 29 This

is

not an entirely harmless

religious belief: in the political realm, envisioning every

man

56

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

woman

and

as individualizations of the state

the essence of

is

totalitarianism. It is

not that

all

positive thinkers are Stalinists or Nazis or

that they present any

imminent

tencies of popular self-help

movements,

their

inconsis-

tendency to draw

from many sources, combining the mandate

for surrender o(

with appeals to individualism, make them

will

The

political threat.

less

dangerous

than movements that value ideological purity. But there strain of

is

a

abnegation in the self-help tradition, represented most

clearlv in

mind

cure and positive thinking, that

is

essentially

totalitarian.

One

antidote for positive thinking and the lure of automatic

behavior was the notion of self-actualization propounded by psychologist

women were

for

Abraham Maslow. While

whom

liable to

attributes of

men and status, who

Peale spoke to

identity was a matter of social

consider motivation, judgment, and creativity

God, Maslow imagined independent, self-directed would always

individuals who, given the freedom to choose,

"choose wisely."

He

idealized "self-regulation, self-government,"

instead of submission: It

is

reasonable to assume in practically every

certainly in almost every

newborn baby,

human

that there

is

being,

an active

and will

toward health, an impulse toward growth, or toward the actualization of

human

potentialities. 30

The human being and

fuller

would

call

is

so constructed that he presses toward fuller

being and this means pressing toward what most people

good

values,

love, unselfishness,

toward

serenity, kindness, courage, honesty,

and goodness. 31

In this view, each of us has a unique inner nature that either inherently

good

or, at least,

morally neutral.

(It is

is

another

Don't Worry, Be Happy: Positive Thinking irony of

naming that Maslow

presents a

57

to est

much more

positive

view of human nature than any positive thinker ever did.)

Evil,

social or individual, represents a frustration of basic inner needs.

Neurosis tion.

32

is

a "deficiency disease," a kind of psychic malnutri-

(Peale's readers

probably suffered from deficiency of

desire.)

This sanguine belief in the capacity of people to grow in the right direction,

once

and

their basic needs for sustenance

secu-

were met, was the essence of humanistic psychology, or

rity

human

the

Rogers,

potential movement, popularized by Maslow, Carl and Gordon Allport at about the time that Peale was

thinking his positive thoughts. Humanistic psychology offered a hopeful view o( natural, individual potential, tempered by

postwar awareness o{ the failures of social and political tions.

While Peale ignored the horrors of World War

acknowledged them, 1950s,

briefly,

institu-

Maslow

but with some urgency: in the

he observed, Americans and Europeans were confronted

with "the total collapse of individual."

The invent,

no

II,

all

sources of values outside the

33

—

goal of humanistic psychology was to uncover

Maslow

stressed

— a "natural value system ....

place else to turn but inward, to the

values." 34 Subjectivity

was an obvious

self,

virtue,

not

There's

as the locus of

perhaps the

car-

dinal virtue of this philosophy, that put every individual at

the center of his or her relationship, therefore,

and

own moral

universe.

was to

therapeutic

was supposed to be nonauthoritarian

"client centered," Carl Rogers stressed.

therapist

The

facilitate

The

role oi the

growth without directing

it.

This celebration of subjectivity was not relativism, as often assumed to be.

Maslow did not

behavior was healthy, only that directed. as

He

all

suggest that

rest

of

us:

it is

human

healthy behavior was

idealized self-actualizers because

moral "scouts" for the neurotic

all

self-

he viewed them

"The

healthiest

58

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

people" are "more sensitive perceivers"

we

who

can

"tell

us less

value." 35

Only healthy people "yearn tor what is good tor them .... They spontaneously tend to do right, because that is what they want to do, what they need to do, what they enjoy, what they approve o{ doing." 36 sensitive

ones what

it is

that

Maslow's concept of the self-actualized person

is

not entirely

unlike the traditional religious concept of the person blessed

when you

accept God's love, you become infused and His values. The truly faithful are capable only ot doing what God wants; they want only the good. In some ways, Maslow simply relocated God, or some would say demoted Him, to a place within each individual. What distin-

with grace:

with His

will

guished self-actualizcrs was their embrace of the "godlike" in themselves.

Maslow was perhaps best known for his study of "peak expemoments o( "ecstasy," generally associated with creative acts that are rungs on the ladder of self-actualization. He charriences,"

acterized these experiences in mystical terms: they entailed a loss

of self-consciousness, a sense of existing "outside of time

and

space," a sense of "oneness," the perception of the universe as essentially

o{ values

benign or neutral, and what he described as a merger

and

facts: in

peak experiences, there

what should be and what

is.

no gap between

is

"Peakers" people

who

more than the usual share of peak experiences, were without being

selfist:

enjoyed

subjective

they tended to have callings or "vocations"

them with the world. The peak experience is a which even "the average human being" is able to

that involved

moment

at

perceive other people

her

own

needs and

and events

desires.

objectively,

independent of

For peakers, "perception can be

tively ego-transcending, self-forgetful, egoless!'

31

the route to self-actualization, but objectivity was

Whatever charges may be leveled an

elitist

who

saw

at

self-actualizers as the

rela-

Subjectivity was

Maslow

its fruit.

— that he was

chosen few and favored

Don't Worry, Be Happy:

"making

life

of the unfit

38

Thinking

Positive

better" for the psychologically

—

he can't simply be called

fit

selfist

at

to est

59

the expense

or relativistic,

nor can he be accused o( simplifying the quest for identity; it

would be

fairer to say

how-to books. academic proviser,

He

writer,

he mystified

it.

At

least

he didn't write

couldn't have, not just because he was an

but because the ideal self-actualizer

someone who

doesn't

is

an im-

need advice — road maps, role

models, or assurances of success; she has the confident ability to "improvise in that situation

The how-to books

which has never

of pop psychologists

existed before." 39

who followed Maslow

appropriated the term self-actualization but

mocked the concept,

by devising guidelines and techniques for achieving

it.

Today,

recovery experts borrowing Maslow's rhetoric about individual

wholeness and autonomy promise self-actualization to anyone willing to follow directions for freeing the child within, as

painting by numbers, we might each become

if,

Matisse. Adher-

ence to externally devised, universally applicable techniques has about as

poem

much

to

do with

self-actualization as reciting a

has to do with writing one.

Maslow's theories were more aptly adopted by ists

political activ-

whom Maslow had little patience or respect. Huron Statement, the seminal declaration of belief for

of the 1960s, for

The

Port

the student movement, lauded "self-cultivation, self-direction,

and creativity," calling for an iconoclastic which openly faces problems which are troubling and unresolved; one with an intuitive awareness of possibilities, an active sense of curiosity, and ability and willingness to learn." 40 As the sober passion of this statement drew on Maslow's hint that self-actualizers might save the world, Abbie Hoffman's playful anarchism drew on the respect for individual intimations of delight that his work demanded. To recover the self, Maslow wrote, "one must recover the ability to perceive one's own delights." 41 Hoffman delighted in revoluself-understanding, "quality of

mind

.

.

.

60

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

tion, revolution for the fun oi

it,

fun being "an experience so

intense that you are actualizing your

full

potential. ...

I

mv

trust

wont

like

impulse," he declared. 42 His pitch for the revolution

like this:

Look, you want to have more fun, you want to get

want t

I

my mind.

to experience pleasure. Just doing what pops into

to turn

reativity,

on with your

then

out of school, quit your job.

get

laid

more, you

you want an outlet

friends,

for

Come on

your

out and

help build and defend the society you want. Stop trying to organize

everybody hut yourself. Begin

to live

Hoffman acknowledged Maslow's apparent chagrin.

But

if

your vision. 43

clear influence, to the latter's

44

Abraham Maslow

disliked the

were used by radicals of the 1960s,

way

in

which

his ideas

hard to agree that he was

it is

misunderstood. In his work, he located conscience and morality in individuals,

not in their political institutions; he linked

ethical behavior with self-awareness (therapy itself for values"); he

made

a moral imperative, while recognizing that will generally

need

a

was a "search

the development of individual potential

good society

in

human

beings

to grow." 45

Abbie

"good

which

Hoffman had the courage of Maslow's convictions. Putting faith in the individual, however idealized, humanistic

psychology implicitly valued dissent over conformity and presented willful individual action not just as a possibility but as a virtue, providing a theory of individual

encouraged the formation of

political

development that

community

— the "de-

mocracy of individual participation" envisioned by the Port

Huron Statement. The humanistic

psychologists shaped the

primary postwar philosophy of identity formation that can

be classed as self-help and reflected democratic eventually limited

and

its

ideals,

fairly

which

commercial appeal. Valuing iconoclasm

a spirit of improvisation, the theory of self-actualization

Don't Worry, Be Happy:

Positive

Thinking

61

to est

Nor

could never compete in the marketplace of techniques. could

survive intact the notion that personal development

it

required

little

know

to

which we've come

unselfish social interaction,

as the selfism of the past twenty years. In the 1970s,

self-actualization easily

devolved into a pseudoscience of

self-

aggrandizement.

How to Get

In

Whatever You Want Out of Life, written in 1978,

Dr. Joyce Brothers

combined

positive thinking with the rhetoric

on making dreams come true. 46 Only you, the "inner you," can "truly know" what of self-actualization in a best-selling primer

you want out of life, Brothers concedes, and only

she,

it

seems,

can teach you

how

good marriage,

exciting sex, fulfillment

want them,"

you buy her book. "A how-to book can make

all

if

to get

it.

"Love, power, riches, success, .

.

.

can be yours,

if

a

you

the difference," Brothers shamelessly declares. 47

Her how-to book offers the usual array of platitudes, pep talks, and case studies about wishing and hoping and thinking your u way to success and self-actualization, which by now means a more rewarding lifestyle." She dresses this up in "scientific techniques," like the Quick List Technique: Write down three wishes, just "as fast as you can," without reflection, she urges, just like a fairy godmother. But she is a scientist, and the Quick List

Technique

is

a "powerful psychological tool."

As proof of

potency, Brothers

tells

the story of "Norman," who, after

writing a quick wish

list,

transforms himself from a middle-

its

salesman into a wealthy entrepreneur, proud owner of "a

class

metallic silver sports car with red leather upholstery" 48

wish

list

Your

should, apparently, be quite specific.

Brothers's advice

is

quite specific too. In her collection of

special, psychological learning techniques,

she devises a study

schedule for you: "Eat a light supper and start working at six.

.

.

.

Stop working

this half

at 8:30 for a half

an hour.

hour have a cup of decaffeinated

coffee

During or weak tea .

.

.

62

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

or an apple.

.

.

And no

.

alcohol."

Another learning

secret

is

studying in a cool, quiet room: "Mental activity thrives on a chilly

atmosphere, so keep the room on the cold side

65°

most conducive

is

own

4l

study secret:

I

have written most oi

planes," she confides, 49 It

is

— 60 to

to learning." Brothers also shares her

and

I

this

book on

air-

believe her.

easy to understand the appeal o( these assurances that

concentration and creativity are merely functions of turning the thermostat down.

It is

harder to imagine readers pondering

banalities because they are presented as techniques

do.

That

is

more and same desk

— but some

the secret o{ the doctor's success. "You will learn

faster at

.

.

.

if

you

settle

down

in the

same room

at the

the same time every time you study" she declares.

much the when it heard

"This helps you condition yourself to study in very

same way that Pavlov taught a bell." 50 Brothers talks

his

dog

to salivate

about self-actualization, but,

like

Nor-

man Vincent Peale, she is really a Pavlovian. She presents her own psychological expertise as "tools" for manipulating yourself and others. "The ability

to manipulate effectively

reports in chapters

on how

introductory chapters that

to succeed.

is 51

money and power

Brothers notes in her

money can buy happiness only "up

to a point," but that's the point she'll help sition of

the key to power" she

you reach; the acqui-

turn out to be her primary subjects.

employment counselor, she offers tips on job interdon't smoke, don't be late, make sure you know the name

Like an views:

of the person interviewing you.

A woman

of the world, she

encourages you to exploit your connections:

know tially

that counts," she confirms.

amoral:

guilt,"

52

is

"It's

whom

you

pragmatic and essen-

easy to manipulate people through

she observes; and although the exercise

tasteful,"

tool.

"It is relatively

She

she must admit that

it is

is

"quite dis-

an important psychological

Don't Worry, Be Happy: Brothers devotes a chapter to

You Want."

She'll help

knows how

to use the

"How

you become

"most

Thinking

Positive

to

Make

People

effective psychological tools" for

and fear — in "Everyone has an

"flattery, rewards, guilt,

that order." Flattery

one of her

is

complex," so everyone

who knows how

flatterer

Do What

"power person" who

a

manipulating people:

inferiority

63

to est

favorites: is

susceptible to a practiced

on

to exploit insecurities. "Zero in

those areas of real concern to the person being flattered bolster his ego in areas

where he may

feel unsure,"

.

.

.

Brothers

advises. Practice her "sensitive listening techniques." 53

Write your own "manipulative handbook," she concludes. It

will help

you gain power and

friends.

54

Like most successful self-help experts, Brothers synthesizes

the sayings of her predecessors. "There

she exclaims;

And

fluences.

1970s

it

Peale

is

power

men.

in thinking,"

and Dale Carnegie seem her strongest

in-

she plays to the tune of the times. In the late

was fulfillment through professional

as well as

naive,

55

success, for

women

A social conscience seemed quaint and awfully

and dissent was no longer

in fashion. If humanistic psy-

chology dominated the 1960s, positive thinking reigned again in the late 1970s,

phenomenal

most notably

success reflected

in the virulent

form of est.

Est's

an emerging preoccupation with

private fulfillment at the expense of public welfare.

Werner Erhard, aka Jack Rosenberg, founded est after an epiphany on a California freeway: "I realized that I knew

alleged

nothing. ... In the next instant

nothing

—

I

realized that

pidly, blindingly

I

— after

I

realized that

knew everything ....

simple that

I

could not believe

It it.

I

knew

was so I

stu-

saw that

no hidden meanings, that everything was just the and that I was already all right. All that knowledge had amassed just obscured the simplicity, the truth, the

there were

way

it is,

that

I

suchness, the thusness of revelation with others

it all."

and

He

built

felt

obliged to "share" this

an empire. 56

64

I'M

As

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL psychobabble indicates, before becoming

his fluency in

development

a leader in the personal its

field

Erhard was one of

most voracious consumers. He read Napoleon

knowledged him

as a

major influence:

make fun o( persons "But

rapher.

integrity

if

you

like

really

peak experience that call Self. ...

I

I

and

Hill

Erhard told

Hill,"

ac-

some people

that

a biog-

look at what [he] had to say you find

human

Erhard "encountered" the

ment, learned to employ

I

know

and humanity." Then, having immigrated

in the 1960s,

what

Napoleon

"I

its

rhetoric,

had

and became

in 1963

was

to California

potential

move-

a peaker:

"The

peak experience of

a

Self— not my

truly experienced the

Self:

l

the word mv' belongs in the world of concept about Self not experience of Self."

He moved on and through Zen Buddhism

and Scientology, another major tered Scientology did all

I

influence: "not until

see clearly that

the trouble; and that the trouble

lies

Finally he took a Dale Carnegie course

and influence people. Erhard was, profession.

With

Mind in

encoun-

at the root of

its

positionality."

on how

after

I

is

all,

to

win friends

a salesman

by

57

his talent for

salesmanship and forays into practically

modern personal development movement, American phenomenon; he was invented by the self-help culture he came to lead. Shallow and glib, he blended the rhetorics of several different movements every important,

Erhard was

a quintessentially

into a babble

all

his

own and convinced

people that he was

saying something different, which couldn't have been

much

harder than convincing them that he was saying something. Like

Napoleon

Hill,

Erhard essentially claimed to have

dis-

covered a way to "think and grow rich." Est promised grandly to "transform your ability to experience

life,"

as

Barbara Grizzuti

Harrison reported in a witty and unsettling 1976 expose. 58 This

meant is

shifting

"from a

state in

which the content

in your

organized around the attempt to get satisfied or to survive

life .

.

.

Don't Worry, Be Happy: Positive Thinking to

an experience o( being

the content of your

life

satisfied, right

as

to est

65

now, and organizing

an expression, manifestation, and

sharing o( the experience of being satisfied, of being whole and

complete, now." 59 Get

it?

You don't

senseless, lofty rhetoric, Erhard's Hill

was

have

to.

Beneath the

message was the same one

back in 1936: Desire can be turned into gold.

selling

Thoughts

really

are things. Expectations are always self-fulfilling.

Erhard's epiphany,

I

suspect,

was that the mass marketing

making them obtain. Est training sessions had the

of these secrets would be greatly enhanced by

expensive and painful to

mystique of boot

camp

or fraternity hazings. Trainees paid hun-

dreds of dollars for the privilege of being imprisoned together in large

rooms and subject

rangues:

"You

The to

are

to psychic drills

assholes," est trainers

all

and verbal ha-

would proclaim. 60

widely publicized fact that trainees were denied free access

bathrooms only seemed

to heighten est's appeal. Training

was an ordeal that, once survived, stamped you

as

one of the

elite.

There from

is

no way

to

know what

every est graduate gleaned

came

come

this training. People

own

help program, with their desires,

and

ideas.

Some

But

I

science already

to

any

self-

idiosyncratic temperaments,

claim convincingly that they found

in est a sense of "personal

activism.

to est, as they

empowerment"

that inspired social

suspect that they entered est with a social con-

formed and managed to leave with

The popular message

it still

intact.

of est, the one that reverberated through-

out the culture, was a clear denigration oi compassion.

We

are in complete control of our lives

and

are completely

and failures, est proselytizers prono such thing as luck (positive thinkers don't in luck), which means that there are no hapless

responsible for our successes claimed. There

is

generally believe

victims, only assholes

who

invite their

own

abuse. Est offered

noblesse without the oblige; wealth brought with

it

no respon-

66

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

sibilities if

sleeping

on

people were poor voluntarily (because they liked grates). It

was the perfect philosophy for a decade

which success began replacing

in

nant cultural

No

ideal.

predomi-

social justice as the

one deserves your help and no one

could effectively make use o(

it,

est declared.

Character

is

fate

absolutely.

Character takes shape in a vacuum. is

obsessed with the effect of family

along with

it,

all

If

life

the recovery

on

movement

character, est ignored

other circumstances beyond our control. In

Erhard's universe,

we

makes victims of us

are each

all, est

our

own

creation. If recovery

gave us permission to be predators.

Although recovery experts use

positive thinking techniques

—

—

affirmations and visualizations and parrot sayings about mind power, they don't borrow much positive thinking ideology. Tracing the historical roots of a self-help movement is often difficult

because experts borrow so

illogically

from a range of

popular movements that preceded them. But ideologically, the recovery

movement owes more

to popular Protestant notions

of salvation by grace and nineteenth-century revivalism, while est

is

deeply rooted in

nuanced view of our

mind

cure. Neither offers a balanced,

responsibility for ourselves

ronments; neither offers the possibility of

But while recovery may be

irritating

willful,

and our

envi-

moral action.

and adolescent,

est

was

cruel.

Erhard's philosophy clearly demonstrated the antisocial strain

of the positive thinking/mind-cure tradition, which

saw

reflected in the Christian Science neglect of charity. If each

oi us creates our

own

reality,

sufficient, self-enclosed, like

mind

then each of us

is

entirely

self-

God

that

the individuations of

cure imagined us to be. Erhard reaffirmed, with a venge-

ance, the message of ills,

Mark Twain

Norman Vincent Peale:

there are

no

social

no external forces affecting our fates; there is only negative enemy within. Regrets are unnecessary because

thinking, the

Don't Worry, Be Happy:

Thinking

Positive

you need only desire success to achieve

67

to est

Compassion

it.

is

a

waste oi psychic energy. Today, est

available in a kinder, gentler package called

is

Forum. Participants in Forum seminars have

rooms and

are spared

est trainees.

some of the

tors oi beingness

about such phenomena

are the writer, director,

If

bad things happen only

thoughts, then evil

is,

as

a misapprehension; evil

There are

justice.

and

star oi a

one-person

play.

bad

to people guilty of thinking

mind-cure leaders claimed, a mistake, is

a

lie.

Mary Baker Eddy put

(Or, as

then,

no

tragedies,

no awful

accidents oi

conflicts of wills, only errors of perception,

Mind

Book of Job

failure to

makes mind

and

cure, positive thinking,

reading oi the

The

as experiential recep-

the awful deception and unreality of existence." 61 )

is

are,

no

on

the same: You are whole. You are complete.

is

You

"Evil

verbal abuse once heaped

But the message to be extracted from The Forum's

New Age rhetoric

it:

The

bath-

free access to

much

so

there

fate;

and no

in-

est don't offer a

as a rejection of

it.

confront or even admit the existence oi

evil

cure, or positive thinking, "inadequate as a philos-

ophy," as William James stressed. But James was being kind.

Denying the existence oi evil, grants placidity of

mind

in

a Faustian philosophy that

it is

exchange

for

empathy and the

will

to alleviate suffering.

James was tolerant of mind cure and respectful of its practical

he was not drawn to

successes, but

he concluded; "the strenuous is

it

required too

life"

of us

little

unheroic,

and deprived us of

this world,

ideals:

which

is

"There neither

nor evaded, but which must be squarely met and

overcome by an appeal to the neutralized

Mind cure was

oi mortal conflict in service to

an element of real wrongness in

to be ignored

it.

soul's heroic resources,

and cleansed away by

suffering."

62

and

In Step:

Support Groups

At ing, a last is

a

Anonymous (SLAA) meetman confesses that he masturbated I'm okay with it," he assures us. He

Sex and Love Addicts

bearded, middle-aged

week. "But

it's

okay.

beginning to understand that

"acting out" his anger.

Now,

when he masturbates he

in recovery,

of "getting in touch" with his anger,

and

he

it is

is

is

in the process

healing his addic-

tion to sex.

Everyone in seated in a is

this small

circle,

nods.

group oi

Then

"powerless over relationships,"

call It is

her ex-boyfriend, with

woman who

tells

of her struggles not to

whom she just broke up last month.

hard for her to be alone. She misses "not the sex but the

touching" and wonders disease."

talks

if

her desire to be held

The nodding continues. Recovering sex

about using sex to gain control.

out oi control in relationships. Carl at

fifteen or sixteen people,

Pamela, a young

work and

Amy

tells

"part of

is

my

addict Joanne

talks

about being

us about his bad day

which underlie his feel wanted originality than con-

his feelings of worthlessness,

promiscuity. "I definitely use sex to

make myself

and important," he confides with less viction. Now he is trying to stop and is practicing

his affirma-

69

70

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

keep reminding myself that I'm not a bad person.

tions: "I

I'm an addict, a sick, suffering person," he says, seeking

self-

esteem.

Meanwhile,

another church basement,

a few blocks away, in

recovering alcoholics are telling harrowing stories o( blackouts

and

binges.

A few blocks in another direction, recovering over-

eaters are talking

about loving their bodies. Several hours

these lunchtime meetings, within the

same

after

half-mile radius,

ACOA), Narcotics Anonymous (NA), and Codependents Anonymous (CODA) will hold their meetings. In my town and probably in yours, there are lunchAdult Children o( Alcoholics

time, evening,

(

and sometimes morning meetings,

five to

seven

days a week, for twelve-step groups addressing every conceivable

form of addiction, every bad habit, every complaint.

The

you hear range quickly from the

stories

trivial to

the

As soon as one woman finishes testifying to the ravages o( PMS, another recalls being raped by her stepfather. Disparate, disconnected stories come in quick succession; sometimes tragic.

attending groups

changes, the

is

like

mood

Everyone's story

is

But while the testimony

— somber —

is

fairly constant.

greeted with equal seriousness

of concern. (Remember,

The format

MTV.

watching

of the group

all

suffering

of the groups

is

is

and shows

relative.)

also constant. (They're like

7-eleven stores; you can walk into a twelve-step group anywhere in the country,

I

suspect,

and

feel at

home.) Members take turns

leading the meetings; usually they begin by reading the Alcoholics

Anonymous

Serenity Prayer:

to accept the things

things

I

can,

I

"God

grant

me

the serenity

cannot change, courage to change the

and wisdom

to

know

the difference."

Then

the

AA, affirmmen and women who

leader reads a mission statement, also taken from

ing that the group

is

"a fellowship of

and hope with each other that common problem and help others to

share their experience, strength

they

may

solve their

Groups

In Step: Support

The statement

recover."

71

includes a disavowal of any religious

membership requirement other

or political affiliation or any

than the desire to recover. Virtually

recovery groups use the same twelve steps, which

all

are essentially a series of

AA.

Step one

maxims and mandates,

a statement o{ need:

is

"

powerless over

(fill

"We admitted we were

in alcohol, drugs, food, sex, shop-

ping, gambling, or religion, or

sadness or rage). Step twelve

is

any particular

[alcoholics,

and

we

spiritual

tried to carry this

such as

and com-

awakening

message to other

drug abusers, rageoholics, shoppers,

to practice these principles in

all

of our

between include making "a searching and tory,"

feeling,

a statement of success

mitment to evangelicism: "Having had a as a result of these steps,

originated by

"humbly" asking

affairs."

fearless

etc.]

Steps in

moral inven-

God to "remove our shortcomings," and

making "moral amends" to "all persons we have harmed." Accompanying these twelve steps are twelve traditions, also suitable for use in recovering from any addiction. Tradition one is

"Our common welfare upon unity." Tradi"loving God as He may

a statement of allegiance to the group:

should come

first;

vows

tion two

personal recovery depends

allegiance to a generic,

express Himself in our group conscience."

Other

traditions in-

and prohibition of commercial and outside contributions to the group. "Our public " policy is based on attraction rather than promotion

clude respect for anonymity, ventures relations

according to tradition eleven.

Many

thoughtful people study these steps and are helped

by them. call for

Many

find in

them not

personal accountability.

I

a

mandate

realize,

to submit but a

of course, that

outsider's analysis of

matter

much

hol or drugs

to

my

is not the only one and that an them and other recovery credos may not someone struggling with an addiction to alco-

reading of the twelve steps

who

finds the

program

helpful.

72

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

Although I'm

instinctively skeptical o{ recovery

personal development movements, I'm not a

— AA —

forerunner

quite critical of our

manv derivative

any more than

and other

oi recovery's

critic

a supporter of

it.

I

am

expanded definitions of addiction and the

twelve-step groups for people suffering not from

chemical addictions but from what might be considered bad habits or neuroses I've

known

—

overeating and "loving too much." But

who destroyed themselves with alcohol or who have recovered through AA. I've read

people

drugs and others

convincing personal accounts of recovery from alcoholism that I

have not the intention,

AA

tended

desire, or capacity to refute. I've at-

meetings on Christmas Day and been impressed

by the fellowship they offered people. Observing groups as a nonparticipant, recovery process.

form

in

AA: one

are not nearly as

I

know

I

have only

AA and NA

a limited

view of the

I'm not privy to the friendships that

recovering alcoholic

tells

me

that the meetings

important to him as the socializing that

fol-

lows them.

So

my

don't claim that

I

remarks about twelve-step groups

are dispositive; they are simply

my

remarks, reflecting

my

reac-

tion to these groups. I'm not offering arguments about treatI do want to provide a more on the twelve-step phenomenon

ments of chemical addictions. critical, political

than

is

The

perspective

popularly considered.

twelve steps that so

many

people find helpful are

fying to me. Imagine listening to the

same

steps

and

traditions, at every

same

stulti-

serenity prayer, the

meeting you attend. After

reading the serenity prayer and mission statement, the leader usually passes around a statement of the twelve traditions that

people take turns reading. For me, this sit

is

the hardest part to

through; people read dead words in monotones.

recovering alcoholics

I

ing mantras either, but

know I

A

few

say they never listen to the open-

guess that

many

others are comforted

In Step:

by the

ritual readings, as

Support Groups

73

they are comforted by familiar prayers

in church.

You can only guess what most people

and other

these

rituals.

We

in recovery feel about

have anecdotal testimony about

the redemptive force oi the twelve steps but no hard evidence of their general effect.

It is

know much who

probably impossible to

about the millions oi disparate, anonymous individuals

move

in

and out oi support groups unpredictably, with

vary-

ing degrees of success. Support groups are quite permeable,

perhaps the most permeable of ing

all

our private associations,

lack-

membership requirements or even membership lists. They most laissez-faire of private associations, setting forth

are the

general standards of behavior that tend to be obeyed rather

than actively enforced. You may be excommunicated from your

church or blackballed by a country club, but

it

is

virtually

impossible to be denied entry to a group or excluded from the

community of twelve

steppers.

who

one meeting, you can always move on

regularly attend

Even

if

you outrage the people

to another.

is

So the abundance of anecdotal reports on twelve-step groups matched by a dearth of empirical evidence about their mem-

berships. I've never even

my

of twelve-step groups;

The and

found a

reliable

evidence also

demographic study

is

mainly anecdotal.

majority of groups I've attended have been mostly white

middle-class, as

for those that

is

the neighborhood in which

I

live.

Except

meet in hospitals serving diverse populations,

support groups seem to

borhoods. (Attending

reflect

the demographics of their neigh-

AA groups in the wealthy part of town

has long been heralded as a

way

to snag a wealthy spouse.)

AA groups used to be all male, but now they welcome women, who made up about half of the AA groups I observed. Codependents Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous were predominantly female. AA and Narcotics Anonymous groups were

74

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

the most diverse in terms o( race, gender, and,

who

people

seemed

I

think, class:

who

appeared working-class mingled with people

Meetings of Codependents Anonymous,

relatively rich.

Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous,

and Adult Children o( Alcoholics were the most homogeneous. In general, addiction

may be

apparently

with what they consider to be their

feel safer

a great equalizer,

but some people

own

Groups sometimes serve very discrete populations, such nonsmoking lesbian mothers of sons.

kind. as

What may he harder

God

you to

refer

to find are recovery groups that don't

or your higher power, although a few for

The drive for may even be con-

recovering alcoholics have recently emerged. secular recovery, from alcoholism at least,

movement: Newsweek has made

sidered a

"lifestyle" story.

to sentence

(It's

the subject of a

fueled partly by the tendency of judges

drunken drivers

sider a sentence to

it

AA

a

some con-

to recovery programs;

violation of religious freedom.)

Rational Recovery, a leading secular alcohol recovery group iated with the

150

cities,

at

American Humanist Association, has spread

according to Newsweek.

to

1

Rational Recovery boasts only two thousand

Still,

affil-

members

any given time, compared with the one million plus member-

AA. Women 2

ship of

group, claims

where there the local

market in a

some

are

for Sobriety,

five

another secular recovery

thousand members, 3 but

in

my

town,

AA meetings virtually every day of the week,

Women

There

for Sobriety chapter has folded.

for secular recovery,

but

country in which atheism

as the business of

America

is

it

is

may have

is

a

limited resilience

considered unpatriotic. Just

business, religion

America's

is

religion. 4 I've

never attended a support group that didn't

how seriously people in Some recovering alcoholics

on

call

Him

recovery take

not

say they "tune out"

say.

I

a

can-

higher power;

all

Support Groups

In Step:

references to

God, along with some testimony and whatever

steps or traditions they don't "relate to."

who

benefit

most from recovery

on

I

suspect that the people

are the savviest,

most

selec-

— the ones who don't share in everything

consumers of it

tive

that goes

75

group and

in the

who

much

ignore

of what the

experts say.

and impreswe know about support groups. Because the support group movement is so difficult to docuI

suspect,

I

guess,

sions constitute

ment,

like

on what

The

I

imagine. Suspicions, guesses,

much

of what

most people writing about

it, I

can only comment

I've seen.

Narcotics

Anonymous meeting

begins

at a local hospital

with the reading of the serenity prayer, mission statement, and the twelve traditions. People read haltingly,

unaccustomed

flatly, as

people

to reading aloud often do. Finally the twelfth

tradition has

been read, and the leader moves on to welcome

"newcomers

to the group." Several

newcomers stand up and

introduce themselves, including a contingent from Baltimore: "I'm George, and I'm a drug addict from Baltimore," one

and everyone applauds. "I'm Bob, and I'm

says,

man

drug addict

a

man sitting next to him says, to more Two more men from Baltimore and a couple from

from Baltimore," the applause.

Worcester are welcomed. a job

and

surprise,

"I'm Wendy,

and I'm

Then

have had a bad week

I

have an impulse to stand up and

a drug addict

from

New

York."

the testimony begins, and the group's relationship to

language changes. Instead of reciting someone ple are struggling to find their

and

— ended both

— and for an instant, just an instant

me by

that takes say,

a relationship

I

own.

Many

else's

testifiers

words, peo-

are inelegant

their vocabularies are limited: every other sentence

tuated by a "fuck." But speaking their

own

is

punc-

words, detailing

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

76

I'M

their

own anguished bouts with

One man who

addiction, they are eloquent.

months speaks movingly oi being watched over physically by members of his group, intent on not letting him score. imagine him hanging savs

he has been straight

for six

I

over

me

a cliff,

new,

a

No one

God much

about

talks

e testifies to his

There

is

a

God

or her relationship with

AA],

good more I

God

talk in

A A. "My

could not do for myself,"

I

was

was unable to stop drinking.

I

I

I

going through the motions."

a conversion. "I

and If

like

cried,

my

sank to

'God,

you are not

if

higher power did

AA,

I

I

asked

man say, life. "On my

testimony

on

like this

a blackboard. If

may be what you

this

came

first

Him

[to

for help

Then he underwent

knees and admitted

I

you're there, please help me,'

religious,

the screech of chalk

but in need o(

—

other

hear one

And when

God, and when

didn't believe in

just

or thanks

many

describing God's miraculous intervention in his

own,

name

recitation of traditions.

attended.

I've

me what

tor

meeting. His

at this

His help, which distinguishes this from

tor

meetings

gives

appreciation o( support.

comes up only during the prayer and

Him

He

with the group holding onto his ankles. less skeptical

you

was powerless

and He

did."

may be

grating,

not

religious

are

learn to "tune out"

the frequent exhortations about surrendering to a higher

power, discussions of the "spiritual bankruptcy" that precedes

conversion to

AA, and

the grateful

encomiums

to His benefi-

cence. Sitting through religious testimonials, I'm grateful that

I'm not an alcoholic testimonials.

recovery to

But

AA

and don't have

a couple of agnostics

dismiss

its

to I

sit

through

know who

religiosity as a

minor

Unlike organized religions, they suggest, recovery

religious

credit their irritation. is

indeed

a

cafeteria.

Freedom not to pay attention, along with the freedom to drop in and out o( meetings as you choose, are the saving graces

Groups

In Step: Support

of

AA

and other twelve-step groups.

Flexibility

and

lack of

Many

organizational controls distinguish recovery from cults. people,

ing

11

imagine, actively question recovery's teachings, bend-

I

them

to suit their needs, but

it is

impossible to

know how

many. Watching participants in a recovery conference nodding at the experts,

taking notes on their one-liners, never asking

questions or disputing their assertions,

I

see

little

evidence of

people actively processing and critiquing recovery's message.

Attending support groups,

I

hear people echoing the experts,

talking about getting in touch with their anger or letting go

of

it;

they seem to practice talk show therapy on themselves.

In twelve-step groups, I've encountered

what appears

a nervous, needy, vulnerable population, eager to believe.

to be

I

don't

expect an undereducated twenty-year-old with a history of drug

and alcohol abuse and intermittent homelessness recovery's ideology, particularly

if

she finds that

understand her gratitude for the group and "It's

great to talk

stupid,"

its

to analyze it

helps.

I

value to her:

and not worry about someone thinking you're

one young woman

says poignantly, recounting her

adolescent years of drinking, blacking out, and waking up in strange apartments, with only a few

odd

where she might have been. Hearing people of drug

and alcohol abuse,

I

lose

still-lifes

testify to

to indicate

the ravages

some of my skepticism about At the same time I wonder

the groups that seem to help them.

how

limited their

own

capacity for skepticism might be.

At an Adult Children of Alcoholics meeting, people to their inability to

annoyances oi daily

"handle" life

mundane

testify

complications and

— checking accounts that won't bal-

work that won't be found, friends who borrow books and don't return them. They discuss the dynamics of "dealing" with bank managers, auto mechanics, and acquaintances the way I imagine foreign policy advisers discuss an upcoming summit. Should you ask your neighbor to pick up ance,

files at

78

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

when you go on

your mail

How

vacation?

should you pose

the question and initiate the "process" o( negotiation? Should

you be relying on your neighbor? Can you mailbox key and to ask a friend

who

trust

him with your

he expect a favor in return? You'd

will

lives across

town

like

check your mail

to

in-

stead, but you're afraid o( appearing too needy.

How

do thc^c people

through the day,

get

them agonize about the nuances of every

to

my

counter, thanking I

realize that

many

wonder, listening

I

trivial

human

people in recovery are genuinely unhappy

and deeply confused about human aged, or at least dented, early

on

relations, in

having been dam-

Some

childhood.

people

are as debilitated by inconveniences as others are by crises.

my

capacity for sympathy

you hear discussed

in

is

sometimes

limited.

ill.

Still,

The problems

ACOA and CODA meetings don't seem

nearly as formidable as the problems of the poor

sured chronically

en-

higher power I'm not a therapist.

and unin-

Listening to thirty-five-year-olds complain

that they have never been understood by their parents,

I

find

myself thinking about the Kurds.

Am

I

being unfair or unrealistic? As

a legal aid lawyer,

I

rep-

resented people facing serious felony charges and people with

summonses

for not

the equivalent of a

paying their subway

traffic ticket, I'd

fares. It

beat asked anxiously about his case, but

"They may only be imperfect "but they are

my

parents,"

it is

an

his traffic ticket.

ACOA

might

say,

ACOAs and other peo-

ple in recovery tend not to say (at least not it

a fare-

imperfect parents."

Unfortunately, that's precisely what

ever said

may only be

remind myself when

to me). They're

more

likely to

one of them has

complain that their

parents are not merely imperfect but abusive. They're more likely to insist that their

problems are not simply their prob-

lems but our problems too, the symptoms of a social disease. Virtually

all

American

families are dysfunctional,

we

live in

In Step:

Support Groups

79

a dysfunctional society, recovery experts proclaim, effectively

assuring people that virtually

all

their personal

problems are

automatically worthy of public attention.

Outside their support groups, people are testifying too, in the most inappropriate places.

At

cocktail parties

encounters with acquaintances, they

tell

stories, proffering intimacies like calling cards.

public

forum

and

in casual

their unsolicited

Sometimes

life

in a

— a book reading or a discussion of safe streets —

someone in recovery seizes an opportunity to share her pain. Feelings and personal experiences are competing with ideas in academia as well. At a lecture on psychoanalytic theory, people stand up during the question and answer period and testify to their histories of abuse. "My mother sodomized me," one man declares repeatedly, regaling us with some graphic detail. Five or ten more people — I lose count — stand up and identify themselves as victims of abuse, while the audience murmurs and nods respectfully. (At least no one applauds.) I wonder what testifiers mean by abuse. Were they sodomized by their mothers too or merely "shamed," deprived of self-esteem?

doubt they ask themselves cares

if

this

audience of strangers

I

really

about their problems. They either presume our support

demand it. In recovery the self becomes a social issue. The tendency of people in recovery to imbue their particular stories with general public importance, imagining them to be

or

of public interest, was also a hallmark of early feminist support groups. But from the beginning, consciousness raising was

accompanied by

political action.

even a

agenda,

and

political

much

The recovery movement less

responsibilities of citizenship. In recovery

the personal

The

is

political;

lacks

concern about the rights

the political

is

it is

not just that

merely personal.

self-aggrandizement that follows from this conflation of

personal

and

political

problems helps distinguish recovery from

traditional psychotherapy

and the innumerable support groups

SO

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

that aren't vasive,

modeled on AA. The language of recovery

but not

all

with recovery groups are groups for people in

isting

is

per-

support groups are twelve-step groups. Coexcrisis

—

people confronting cancer or a death in the family or divorce.

Formed

in response to events

and traumas

in people's lives,

not the chronic condition of codependency, these groups are not generally in the business o( promoting theories of selfhood,

much

less

visions of sin

and redemption.

In general, they're

not evangelical.

Not

that support groups outside the recovery

movement

widespread. Newsweek estimates that fifteen million

aren't

The basis how do you count an anonymous

Americans attend support groups, twelve-step or o{ this estimate

is

unclear:

and ever-changing population? But I'm

not. 5

willing to believe that

support groups outside recovery do involve millions of people.

You can probably find

a no-step

group for every conceivable

segment of the population, from parents opposed to circumcision to people

who have been

visited

groups don't have a copyright on sive ideology, these

by aliens. (Twelve-step

silliness.)

But lacking a cohe-

groups do not constitute an identifiable

personal development movement.

Some

are therapeutic, of

course, but given the range of interests, causes,

and problems

they address, groups outside recovery are best viewed simply as part of the larger, pluralistic tradition of private associations. It is,

therefore,

even more

difficult to generalize

groups that don't follow AA's twelve steps. twelve-step groups primarily because they

national

movement with an

focused on

do contribute to a and ideology and

insidious jargon

partly because twelve-step groups are

open

about support

I've

anonymous and

usually

to the public.

But attending several twelve-step meetings a week, listening to people talk

about their parents and their PMS,

to listen to people grappling

I

needed

with more awesome problems.

Of

In Step: Support

course,

some of the problems you hear

groups are awesome enough,

like

drug addicts, and incest victims;

Groups

81

aired in twelve-step

the problems of alcoholics,

it's

just that

I

find the rhetoric

of recovery unrevealing and the ideology disturbing. So, as an

Cambodian women refugees — women who were persecuted by the Khmer Rouge regime, women who survived torture, starvation, multiple rapes, antidote to recovery,

and internment

I

visited groups of

in concentration

slaughter of their families,

The Khmer Rouge

imagine.

camps and witnessed the

women who endured what is

I

can't

reported to have killed about

one million people betwen 1975 and 1979, the years they

mained

re-

in power.

whom some John Bradshaw, compare themselves. Many people in recovery tell "trauma stories" and have seized upon the syndrome afflicting these refugees — posttraumatic stress disorder — and claimed it as their own. (Virwomen

These

are the

Holocaust survivors to

recovering codependents, like

tually

all

codependents are said by the experts to be victims

some recovering codependents resent my comparing them to Cambodian refugees whose sufferings they cannot match, I'm making the comparison their movement has invited. I'm not suggesting that we should ignore all lesser degrees o( suffering and care only about greater ones or that only tor-

of PTSD.)

If

ture victims

and the

and

targets of genocide

have reason to be unhappy

do have more reason and

right to be heard, but they

perhaps we should afford them greater rights. Mostly, this portrait of

a

Cambodian women

I

offer

refugees as a reality check,

reminder of the difference between holocausts that happen

only metaphorically and holocausts that happen in

many ACOAs and Cambodian survivors don't Unlike

fact.

other people in recovery, these glibly

proffer their

stories

to

strangers. Their relative silence reflects, in part, a difference

between Asian and American

cultures: discussing

emotional

82

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

problems with strangers or even clinicians

is

Indochinese tradition. Their reticence also

reflects,

not part of the

the severity o( the traumas they have suffered.

have

I

sat in

on

group sessions,

several

details

and

social workers.

I

sec-

find the

hard to remember, probably because they are so horrific

and hard o( a

their doctors

have

I

women

only heard the individual trauma stories of these

ondhand, from

do you

and genocide?

testify casually, facilely, to torture

So, although

suspect,

I

How

to absorb. For

some

woman who watched

reason,

I

only

recall

open with an axe and was spared, unaccountably, forced to dig her

own

grave.

The

refugees includes stories like this:

disemboweled; she tives,

and

camp

until she

she was

left

is

to die.

man who

head being

literature

on Indochinese

A woman

sees her parents

on the bodies of her

A

girl is

ten-year-old

she

is

confinement

for

rela-

interned in a work

regularly beaten, tortured (once

hung by her ankles from

in solitary

after

beaten, tossed

fifteen;

is

the story

soldiers split her husband's

a tree for three days), kept

months, and raped repeatedly.

was interned and tortured

is

A

the sole survivor of his

family of forty-seven people. 6

Khmer Rouge are, in general, multiple "Khmer psychiatric patients in the United

Survivors of the

trauma victims.

States have experienced

an average of

16

major trauma events,"

according to a 1989 U.N. report: "The traumatic experiences of these patients

fall

into four general categories:

1)

deprivation;

and torture; 3) incarceration, brainwashing, re-education camps; and 4) witnessing killings or torture." 7 The traumas did not end with the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Over 300,000 Cambodians still live as displaced persons in camps along the Thailand border. Conditions in the camps are supposed to be "humane enough to protect the physical well-being of the Khmer but harsh enough to discourage other Cambodians from seeking refuge in Thailand." In 2) physical injury

In Step:

fact,

Support Groups

83

inmates in the camps are beset by chronic malnutrition,

crime, poverty, domestic violence,

and

shellings from

camp

border conflicts. Confinement in a

is

ongoing

described as "re-

and re-traumatization" by U.N. observers. 8 For those lucky enough to experience it, emigration to the

victimization

United States I

traumatic too.

is

None of the Cambodian women

encountered spoke more than a few words of English; meetings

are bilingual,

and

a bilingual Indochinese health

ates the relationship cians. All

of the

women

are

poor and

high homicide, robbery, and arson eling to the clinic are frightening

worker medi-

between the groups and American

once or twice

a

live in

rates.

week

is

clini-

communities with

For some, simply travdifficult:

the subways

and confusing, and many women who have

suf-

fered multiple rapes are afraid of taking cabs for fear of being

alone with the drivers.

few days after a

One meeting I

Cambodian woman

attended occurred only a

in their

neighborhood was

robbed and murdered in her apartment and during a spate of fires

that

left

many

families homeless.

The women

discuss their

and practice dialing 911, saying "emergency" and reciting their American addresses. They are scared and a little somber until a raucous older woman exhorts them to toughen up, acting out how she intends to greet anyone who tries breaking into her house; shrieking fearlessly, she makes everybody laugh. There is more laughter and lightness in these meetings of fears

vulnerable, impoverished survivors of genocide than in any twelve-step group I've attended, where people pursue recovery

with deadening earnestness. Twelve-step groups depress so

many people

me

talking about such relatively trivial problems

with such seriousness, in the same nonsensical jargon.

Cambodian women's groups resilience these

These are not directed

—

women

impress and enhearten

me

The

— such

show.

classic self-help groups; they are organized and by health care professionals. But they are directed

84

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

democratically and seem more

support groups than

tradi-

group therapy. Groups are unstructured and informal.

tional

One

like

group meets

in a

rundown community center; twenty or room and share the floor.

twenty-five of us crowd into a small

Thev

another group concludes

are social events;

its

meetings

with an enormous, communal, potluck lunch. Socializing and socialization

—

education in American customs and rules

much

takes perhaps as

sidered therapy

—

—

time as what might formally be con-

people talking about

how

they

feel.

the clinic that organized these groups reminds

In

some

me of turn-

ot-the-centurv settlement houses that served an earlier,

less

traumatized population o( immigrants.

There are many obvious differences between professionally led groups for

Cambodian

and

refugees

leaderless recovery

groups. But the structural differences (or similarities) between

and recovery groups

refugee

which

is

this:

ment denies and the Unlike

women

many

ness

my

concern,

it

encourages.

heard, the

I've

Cambodian

don't seem to revel in their victimhood. Their meetings

complaints and testimonies about their

Sometimes they is

cult of victimization

twelve steppers

aren't collections o(

pain.

are not relevant to

the hierarchy of suffering that the recovery move-

are sad

an interruption

session the

women

and

serious;

moment

in a long

practice putting

sometimes the sadof frivolity.

makeup on each

another, they experiment with sample

gifts

At one At

other.

of body lotion, dis-

cussing approaches to skin care like leisured ladies at a spa.

At

a

War,

meeting that convenes during the

first

week of the Gulf

women talk about their fears and the flashbacks they expewhen they hear bombs exploding on television. They

rience

wonder

if

they're in danger of attack,

worker leading the group passes plaining where the Gulf

Cambodia

is

a

and the American

map around

in relation to the

(they're worried

about

social

the room, ex-

United States and

relatives too).

The war

is

far

In Step:

We

away, she assures them. of the groups'

last picnic,

Cambodia by

to

watch

home

the groups'

Cambodian

Some

meetings are devoted to remembering.

They life.

about their

their

visited

a

pasts, before the

husbands, some of

back

young woman who adorns at the community center —

set

met

She

coleader.

85

one tape

a recent trip

movie

stories

—

videos

another tape of

and a movie star — a calendar in one o{ the rooms and the women are captivated. a

Support Groups

Khmer

whom now

are

Women

Rouge,

how

tell

they

dead or missing.

about courtship customs in Cambodia and family

talk

A Tibetan

troubles in his

one session and talks about the country, and one woman who has lost all her doctor

visits

children cries softly. "It explains, "especially

is

always with

when we

us,"

another

are alone; then,

woman

we always

remember." She suggests that they gather together partly to forget.

"How do you

"Sometimes, we I

don't

mean

in a strange,

of so

many

tell

help each other?" the social worker asks. jokes."

minimize the struggle to begin a new

to

hard country with so

losses.

I

are deeply depressed

trouble sleeping

and

a history

many of these and may remain so. Some have

and

are plagued

I

imagine that

by bad dreams and need medi-

cation to maintain their equilibrium. I've visited,

resources

have seen only a moment, barely a moment,

in a long passage to recovery.

women

little

life

Still,

of

all

the groups

these are virtually the only ones that engaged me,

the only ones

I

only ones that

enjoyed and looked forward to attending, the left

me

with a sense of hope.

The Recovery Boutique:

Workshopping Marilyn Volker, sex is

and codependency

therapist,

expert,

conducting a workshop on "childhood messages about Like a talk

uality."

show

host, sleek in purple silk, she

sex-

works

the room, seeking testimony, accosting us with her microphone.

When

it

is

my

politely ask her to over, several

when her microphone is in my face, I move back. Later, when the workshop is

turn,

women compliment me on my

"assertiveness."

John Lee, an acolyte of men's movement guru Robert Bly and author of The Flying Boy, a popular codependency book about

why men

flee

from relationships,

tells stories

about his

and his struggles with intimacy. Dressed and cowboy boots (he's from Texas), with a down-home

family, his girlfriends, in jeans

twang, he confesses his sins against

women, playing

his

female audience with the assurance of a middle-aged rock After his talk, a parade of

graphs and hugs.

I

ask

him

women if

he

is

ence. "I don't allow challenges,"

all-

star.

descend on him for auto-

ever challenged by an audi-

he

says,

looking

me

straight

in the eye. "I only accept support."

87

88

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

Yvonne Kaye, what

delivers

is

own

about her

She carno

a

grief

counselor and local radio personality,

intended as an inspirational, keynote address

victory over

stuffed

swan

codependency and low

to the

morphosis and begins her

talk

podium

self-esteem.

to symbolize her meta-

by asking members of the audi-

ence to stand up and applaud themselves.

Approximately 250 at

Wvndham

the

women

are gathered here in Philadelphia

Franklin Plaza Hotel for a three-day confer-

ence on recovery and self-esteem. In lectures and workshops presented by a roster of codependency/recovery experts, they'll

and other sub-

grapple with their addictions to love, food, stances,

and various forms of abuse;

they'll explore their inabil-

establish boundaries in relationships; they'll

ity to

prospect of true intimacy; they'll do

some

grief

ponder the

work and

ferret

And they'll buy books by leading resome of whom are here in Philadelphia, all of

out their inner children. covery experts,

whom

are published by Health

Florida-based recovery publisher In 1990,

HCI

Inc., a small,

and sponsor of this conference.

was sponsoring about seventeen or eighteen

regional conferences it

Communications,

and one national conference every

year;

was also venturing out internationally, with conferences in

Canada and tually

been aimed

Australia. Conferences have

all

vir-

Americans; but the consuming codependent public

appear to be mostly white, female, and middle this

at the

codependent public, which supposedly includes

general,

group o{ 250

The number

women

in Philadelphia,

I

class.

(Out of

two

blacks.)

see

of annual conferences and conference attendance

has declined since 1990, along with the economy, and the female market for codependency books there

men

is

peaked. But

among

searching for something called "authentic masculinity,"

and HCI has held an occasional

The

may have

an emerging market for codependencylike books

special conference for

Philadelphia conference, however,

is

billed as a

men.

women's

The Recovery

many ways

conference, and in

Boutique: Workshopping

it is

like

an

89

early exercise in con-

sciousness raising.

The

self-professed

codependent

their passivity, submissiveness,

women

here are protesting

and dependence on men, the

which they've been conditioned to put themselves last and endure abuse. It is as if they were discovering what is wrong

ways

in

with femininity for the

These

are

first

women whom

time. Consciousness Raising 101.

feminism bypassed.

But catching up with popular feminism twenty years

movement

they find a

later,

diluted by concern for the rights

and

men. Men's movement expert John Lee is a featured speaker in the plenary session, opening night. Focusing on

feelings of

men's fear of intimacy, he explains ized

how men have been

by a culture that does not allow them to

warned us that he won't say much presence as

He

much

titillates,

He

in bed. leave

as his insights that the

women

Lee

women

seduces; admitting that he loves

for the '90s, calls

is

sensitive,

is

his

only to

A carefully

John Lee seems

Alan Alda bonded with Clint Eastwood. flies away from women

himself a "flying boy": he

in perverse attempts to experience emotion: "Getting a

to leave

it

here crave.)

them, he projects such tentative unavailability.

man

(He has

but

with asides about what he says to his girlfriend

cultivated cowboy, as rugged as he a

cry.

that's new,

victim-

was one way

I

could get close to

my

woman

feelings ....

But

woman was ever expressed, I'd get up women has never been hard:

before the grief around that

me another one." Lining women love flying boys, Lee

"They chase them, try to catch them and fix them." The audience murmurs appreciatively, and Lee rambles on about himself, his abusive, codependent parents, and his flying boy syndrome in an occasionally confirms.

coherent collection of one-liners. "You can always spot a flying boy. He's tired of having to flap his wings,"

take notes.

He

is

revealing,

I

he

says,

and women

guess, men's anguished, secret lives.

90

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

much

"Flying boys hurt so

which is

a

anybody,"

tell

men's movement, Lee suggests. "Life

not worth living ungrieved." Flying boys are shirking their

grief is

why we need

is

inside they can't

work:

hard for flying boys to land because the pain

"It's

bad when they

so

Men

do."

have an especially hard time

dealing with pain because "society had a vested interest in

making sure we ing, angry, to

didn't feel our feelings.

be

how angry men

a killer.

Lee assures us,

and

I

was

Most women

.

he adds, but,

are,"

okay to be angry

"It's

.

.

raised to

be unfeel-

don't understand

in fact,

think we do.

I

anything you want to be angry

at

women

nod. Considering the number of

homicides, not to mention rapes, committed each year, that I

America

am

suffers

in denial.

"grief

from too

Unlike

way o(

"useful as a

much

anger, not too

and shame, anger

guilt

life" for

work" allows them

at,"

I

suspect

little;

but

apparently

is

recovering codependents. Doing

to

"own"

their anger,

which

is

part

o{ their entitlement as victims of abuse.

Having experienced, or

at least

Lee's audience of recovering

imagined, their

women might

own

would not

Lee's unqualified validation of anger. Surely they

agree that

it

demands on of their

own

is

"okay" to be angry

okay

for

emotions, which are always

my

about

our

too,

"If

anger

is

justified.

always okay for me,

You don't

why

wasn't

parents?" Like most codependency experts, Lee

wants to help us a sense of

your child for making

you. But in recovery, people seem to think only

hear anyone ask, it

at

abuse,

have been wary of

feel

own

good about ourselves, imbuing us with

righteousness.

he informs

But women's anger

is

Women

have a

lot to

be angry

us.

yesterday's news; Lee

is

more concerned

with the unexamined grievances of men. "As soon as a gets with a

woman he

man

some energy moving out of him," about codependency and men. Men

feels

he declares in a digression

become codependent because

"their energy was

needed by

their

The Recovery

Boutique: Workshopping

91

mothers," he explains, before catching himself and adding that

other family

mens

members

— siblings or grandparents — can drain and

they need to grieve about. as

you didn't know

if

men

energy too. Enervated, cut off from their feelings,

retreat into rationalism

men and

emotional

recovery kicks

that,"

Men Lee

women

are so

says, as

"Does that make sense

if

much

in their heads,

stereotypes of cerebral

were indisputably

the grief process

in,

what

"can't readily identify with

is

true. "Until

from the neck

up."

to you?" Lee keeps asking rhetorically,

wonder if sense is what many women here are after. "Men have to fly away because they have to deal with their pain." (Didn't he tell us that men fly away because they cant deal with their pain? Never mind.) "Men have to connect with their but

I

masculine side

.

.

.

most men haven't; they've

around and connect with their feminine killers

now

tried to skirt

side."

(The macho

that society trains seem momentarily forgotten;

in a

we

are

world of new, "sensitive" men.) But in "finding the

masculine

self,

men

also begin to explore their feminine side."

Does that make sense

to you?

Lee assures us that the answer

is

within ourselves: "Most

men have

to make that journey to find the lover that only lives Most women make that journey. The prince lives in the kingdom within .... For men, too, the princess is inside,

within.

though

she's often stone cold dead."

It is

unclear to

of this makes sense to anyone in the audience, but

me

if

any

many seem

enraptured. Trust in

God is

Lee's concluding advice: "Let go

and

let

God

men and women because we enough of ourselves and we haven't got enough

be in charge. We're looking for haven't got

of God." But, in the meantime, "Love for the self or the other

comes one day at a time .... Love a woman one day because you want to and then you get up the next day and see how you

feel."

92

I'M

It is

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

onlv

a little surprising to find

thirtv years later,

packaged

(John Lee reminds

preneur was

me

Hugh

the Playboy philosophy,

as recovery for

that the

Hefner.)

onlv conditionally, one day

first

men. Plus qa change.

great

mens movement

Lee's

endorsement of loving

Maybe

at a time,

entre-

difficult to reconcile

is

with

the recovery movement's heavily promoted ethos o( sharing

and caring and unconditional

love,

but this

is

not a movement

demands, or even recognizes, consistency. Codependency

that

experts borrow haphazardly from popular culture, psychology,

and

religion.

Catch them

in a contradiction,

and they accuse

you oi thinking with your head and not your heart. ideological confusion

It

is

a virtue,

codependency experts

be sanctified by their teachings about gender

John

Lee's veiled misogyny, there are

many

roles.

soft,

will

Along with

popular femi-

messages about women's need to assert themselves and

nist

more than Keynote speaker Yvonne Kaye pep talk about empowerment,

achieve independence, saying no to abuse and being caretakers tor their families.

opens the conference with

a

"putting the focus on yourself It

a tamiliar

is

.

.

.

learning to love yourself."

message, dating back to the beginning of the

recovery movement; the process oi recovering from codepen-

dency has always been Lately, however,

billed as a quest for self-love.

codependency experts have been talking

about the value of nurturing others

as well.

Always attuned

— today many feminists laud women for sharmore than men — the codependency experts

to cultural trends

ing

and caring

now

assure us that they never

meant

to suggest that

women

should think only of themselves. Self-centeredness (the word, not the phenomenon)

is

associated with feminism,

which

is

the target of considerable hostility here, despite the uneasiness

with traditional notions of femininity. While

about having been taught to be feminism

for

selfless

encouraging them to be

women

complain

domestics, they attack selfish careerists.

The Recovery Jane Middelton-Moz,

feminism

as

much

Boutique: Workshopping

popular speaker and author, blames

a

as femininity for what's

today: they're isolated

93

wrong with women

from each other, she

says,

because femi-

nism taught them to compete. Middelton-Moz chronicles her

own

disillusionment with both traditional feminine roles and

feminism.

Unhappy with

women were

the notion that

defined

completely by their families, not wanting to become her mother,

"an extremely frustrated woman," she found

new mother became

feminism, until "the

mother" she had questioned. assailed

"new mother"

neurotically, seeking a

Now, according

to

to

list

list

are

"women-must

the old feminine

Women must be submissive and ladylike,

they must

Then

A woman must

the feminist "women-must messages."

have a high-powered

un-

the old culture

keep house and never say no, the audience responds. they

is

women

new one of feminism.

She asks the audience messages."

women

"new mother,"

Middelton-Moz,

by conflicting "do's and don'ts" from

of femininity and the

in

like the critical old

behind. Her assumption that most

left

embraced feminism

a

must always use her head and

career, she

never her heart, she must be equal to her man.

Perhaps the

women

here are as threatened by the prospect

of equality as they are frustrated by inequality. But whether

or not they fear feminism, they misconceive

it.

They

what has become a prevailing view of feminism, not rights

movement,

movement

a

row campaign to promote ing the 1980s, as executives

as well as for little

fixtures

—

doctors, lawyers,

as a nar-

on TV, feminism became

Women

must make

Dur-

and hard-driving

an obligatory three-piece

men.

but

women in corporate hierarchies.

women

became

with yuppieism

for social justice,

share

as a civil

identified

suit for

lots of

compassion, and do no nurturance; that

women

money, show is

feminism's

primary message, according to Middelton-Moz and her audience.

Everyone

gets

mad

at

me

for suggesting that feminism

^4 is

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

"women-may" and not a "women-must" movement. calls me "madam.") The women here don't

a

(Middelton-Moz ciate

feminism with choice; thev view

it

as another,

harder

set of strictures.

This

about

codependency conference gets. Middelton-Mo: concludes be announcing that the biggest problem being women today is "burnout!" If it is striking to is

as political as a

lane

hear

women

talk

about what

is

wrong with femininity without

talking about empirical realities such

ing to see the ease with

the world. There talk

lis

employment discrimina-

day care, or domestic violence,

tion, the dearth ot

is

no

about themselves

it

is

frighten-

which people wall themselves up from social or political context here; as

thev were

it

people

somehow disconnected

from society and the nation. Once again, irritate Middelton-Mo: and her audience when suggest that women should gaze outward, that burnout may I

I

not be our greatest problem after erty, pollution, sexual

and

all.

What about AIDS,

racial violence,

pov-

not to mention world

peace and a few other usual suspects? "You have to work on

work on the world," Working on both simultaneously

yourself before you can

several

quickly retort.

is

women

not an appar-

ent option.

That we ourselves

will

reform our dysfunctional society by reforming

and our

families

is,

line.

in the

world today

is

soul-murder," which does sound a bit

problematic than burnout. experts,

will

it

movement's

According to John Bradshaw, "the basic problem

party

our

in fact, the recovery

(If

there

is

be a battle of hyperbole.) Bradshaw suggests that

social crises reflect the fact that adult children are

the world

Recovery

—

more

ever a battle of the

running

"our schools, our churches, our government."

will save us as a society,

off totalitarianism and other

he suggests, somehow staving

evils.

Some

nineteenth-century

evangelists professed a similar belief that social reform

would

The Recovery

Boutique: Workshopping

be the inevitable result of individual conversions. ing doctrine, since in the world.

with you.

it

saves

You have only

is

an appeal-

you the trouble of ever taking action to recover

The primary moral

City of Love,

It is

and the world

recovers

imperative here in Philadelphia,

learning to love yourself.

Loving yourself will stop you from losing yourself in ships, love addiction expert Joy Miller

on

95

relation-

confirms in a workshop

addictive relationships. "Loss of self in a relationship

is

"an issue that talks about our basic core," she says tautologically

but with an

air

of genuine concern.

One woman

in the audi-

ence suggests that "victimizing" relationships are mostly "core"

women, adding that men would never tolerate the abuse they inflict on women. But the audience generally disagrees. "She can't speak for men," someone calls out, with considerable support. Again, no one offers a factual context; no one mentions that battered spouses and adult victims of other sex crimes are usually women. Miller only points out that "emotional, sexual, and physical abuse are all rape of the soul," and women nod. It is an article of faith here that all suffering is relative; no one says she'd rather be raped metaissues for

phorically than in fact.

The

crimes in codependency are often metaphoric,

The

like "soul-

make the self inviolate. Joy Miller wants to help us set "boundaries" and get in touch with our rights. She asks us to divide into groups and devise lists of ten basic murder."

goal

is

to

relationship rights; people happily comply. After ten or fifteen

minutes of conferencing, someone from each group steps up to the

mike and reads us our

to be whatever

I

rights.

They

want, to be myself and get

right to separate, to

choose

my

include: the right

my

needs met; the

actions; the right not to be hit;

the right not to have to explain myself; the right to space; the right to

change

the right to follow

my

my mind,

bliss.

to use

my own

my brain and grow;

96

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

Miller

comments on none of these rights; she only gestures them all. I wonder about a few of them.

or voices approval of

The

right not to explain yourself?

make

yourself clear?

one relationship?

The

What

right to get

if

wonder how anyone

I

exercising

rights could ever be in a relationship at

women

are sobbing

Miller I

is

an

and hugging and

effective facilitator

think, in her efforts to

empower

these

all

But around

me

feeling affirmed.

us. In

another, smaller work-

to failures of self-love), Miller

our power." She asks us about our

mations and shares her own:

am

all.

— perky, effusive, and earnest,

shop on love addictions (attributed offers to help us "claim

you don't always

your needs met, in

all

"I

am enough.

I

am

affir-

whole.

I

now."

She instructs us to think o{ an affirmation, close our eyes, and repeat it ten times to ourselves. Then she suggests that

we each

find a partner

can repeat

women

it

tell

her our affirmation so that she

"You are

and Miller

lovable, wonderful, enough,"

always get excited closer to recovery.

She wants us

seem

minutes for

it,

to like filling

noting some strong emotion here. I

see people cry.

Cherish each

to share

One woman

leaves five or ten

'Tm when

with comments:

cise.

and

us.

are telling each other, ten times. People

this exercise, in

back to

Each

I

tear brings us

tear."

our feelings about the affirmation exer-

says she couldn't "receive." Hearing her

affir-

mation from her partner didn't mean much because "she doesn't

know

me." Miller exclaims that this

is

a typical

codepen-

dent response, indicative of low self-esteem, an inability to believe a

someone

symptom.

I

else

can find you lovable. Everything here

can't help suggesting that

rational not to believe a total stranger

maybe

it

who

may be

is

perfectly

says she loves you;

resistance to flattery reflects high self-esteem. Later,

Miller thanks

me

for sharing.

The Recovery

Boutique: Workshopping

97

She concludes the workshop by having people write letters to

themselves,

or, rather, to their

inner children. After

ten minutes or so of silent writing, people share their reading

them out loud

letters to their

to the group.

inner kids,

like this:

your wide-eyed innocence.

Or

"Sweetheart,

I

am

I

Women

letters,

are crying, reading

"Dear Honeybunch,

have to get to know you

very happy that

I

love

I

love

better."

have begun to know

me for such a long time. I'm looking forward to your teaching me how to play." A few use the language of romance novels: "Your passion sets me on fire," you. You have been lost to

they say to themselves. Miller

is

moved. "There

a lot of inner children

almost everyone.

is

a lot of

coming out

hope

in here.

There

today," she confirms,

are

hugging

One woman who wanders in during the me and says, "This was good,

reading of the letters turns to wasn't it?"

Workshops like this women's reasons

clarify

for attending, at considerable cost.

ference registration fees are about $200; travel

tions can cost

and Con-

are at the heart of the conference

and accommoda-

hundreds more, and once they

arrive,

women

bombarded with HCI books as well as tapes of the lectures and workshops they've paid to attend but are forbidden to tape are

themselves.

Maybe most

of the

women

here don't

mind being taped

commercial purposes, and maybe they don't attend conferences or buy books and tapes

many no doubt feel enriched or rience.

A conference

is

at least

modestly middle-class sumers.

supported by the expe-

an expensive investment

not appear to be an upscale crowd

for

They only by choice, and feel exploited.

for

what does

— most of the women seem

— but they appear to be satisfied con-

Maybe there's nothing unethical about HCI conducting manner the market will bear. It's just that the

business in any

98

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

women

here seem so needy and the conference organizers are

so slick. Still,

many women

suspect that for

I

ference

is

weekend

a little like a

They come for the books signed, and to hug

experience of being here, to get their recovery

movement

doubt that many

about codependencv.

women

attend to learn anything

asked a

number

I

anything new, and no one that

it

other. Reciting affirma-

massaged.

tions, they get I

and each

celebrities

weekend recovery con-

a

at a spa.

of

women

said, "Yes." Several

if

added, however,

was "affirming" to hear experts say in person what they

write in their books. Virtually

pendencv presented here available in

books or on

is

the information about code-

all

and much more cheaply

readily

tapes, but information

generally

is

regarded as "too academic" anyway, and there's not

apparent interest in

"What

want

I

"1

it.

don't do facts," John Lee

to share with

you

is

Instead, he shares stories about his

not a whole

life.

lot

of

at least

"One of the most major things happening in this today is women committing crimes," he claims, apropos

of nothing much, and, as usual,

Since there

is

so

little

any hard information

women

during the

more

like

first

at all,

evening of four one-hour

ing the line between love I

nor

and

desire

is

especially clear

lectures,

tells

us

we

and looking

which

are

are "walk-

for love in-

expect her to break into song.) Being here

being at a floor

show

or in the audience of a

or a televangelist revival.

recovery circuit, are

given their talks

here,

the content of each presentation

performances. (Marilyn Volker

between," and

audience nod.

in the

new information presented

often the personality of the presenter. This

like

facts."

Either you "feel" what

"fact":

country

is

much

tells us.

he means, "or you don't," he shrugs. But he does offer

one

new

they heard

all

many

The

speakers, celebrities

quite slick,

and

it's

is

TV talk show on the

clear that they've

times: they each speak fluently for

an

The Recovery hour without

notes.

99

Boutique: Workshopping

The audience

is

starry-eyed,

nodding and

murmuring throughout. In nearly three days oi lectures

person

I

and workshops,

hear question or challenge an expert.

I

I

am

the only

always take

them by surprise, and the audience is always irritated with me. So while the experts routinely disclaim expertise (they often seem

say they are experts only about themselves), they their authority never to

The

is.

be questioned, and

experts hold forth, for a

it

and the audience

fee,

to expect

virtually never receives,

at a cost.

Yet its

one oi the

selling points of the recovery

movement

aggressively egalitarian posture; in keeping with the

tradition

from which

it

grew, this

is

is

AA

supposed to be a leaderless

movement of equals. There is no filhrer — no Werner Erhard, no Reverend Moon, no L. Ron Hubbard. Some experts, like John Bradshaw, are better known and more widely read than others, but the recovery movement is not centered around a single expert any more than Hollywood revolves around a single star.

Experts are required, in ing us at least a

little

fact, to identify

about their

and some oi the expert confessions as the heartfelt cries of the

in Philadelphia,

with the group,

own codependent

tell-

disorders,

are as intimate in subject

rank and

file.

On

the

first

night

Marilyn Volker reveals to an audience o{ 250

women

that her first marriage was not consummated on her wedding night: she had vaginismus and her husband couldn't get

it

up.

It's

clear that she

other strangers,

many

has shared this story with

times from

many

stages.

I

many

don't imagine

that she's talking to me, but her revelation seems designed to

make me feel that I can talk to her. Confessions are routinely used to make the experts seem like common folk, which probably boosts sales, especially for women. One of the most popular women' experts, Melody Beattie, is also one of the most

100

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

approachable

(in print, at least;

I

haven't seen her perform),

because her expertise comes almost entirely from her personal

On

experience with addiction.

movement may be the vives

some

prospect of celebrity.

codependency and can use

to write B best selling

But the recovery movement If

Anyone who

sur-

word processor can hope

a

the flock. Behind their

is

about as truly egalitarian as

everyone

support group, the shepherds

women

this

book.

any established church.

leading

promise of

level the

silks,

still

is

equal before

have more authority than

makeup, and microphones, the

women consumers

look

like

be touched by John Lee. Lee, subject o( so tells

although he

is

me

to.

If

says,

feminine

that he doesn't pretend to be an expert,

tells his

He

points

audiences that they are free to discard

but he prospers from their willingness not

people regard him as an expert, "that's their problem,"

he declares, and,

There

who

they'd love to

much

introduced with a string of credentials.

out that he always

anything he

or a

experts in Philadelphia often seem untouchable,

while some oi the

adoration,

God

are,

I

suppose, his reward.

however,

at least a

few experts in the audience

have paid their way here. Professionals get continuing

education credits (CEUs) for attending these conferences, which is

a little like getting

CEUs

for

watching "Oprah."

Of course,

some may simply register and go home. I met one man from New York who showed up briefly for the first day and the last, without missing much. If this is how therapists are being trained, clients are in more trouble than they know.

6 Stop Making Sense:

New Age on the no longer novel to me," other-world-weary Shirley MacLaine confides, in It's All in the Playing, after hanging up on Lazaris. No wonder. Lazaris, an entity helping Shirley with her miniseries (he's channeled through a San Francisco trance medium) has no novel advice, no new wisdom to offer. Talking about the power of unconscious fears and the way you "Talking to a disembodied spiritual entity, even

telephone, was

"create your

own

reality,"

he speaks the pedestrian language

show therapist. days seem a bit more arcane,

of an ordinary, embodied, talk

Most

spirits these

1

if

not incom-

prehensible; they express themselves best nonverbally. Their

provenance, after

all,

as

"place where there are

my

friend Barbara reminds me,

no words"

where Barbara meditates, makes work.

"No one

—

films,

rational, nonlinear

and does her inner

ways of knowing, she

are "levels of beingness" that at

a

child

here reads anymore," this former English major

assures me, "except for a few professors."

Still,

is

a place like California,

There

are better,

non-

suggests, because there

cannot be captured in words.

the portals of a New Age, undeterred by the limitations

of our linear, left-brain language, self-actualizers for

whom there

101

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

102

I'M

are

no words

persist in writing

They

books.

share their transfor-

mative experiences, predict paradigmatic consciousness shifts and

new ity,

sense modalities, describe processes of spiritual synchronic-

empowerment

prescribe personal

road maps for readers on their

own

affirmations,

and devise

personal odysseys toward

the light, the harmonious inner space of self-actualized energy.

You know what they mean.

mand

precision

and

specificity

New Age

is

an

To de-

attitude.

meaning)

call

paradigms or transpersonal

in a discussion of consciousness

energv vibrations

is

(what some would

to reveal yourself as only "half-minded,"

a sorrv left-brained creature

trapped in rationalism, foolishly

focused on the external world.

It is

to absent yourself

from the

human evolution and to New Age is aggressively anti-

postbiological, postverbal phase o(

dwell spiritually in nonlivingness.

proudly nonrational.

intellectual,

sense.

You don't read

perience or process

a

be meaningful.

not supposed to make

spiritual odysseys;

you

ex-

it.

Yet the polysyllabic jargon to

It's

book about

A

is

deceptive;

it

sounds

as

if it

ought

paradigmatic consciousness shift sounds

important, even profound. Paradigm has long been a favorite

word of academics, who discourse about such things as doctrinal paradigms, by which I think they sort of mean ideas, important

ideas.

More

recently, paradigm has

been discovered

by public policy experts seeking new empowerment paradigms,

and

it

become

has even

of Arkansas

is

a

a sobriquet:

"paradigm

liberal,"

Governor

Bill

Clinton

according to political col-

umnist Joe Klein. Paradigm has also entered the lexicon of howto-succeed authors: In his best-selling The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,

Stephen Covey rhapsodizes about the "power

of a paradigm" and encourages readers to shifts" (the

o{

power of

quantum

a

change"). 2

paradigm

shift

is

make "paradigm

"the essential power

Stop So, what,

if

A paradigm

is

notes, the

Making

Sense:

New

Age

103

anything, does this versatile word paradigm mean?

fundamental concept or model, but, as

a

word can

signify a big, "overall"

Webster's

concept that explains

which makes it a perfect New Age awakenings and consciousness shifts, like

a set of data or processes,

—

word

spiritual

recovery, are always processes, never events.

The

phrase "paradigmatic consciousness shift"

who

hasn't yet

It

a shift from it

then, a

little

stops to think, a reader

had her consciousness

shifted so that she's able

to read nonrationally.

awaits her?

is,

who

redundant, but only to a reader

What

is

the consciousness shift that

seems to be a cerebral movement toward the

left-

which makes

to right-brain sense modalities,

a paradigm that

right,

cannot be comprehended by a stubborn,

left-brain analysis like this.

Nor can I be

sure about spiritual synchronicity, but

ably what people

mean when

it is

prob-

they talk about being "in sync,"

which sounds appealing. Since synchronicity means everything happening to (I

at once, spiritual synchronicity

do with

spiritual oneness, a

am you and you

synchronicity

is

are

must have something

New Age

me and we

are

or paradigm.

ideal,

one

together.) Spiritual

probably a transformative experience, or a

paradigmatic change. Transformative

is

another word

New Age

shares with the academy. (Jargon seems to be the place where right ple,

and

left

brains meet.) Feminist legal scholars, for exam-

construct transformative jurisprudential analyses (after

they've deconstructed traditional legal theory), while

New Age

feminists visualize transformative cognitive reconstructions of

the masculine mode.

Oh, Goddess. People from the

place of

pretty generalities that are supposed to

about wisdom,

serenity,

and

spiritual

no words speak

mean

everything

wholeness

in

—

— instead of

nothing. They've devised a language of "inclusivity," having

104

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

on the way

discovered

when

words only

to the marketplace that

limit

they specify.

New Age writers,

however, are carrying on a venerable

tradi-

making sense. Theirs is hardly the first movement on language that is inimical to reason. Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health, the bible o( Christian Science, is sound and fury or, as Mark Twain observed, a collection of "showy tion o( not

built

incoherencies":

When

you read

it

you seem to be listening

and oracular speech delivered

whose

spirit

you

in

an

to a lively

unknown

but not the particulars

get

listening to a vigorous instrument

which

is

hut which, to persons not

.

.

and

you seem to be

.

making

a noise

members

it

thinks

is

only the martial tooting o( a trombone, and merely

is

a tune,

aggressive

tongue, a speech

which

of the band, stirs

the soul

3

through noise, but does not convey

a

But, like most popular religious

and personal development

authors,

Eddy knew how

meaning.

to create the appearance of

meaning,

Twain conceded: Whenever she

notices that she

is

chortling along without saying

anything, she pulls up with a sudden

"God is all over us," or some moment it seems to light

other sounding irrelevancy, and for the

up the whole she goes

district;

then, before you can recover from the shock,

and meaninglessly along

flittingly pleasantly

you hurry hopefully thing this time ....

after her,

again,

and

thinking you are going to get some-

Whenever she

discovers that she

is

getting pretty

disconnected, she couples up with an ostentatious "But," which

has nothing to do with anything that went before or

is

to

come

after, then she hitches up some empties to the train — unrelated verses from the Bible, usually — and steams out of sight and leaves

you wondering how she did that clever thing. 4 Politicians

and

their ghostwriters could learn

Eddy, or perhaps they already have.

Political

much from

people instinctively

Making

Stop recognize the value of

feel

language

rection that has long

to be self-actualized.

105

a refuge for scoundrels,

resist

less

thousand points o{

a

language of euphemism and indi-

like fascism

who

times even voters seem

good about

a

been

Orwell observed. Words

abused by politicians

is

New Age

meaningless phrases: everyone who's

lofty,

dark can

afraid of the

light. Political

Sense:

and democracy

George

are regularly

defining their terms. But some-

who

starry-eyed than people

Conversant

in

New Age jargon,

long

they talk

about channeling their energy systems, finding their focal awareness points, and engaging in processes of spiritual psychosynthesis with such conviction. Perhaps they

mean.

A

term

like "creative

everything you see in

An

it is

all-inclusive jargon

perative in the

New Age

We Are

the Walrus.

is

beingness"

a

know what

they

Rorschach

test:

true.

a

moral

as well as

because truth

is

commercial im-

all-inclusive.

(I

Am

the World.) Ways to the truth vary, how-

people are at varying stages of spiritual evolution.

ever, since

Under the umbrella of a vaguely

New Age

is

articulated ideal of wholeness,

offers a pluralistic collection of

you achieve

techniques to help

it.

many

on

jargon, as

there are spiritual paths as there are shelves in a

New Age

There are

as

techniques, and variations

bookstore. Between angel directories loaf,

many

spirits speak.

Some

and

recipes for tofu meat-

promise to help you harness

your power to heal and reclaim the primordial child within, bit too

much

Jung. Switching channels, others offer access to new,

inter-

sounding

just like twelve steppers

who've read a

planetary dimensions of illumined selfhood, sounding more like fans at a

Star Trek convention.

The New Age

is

an age oi choices. You can seek your truth

or inner space in a relatively conventional array of Western

and Eastern

religious literature, in psychology, recovery,

holistic health

and

books, the always intriguing "esoterica," or in

106

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

astrology, divinations,

and revealed

teachings.

If

you're anxious

How

to transcend the material

world quickly, read

Chit'of-Body Experience

Thirty Days (by the author of Inner

Sex

in

Thirty Days).

you can use your

If

in

your path in

Hill suggested over fifty years

Do What seller,

this life

Have an

a material one,

ago in Think and

Money

You Love, The

is

wealth

spiritual energies to create

to

(as

Napoleon

Grow

Rich).

one recent

best-

described by the guy at the bookstore as "yuppie

New

Age," proclaims.

Or you

Will Follow,

can study The Seven Habits of Highly

Effective People.

Actually The Seven Habits might not appear in every

Age bookstore, and us of his belief in

its

"God, the

protest his inclusion in

happy

to

author, Stephen Covey,

New

disown him. The

chal: witches, goddesses,

creator

and Father of us

New

assures

all"

might

New Age gurus might be New Age is not patriar-

Age.

spirit

who

of the

buddhas, angels, and

spiritual entities

of no discernible gender happily cohabit the interstellar space that

is

New

Age. But the best-selling Seven Habits of Highly

New Age; as the book Covey has an ear for grandly meaningless, vaguely spiritual phrases: "The being/seeing change is an upward process — being changing seeing, which in turn changes being, and so forth," he writes, with the air of someone imparting information. 5 By teaching us the Seven Habits, he will help us "break through to new levels of personal and interpersonal effectiveness as we break with old paradigms that may have been a source of pseudo-security." And what are the Effective People

glows with the aura of

jacket says,

"holistic."

it is

Seven Habits? In

harmony with the

natural laws of growth, they provide an incre-

mental, sequential, highly integrated approach to the development of personal

and interpersonal

effectiveness.

basis of a person's character, creating

.

.

.

They become the

an empowering center of

Stop

maps from which an

correct

Making

Sense:

New Age

107

individual can effectively solve prob-

and continually learn and

lems, maximize opportunities,

integrate

other principles in an upward spiral of growth. 6

I

doubt that many readers know what

but they with

know how

it

makes them

feel.

this means (I don't), Covey seduces them

the right buzzwords: harmony, integrate, interpersonal,

all

maximize, effectiveness, empowering (eventually he gets around to synergy). His peroration, the

phrase he repeats often), corkscrew.

like a

inspiringly;

Not

is

"upward

uplifting,

Covey has

if

spiral of

growth"

you don't mind

(a

feeling

nothing

a useful talent for saying

he should write commencement speeches.

that his talents are wasted.

An

M.B.A. and chairman

of something called the Institute of Principle Centered Leadership,

Covey seems

book may

spiral

to

be a sort of management consultant. His.

your

spirits

upward, but

it

is

grounded

in

pragmatic concerns about personal and organizational productivity.

The Seven Habits

themselves, like most self-help prin-

paradigms, and revelations, are essentially a series of

ciples,

maxims you already know: take initiative, have a goal, set priorities. Covey offers advice about such earthly matters as time management, human resource management, organizational PC (production capabilities, not political correctness); he talks

about delegating responsibility and a "high leverage activity."

People

is

corporate

New

calls "effective

delegating"

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective No wonder we've lost our com-

Age.

petitive edge.

That line

is

spirits

can

spiral

upward and remain

a singular premise of

"selling

is

American

tied to the

capitalism. In

bottom

America

a form o{ ecstasy," financial writer Michael Lewis

has remarked.

"God and money have

Today's middle managers

who came

never been ...

far apart." 7

o{ age in the 1960s

may

be especially susceptible to spiritualized business books, one

108

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

New Age

publisher speculates hopefully, because of their

"youthful infatuation with Eastern philosophy." (Two of the best-selling business

books of recent years were ancient Chinese

The Teh Ching and The Art of War.) Mainstream pubare also making money on modern American treatises

classics:

lishers

on the

spiritual side of business. According to one Doubleday (who has probably read too many of her books), "Business is becoming more and more anthropomorphic. The New Age did speak o( a worship o( people, not structures, and so we are seeing authors moving away from an idea of business as a mechanism that exists outside the self." 8

editor

There religion

however, nothing

is,

new

in this

view of business as a

and form of personal development.

of the Horatio Alger myth.

Money

It

was at the center

has long satisfied spiritual

and psychic needs, while established religions, as well as those on the margins, have readily accommodated themselves to the demands of a commercial culture, lending mercantilism some moral authority: nineteenth-century Protestantism effectively sanctified the is

growing

free enterprise system.

especially adaptable to business, given

its

New Age

religion

doctrine of inclusiv-

more easily defined by what it is not — traditional, patriarchal monotheism — than by what it is — practically ity: it is

everything

else,

from spiritualism to the "science" of positive

thinking.

If

you want

to experience or "process"

New

Age's heady com-

bination of pseudoscience, religion, and money, or two of The Forum, the

visit a session

new incarnation of est. I'm not sugForum seminars are

gesting that you pay for the privilege.

expensive

—

$625 for four days and one evening's worth of

wisdom, but you can are invited

by

a

visit a

couple of sessions for

free

if

you

paying participant. Participants are encouraged

Stop to introduce friends

and

Making

relatives to

Sense:

New Age

The Forum:

109

every guest

a potential recruit.

is

The Forum is essentially the philosophy You are totally responsible for all your sucand failures. You have total control of your life. Or, as

The philosophy of

est:

cesses

No

of

excuses.

Shirley MacLaine's spiritual entity, Lazaris, reminds her, you are your

own

consists of

reality.

The Forum's $625

introductory program

two weekends and one weeknight of pep

talks

by

and mild browbeating of participants who testify and complain about their lives. (Forum seminars are much less abusive than est training sessions were, and everyone has free access to bathrooms.) There are no cross conversations the program leader

between participants; you interact

who trol

directly only with the leader,

controls the seminars totally, as you are supposed to con-

your

own

life.

This program of testimony and exhortation

is

familiar

is why people pay so much money The Forum's promotional literature, however,

enough; the only mystery to partake in

it.

offers a vague, entirely abstract description of itself that

a

makes

hackneyed program seem grand and arcane: The Forum provides a breakthrough to a new dimension of possibility. .. The Forum is a powerful, practical inquiry into the issues .

that determine our personal effectiveness in

all

facets of

our

lives.

This inquiry demands the courage of adventure .... The break-

through available in The Forum

is

produced by examining our most

cherished assumptions, and by stepping boldly beyond them.

It's

a breakthrough that leads to decisive, effective action that shapes a future, advances intentions, achieves our goals,

and contributes

powerfully to families, communities, and to the world

This

is

we

share. 9

the kind of "inspirational," content-free language

expect to find in a promotional brochure;

it's

like a

commercial that commands you to "master the

we

MasterCard

possibilities."

1

10

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

Writing

like this

is

computers can do

easy; even

only master the vocabulary decisive, adventure, share,

—

it.

You need

power, practical, breakthrough,

community.

In

The Forum,

people

At the session I attend, the leader, a talking Ken doll, proclaims that The Forum will teach us "to access new dimensions of being." His language is a fluent hybrid of computerese (he is always accessing and interfacing), bureaucratese (his syntax is quite contorted), and New Age psychobabble. talk like this too.

"One is

that

o( the major distinctions of The

Forum

that

we impact

we focus on living, not knowing," he declares. But despite knowing, The Forum is concerned with learn-

this disdain for

ing, offering a special learning

learning Its

goal

is

what we

call

method of

technique: "This

distinguishing," the leader explains.

"learning to function by insight, instead of building

is

information." (Or, as codependency experts say, think with your

heart and not your head.) There are "different fields of study,"

he informs is

living

—

us:

"The

how

field in

which we study in The Forum — how to manage the expe-

to live effectively

The Forum accesses is a privilege. new dimension of yourself as a human being. It's what you don't know and don't know that you don't know." Oh, do not ask what is it. Let us go and make our visit. rience of being alive. Life

.

.

.

a

There I

are

about 250 to 300 people participating

attend (representing, according to

as $187,000 to

The Forum).* We

•I'm figuring 300 people at $625 a head.

my

in the session

calculations, as

much

are seated in rows, lecture style;

It is

worth noting that these $625 introduc-

tory programs are apparently conducted regularly throughout the nation: in

my

region,

according to the leader of our session, there were three or four programs offered during about a two-month period. In addition,

Course

for $1,300 (you

for children

can review

and teens and

as transformation,

a long

this six-day list

The Forum

offers a

Six-Day Advanced

course for a mere $750).

It

offers courses

of courses or seminars in selected topics, such

communication, and empowerment. This appears

million-dollar business that produces nothing but rhetoric.

to

be

a multi-

Making

Stop

the leader

is

miked.

He

Sense:

New Age

111

introduces the session by telling us about

the wonderful breakthroughs people have achieved through

The Forum's unique, dynamic program and

covery,

in self-knowledge, dis-

effectiveness that holds the key to authentically

experiencing

life.

He

is

primarily addressing the invited guests,

whom he hopes to recruit. Through The Forum we will explore our individuality, learn fectively at

how

communicate, and

to activate vital relationships, fully

ways of being able to contribute.

called peace of

"We look phenomenon

experience being.

We look

at the

mind. As you hear people sharing,

people talk about

That, of course,

how is

you'll hear

has impacted their way of

this

ef-

a cue for people to share,

life."

and some

do.

A series of people stand up, each to considerable applause, and testify.

in

my

"The Forum opened up relationships.

It

a

new

my

changed

place for

me

to start

consciousness about

from

how

1

young man says. "It makes the way you are within yourself better." (In one or two Forum sessions, you can learn to speak like this too.) The leader comments on each piece of testimony; or rather, he repeats his comments about accessing new dimensions, learning to live effectively and by instinct: "What you know has nothing to do with the way you live. From a two-dimensional reality you will never get a sphere. The Forum brings an added dimension to what you have perceived other people," a

— dimension possibility!" In forty-five minutes or so — lose track — the leader hardly

in your

life

right

now.

We

call this I

ever actually says anything. But borrowing

some language from

technology, he borrows the appearance of precision, and he tirelessly repeats

key words and phrases

— effectiveness,

new

dimensions of being, accessing, systems, authentic, commitment, in the

totality.

room

there changed

"Coming

to

The

effect

gazing at

is

a

little

him seem

my life," one man

The Forum

gave

hypnotic, and most people

impressed. "That

testifies,

me

man

over

pointing to the leader.

love, happiness,

and the

112

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

I owe Forum

possibility for a relationship. testifies

that a few days o{

eight years o(

The

how

changes so quickly. willing to

who it

I

leader explains It

by saying they

guy

my

sessions

my

related to

life."

offers "positive

effects these

it

all,"

miraculous

reinforcement to people

to the experience."

The only

from The Forum are "people

know

A woman

"changed twenty-

father."

how The Forum

open themselves

will fail to benefit

this

he adds,

in case

people

who dismiss

we were

think-

ing o( not signing up.

After an hour or so of testimony and harangues by the leader,

the guests are

up

split

interested in joining

that

would simply

into

two groups

The Forum

like to

—

one group of people

themselves, another (my) group

hear more "information" about

Forum

programs. I

join about thirty people in a small room,

apprentice leaders assure us that "discover

and unleash

nar?

little

What do you

is

the place to

potential, to tap into yourself, getting

knowledge or experience." Several times the program a

where two female

The Forum

more

concretely.

I

ask

them

to describe

"What happens

in a semi-

actually do?" Several times they respond,

"The Forum experience cannot be described. It can only be experienced." They remind me that "The Forum results go beyond the moment of insight, and life is too important for you to be less than you can be. The Forum provides opportunities for meeting demands." Then we watch a promotional video consisting of testimony by high achievers: an Olympic athlete, actor Raul Julia, and a handsome, wealthy businessman living with his handsome family in the Swiss Alps all tell us that

The Forum changed

their lives

and made them what they

are today.

After this exchange of information, the larger group reunites for a concluding, plenary session.

the leader,

who

is

making

We are back in the room with "When I'm around

his final pitch.

Stop

people

who

are

More people

man

committed,

"There

testify:

Another pays

says.

Making

it's is

Sense:

New Age

113

inspiring to me," he confides.

a final yes after every no,"

tribute to the leader: "I feel

And

I

one

got a

what I see." The leader commitment to fulfilling the potential of what life can be on the planet, fulfilling what you are committed to. What gets me up in the morning is sharing what you share." Finally the leader pays tribute to The Forum: "Martin Luther King and John Kennedy made it happen." The Forum, "this technology," can make it happen too. This technology? The Forum is carefully packaged as a science, not an art. In a high-tech age in which computers are piece o( a mirror from you.

pays tribute to the group:

literally child's play,

a

renewed

or tries its

an

to, in

you

a

science enjoys considerable cachet, despite

interest in spirituality.

market.

like

I

"I see in

New Age

appropriates science,

effort to bolster its credibility

and expand

New Age embraces pop neuroscience —

the science

of speculations about the creative ("feminine") right side of the

brain and the analytic ("masculine")

left side,

the science of

brain wave machines that offer push-button Nirvana. Having trouble meditating, peaking, or exploring the furthest reaches

human

of

consciousness?

At an

altered-mind-states gym, in

Cambridge or L.A., you can hook yourself up 111

a

or an

to

an Inner Quest

MC Dreamachine. The Dreamachine may look like 2

walkman, but

it is

really a "training device for

people to expe-

rience the multidimensionality of their brain waves ....

[It]

helps you get there effortlessly without the hassle of mantras

or lotus positions." 10

The blend

of spiritualism

and pseudoscience that you

find

an altered-mind-states gym is familiar, dating back at least one hundred years to mind cure and Christian Science. It is in

a powerful

Vincent science,

and

Peale,

profitable blend, as

and Napoleon

Mary Baker Eddy, Norman

Hill demonstrated. Packaged as

any wishes, speculations, and the wackiest "systems"

1

14

I'M

for success

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL and salvation

are transformed,

through the alchemy

o( the marketplace, into established, objective truths.

The

truths

validity.

may make no

sense, but that only proves their

"Embrace the mystery,"

New Age

enthusiasts would

saw You're not supposed to analyze the truth or process logically; in the

tion.

New

Age, you're not required to pay atten-

Even the words of best-selling authors only

realities.

They

signify outer

outline the techniques that lead you to a

actualized perceptual space of inner silence, just as brain

machines take you to

where your brain are

is

it

a place

self-

wave

of hemispheric synchronization,

in a state of

oneness and,

at last, there

no words.

That

a

disdain for rationalism can comfortably coexist with

one of the wonders of personal development in America. It is also one of the benefits of irrationalism; experts on spirituality and selfhood revel in their an attraction

to science

inconsistencies. But

if

the appropriation of science by self-styled

spiritual leaders reflects it

is

some underlying

does make sense commercially; that

By laying claim

to science,

New Age

lay claim to a share of the science

avoiding the term

New

books, lisher,

like

it

makes money.

entrepreneurs hope to

market. Publishers are

Age, Publishers Weekly recently reported,

and seeking new, more

"New

ideological confusion, is,

credible, "scientific" labels for their

Paradigms." Bantam, a leading

has launched a

New

New Age

A

the market that has been buying Stephen Hawking's History of is

Time and James Glieck's Chaos

also limiting

readers

who

its

use oi the

associate

in droves."

New Age label because

New Age

11

Bantam

with crystals, channeling, and is

not the books or the motto of Bantam's spiritual

Search for Meaning, Growth, and Change." scorn that?

Brief

alienates

it

other marginal spiritual pursuits. But only the label ing,

pub-

Science imprint, "hoping to capture

12

chang-

line,

U

A

Who would dare

Making

Stop

Sense:

New

Age

115

much

as dissolving

into the mainstream, Publishers Weekly suggests.

As New Age

"We do books on

child rearing,

New Age

books

aren't disappearing so

publisher Jeremy Tarcher notes,

personal health, business, Jungian psychoanalysis, men's con-

and

sciousness, sexuality, at

New Age

with a

all

are

now

perspective." 13

an

crystals are a little passe,

one can look

subjects

And,

if

channeling and

So Over

interest in tarot cards persists.

does belief in the Goddess or Cosmic Mother of us

all.

Her nationwide. Goddess

100,000 people are said to worship

books, or "feminist spirituality" books, have not yet been over-

and of course constitute the newest and most

published, according to one publisher in the

books about male promising

New

Bly (with a

spirituality

Age/personal development

little

books now have

help from their

Bill

field,

by Robert

craze, led

Movers).14 "Men's consciousness"

own shelf in my neighborhood

bookstore,

next to women's books, psychology, and recovery. Iron

}ohn

Robert Bly's recent

y

best-seller that started this

lucrative trend, crosses several publishing categories.

bines codependency theory (references to addiction

It

com-

and abuse)

with antifeminism (complaints about emasculating women) with popular mythology

(in

the style of Joseph Campbell,

Moyers's other contribution to the culture) and popular, reduc-

(The industrial revolution separated fathers from

tionist history.

their sons, Bly laments,

without a footnote or any other sub-

stantiation, of course.

guess he's never heard of the postin-

I

dustrial, bourgeois family business.)

bears the hallmark of New spiritual,

tudes is

and

it

rarely

— male bonding —

a spiritual virtue

book's ideas.

makes you

It

feel

this excerpt

Age

makes is

—

But most of

it is

sense.

Iron John

You can glean from

good, feminism

but you

all,

portentous and vaguely

is

it

atti-

bad, self-absorption

may be unable

to specify the

has the elusiveness of advertising copy that

good without conveying any information,

from the publisher's promotional blurb:

like

1

16

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

Iron

John

is

at

the same time

manhood, one

of adult

new vision and

a very ancient vision

that has depth, vividness,

and

solidity.

It

reconfirms the power oi indent stones to guide, to heal, and to

convey the deepest truths. is

You know what

this

means

—

—

nothing

still, it

sounds im-

portant, like most of this hook. Bly writes about "Zeus energy"

and the "wounds"

to "our princehood,"

down

archy [that] brings

and the "genuine

the sun through the Sacred King";

he ponderously otfers allegories of male initiation

Wild Man: "what the psyche

tributes to the is

a

new

figure, a religious figure

God and

patri-

is

rites

and

asking for

now

but a hairy one, in touch with

and earth." He substitutes sanctimony for sense, and soon grown men are off in the woods, crying, chanting, and beating their drums. 16 sexuality, with spirit

Pergonal development, popular spirituality, and consciousnessraising is

movements have been

targeting

women

for so long,

it

gratifying to see that the sexes are equally silly. Like the

recovery movement, The Forum,

and

all

of

New

some branches of feminism, Age, the men's consciousness movement cele-

The

brates feeling at the expense of rationality.

men

is

that they are

ment converts

"numb from

regularly assert.

to a Boston Globe reporter, a

man

If

my

a Bly

explained

always had as

at a feeling level.

you want

to denigrate thinking, call

it

to elevate thoughtlessness, call

Then

feeling realities if

intellectualizing. If

it

experiencing at a

spirit

consciousness and

— deeper truths than our

minds can compre-

feeling level. Talk

—

much

workshop that got me out of my head and

gut." 17

you want

hend

I've

was intellectualizing everything, always analyzing and

went into

into

As one New Man

"one problem

justifying, never experiencing I

trouble with

the neck down," men's move-

about body and

you want to sound enlightened and redeemable.

Stop

New Age in

itself:

lytic

lies

a

and

as well as recovery.

mental

exercise,

is

blamed

serial

for every

nonrational age.

(I

ill

from war

is

part of our problem

—

not a spiritual one. Intellectuals are dino-

our

thought we were already

Listening to the weird

bliss to a

new,

there.)

New Age babble of bliss-speak,

techno-

and personal development proverbs, while the experts be-

moan I

117

murders, in the literature of

Language

saurs. We're evolving nonverbally, following

talk,

New Age

salvation. Linear, logical, left-brain ana-

(male-identified) thinking

to pollution to poverty

it's

Sense:

promises to take us beyond language and reason

nonsense

New Age

Making

the excessive rationality of our culture,

the only person

sound

bites

who

I

wonder.

Am

thinks we've gone crazy? Assaulted by

and slogans that pass

for political discourse, gossip

and anecdotes that take the place of ideas, I never feel surrounded by rationality. My idea of heaven is a rational world; but I must have blinked during our literate, intellectual phase (it must have flashed by in a video), because here we are in some postliterate, postintellectual space, in which that passes for news,

language

is

supposed to convey only an attitude, and a word

means no more than

a smile.

7 God

Good Parent

a

Is

Too: Self-Help and

Popular Theology New Age spiritualism

is

an

affront to traditional

mono-

theism — some conservative religious sects consider Satanism — but securely placed in the motley American spiritual it

it is

tradition that embraces

thinking.

Atheism

is

mind

cure,

New Thought, and positive

what's considered un-American.

As any

and communism are inextricably bound; so were Americanism and Protestantism one hundred years ago. This is a Christian, or Judaeo-Christian, child of the cold war knows, atheism

or deeply spiritual country, pundits proclaim. right to

Under

worship differently

ship not at

and

politicians regularly

the rubric of religious freedom,

much more than

we

respect the

the right to wor-

all.

Intolerance of disbelief is a subtext of most popular, prescriptive religious literature. If

not condemned, nonbelievers are

and patronized. mourned as a corrosive,

not considered

pitied

religious writers

who

way would hardly be

If

sinful,

self-defeating dysfunction.

atheism

is

Of course,

lack conviction that they offer a better religious at all (or

maybe they wouldn't

119

120

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

be writers). Their certainty of belief because o(

its

importance

as a

is

worth noting, however,

marketing

tool,

because o{ the

place their books occupy in the publishing business culture. Straddling the secular

are hybrids

—

using self-help/success primer techniques to in-

struct, inspire, or indoctrinate religious belief

No

and popular

and sacred, popular religious books

on the grand

scale.

review of the personal development tradition would be

complete without

a

review of popular religious teachings, par-

ticularly today. Religion

bv the

common

religious

is

tied

questions about selfhood they address; today

they are even offering

movement

and psychology have always been

some common answers. The recovery than nondenominational, and popular

less secular

books

are infused with the precepts of popular psy-

chology, as well as the spirit of self-help publishing.

Doubtful secular.

self-help authors don't sell

many books,

sacred or

Their readers seek answers, formulas, and guarantees,

not inquiry and speculation.

The

and tortured thewould probably

tentative

ologies of William James, Dostoevsky, or Kafka

not answer the needs of people

who

read

M.

Scott Peck, Harold

Kushner, Charles Swindoll, James Dobson, and other popular writers I've reviewed.

Theology may

be, in fact, too

and proclamations that popular

grand a term for the attitudes

religious

books comprise. These

books of argument; they don't engage and exploration. Instead of reasoning or arguing, they pronounce, admitting no distinctions among opinion, desire, and truth. are not, in general,

readers in dialogue

This ing

is,

in part,

an occupational hazard, or

on your point of

view.

"God

loves

perquisite,

you"

is

depend-

not a provable

or even arguable assertion. But these books are not billed as

simple declarations oi

belief;

they are marketed as primers on

and psychotherapy, child rearing, spouse abuse, deprivation, and despair, as well as the search personality development

God and

for love, happiness,

to existential questions

a

Is

Good

who find

salvation. Readers

and various

Parent Too

121

the answers

social crises less

than

self-

evident should seek their counseling elsewhere. It

seems indisputable, however, that hordes of people do find

comfort, and first

maybe guidance,

M. Scott Peck's on the New York

in these books.

book, The Road Less Traveled, spent years

Times

best-seller

writers

is

The market

list.

thriving too,

more specialized Christian and Christian books published by religfor

ious presses are beginning to enter the mainstream.

be both

futile

and presumptuous

enced by so many readers, whose

As

to

It

deny the benefits

tastes

and

ideals

I

would experi-

don't share.

a skeptical, secular humanist, Jewish, feminist, intellectual

lawyer, currently residing in the Ivy League,

I

belong to a num-

ber of groups disdained by conservative religious writers,

dominate the even for the

my

dismiss

field,

and I'm probably not the

less doctrinaire. Just as

critique of their efforts

who

me

and angry

as a lost

has not seen the

light,

Smugness coupled with trait

target audience

codependency authors

by dismissing

"in denial," traditional religious writers,

or pity

who

I

me

as

will

someone

suspect, will dismiss

soul; in their eyes

I

am someone

or perversely refuses to look at

false

of popular religious writers.

humility

They

is

a

like to

common,

it.

central

quote themselves,

clumsily re-creating self-serving conversations with others, citing passages from their earlier books: they are their

Disclaiming their

own

and

them-

struggling, they carefully

repeat the praise they get from others.

thank him

authorities.

greatness, modestly presenting

selves as fellow seekers, fallible

regularly

own

M.

Scott Peck's patients

and compassion, paying me after all," one woman says,

for his insights

do care for one of the few people who has ever understood me," a member of one of Peck's community workshops says, after Peck has summed him up in a paragraph. 2 Christian family counselor and radio personality James Dobson is fond

tribute. all

"You 1

really

aglow. "You're

122

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

of reprinting testimonial letters he receives from readers and listeners/

The

generally likable

and pastor turned

sionary

David Seamands, former mis-

professor, introduces his first

book

with the tearful praise he received from one of his mentors:

"David, I

and

pastor

never heard

I've

a

sermon quite

what you have found

believe

is

like that before.

.

.

.

the answer." 4 Charles Swindoll,

(who

prolific evangelical writer

also has a radio

man who praises him for his compassion, open-mindedness, and humor has got him "pegged." The sanctimony is surely heartfelt, but it is also a marketing show), admits that

a

5

order to

tool. In

have to

sell

—

books

sell

themselves. Since there

little

the authorial voice

like

feel

is

so

little

information, arguments, or

power o( persuasion To

their messages, popular religious writers

is

substance to their

new

ideas

—

their

purely personal, deriving from trust in

and the

portraits they paint of themselves.

reassured or enlightened by these books, you have to

the authors and believe in them, trusting in their certitude.

Precisely

what

are they certain about?

Some common

atti-

tudes or preoccupations emerge from a sampling of over thirty

popular Christian books:

The

universe

essentially a moral, just,

which everything happens

place, in least,

is

can be put to good

linings;

it

and ordered

for the best or, at

use. Faith illuminates

makes happiness and

the silver

salvation available to

everyone.

The

universe

is

not a place to navigate alone.

sufficiency, or the pretense of

masters of our

fate.

We must

it, is

risk of

She, He, or

It

offending some readers, is

I

We

are not the

acknowledge our depen-

dence on God; by submitting to

*At the

a sin.

Self-

Him we receive

refer to

God

called by popular religious writers.

as

His

love.*

He, because that

is

what

God American individualism,

Is

a Good Parent Too

123

"selfism," competitiveness,

and

the ethic of achievement are sinful too, as well as un-

God and

healthy, isolating us from

each other, focusing

our energies on worldly pursuits, fostering the arrogant illusion of self-sufficiency.

Loving yourself, however, neighbor;

God

it is

(which

is

is

as

important as loving your

the basis for a healthy relationship with essentially individual,

not communal).

Loving yourself is even a scriptural imperative: esteem

sinful, like self-sufficiency.

is

God who Evil

is

a

loves you, warts

and

It is

Low

self-

an affront

to

all.

kind of personality disorder, which

is

not to

deny the existence of Satan. Personality disorders may be weapons of Satan;

of self-esteem and plays

God

is

a

good parent, loving and trustworthy, who asks

only that you allow function of

What

is

bad parent, he deprives you upon your weaknesses.

like a

Him

to

redeem you. Salvation

is

a

faith.

interesting about these familiar messages

is

their

blend of religion, popular psychology, and popular communi-

American culture. Although many, if not books are published by religious presses and

tarian critiques o(

most, religious

speak to subcultures of believers, especially conservative Christians,

they partake in prevailing mainstream notions about

goodness, health, selfhood, and social relations.

between theology and

social science has

The boundary

been crossed

before,

notably by William James, more recently by Joshua Liebman,

whose 1948

best-seller, Peace of

Mind, looked forward to a

redemptive collaboration between religion and psychoanalysis. Divinity schools have long offered courses in pastoral counseling.

And, on the margins of denominational

religion,

from

New

124

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

Thought and Christian Science

to

New

Age, spiritualism has

credibility in pseudoscience, describing the

sought

magic of

cosmic energy while borrowing from new theories about the

human

psyche and the power of imagination. But the marriage

of religion and psychology has been tentative and episodic, dis-

rupted by Freud, and marked by periods of considerable hostility

on both

sides for

not just

a

much

Religious writers

it

we're witnessing

accommodation.

would minimize or dismiss the

chology on religion, changes, but

Now,

of this century.

truce but a remarkable

fiercely

denying that

it

has

effect of psy-

made

doctrinal

does seem to have influenced the tone and

packaging o( religious appeals. There are few warnings about fire

and brimstone and

God

is

lots

of

encomiums

mercy and

invariably portrayed as the ideal parent

can never exhaust; you can only

good parenting derive from our writers suggest, or

How

to

is

reject

it.

Do

relations with

whose

grace.

love

you

our notions of

God,

as religious

our vision of God shaped by our parents?

you answer that question probably determines whether

at heart you're a cleric or a shrink.

Meanwhile, Christian therapy

is

a

burgeoning

field.

Like

Dolly Parton singing Gershwin, Christian crossovers to psychol-

ogy combine

a

kind of pastoral counseling with the practice of

individual or family therapy, often focusing

on popular problems

o{ addiction and abuse. Christian codependency books, like

those produced by the Minirth-Meier clinic in Texas, are practically

indistinguishable from codependency books published

by secular writers, except for their reliance on effective

means

for

Jesus.

overcoming codependent relationships

to establish a relationship with Christ himself,"

cofounder of the Minirth-Meier also

'The most

clinic, writes.

6

is

Frank Minirth,

David Seamands

draws heavily on popular psychology, stressing that the

insights of psychotherapists

come from God and

that counseling

God is

God's work. M. Scott Peck

Is

a Good Parent Too

stresses that

mental and

125

spiritual

problems are one.

Complementing writers

is

this

embrace of psychology by

religious

the increasing religiosity of popular psychology.

Therapists are urged to heed their clients' spiritual needs (M. Scott Peck

is

offered as a role model); 7

and

twelve-step groups,

of course, are covertly religious, invoking higher powers and describing addiction as enthrallment to a false god. For people

and personality disorders, real and imagined, the messages from religion and psychology are compatible and clear: therapy is a door to redemption and faith struggling with addictions

is

a

door to recovery.

Religious writers justify their reliance

ing

it

for "catching

on psychology by

prais-

up" to some eternal truths, but they've

found a way to make the temporal truths of psychology able. Religious leaders

once condemned psychoanalysis

also

palat-

for

its

moral neutrality (Freud made everyone "nice," Fulton Sheen complained). 8

Now

popular religious literature equates

illness

with sin (Satan works through personality disorders), which

makes psychology a penitential technique,

if

not a form of ex-

orcism. Religious writers stress repeatedly that psychology

is

only a spiritual tool; some therapists might consider religion a therapeutic one.

But whether psychology has caught up to

the most popular becoming less and distinguishable. Like Macy's and Gimbel's, therapists and

religion, infiltrated

it,

or been adopted by

versions of both psychology less

and

religious leaders are happily staking

M.

Scott Peck

is

on

out a

the most successful, widely

therapist with the broadest

turn up

it,

religion are

common

known

market.

Christian

mainstream audience. His books

the most unexpected shelves, in the

homes of peo-

126

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

pie you'd swear were agnostic.

But Peck

times. In the past fifteen years, his

and

touch with

career path as

his

an expert

author has taken him from a generalized, inclu-

best-selling

sive belief in

own

in

is

God

to Christianity

and from the conduct o( indi-

vidual therapy to workshops in building

community,

in keeping

with cultural trends toward organized religion and the idealization o(

community.

Peck did not turn to Christianity until after publication of

The Road

Less Traveled, published in 1978.

cloaked a familiar,

It

popularized account of psychotherapy in the vague, inational, Star late 1970s.

tional

Wars

Psychotherapy

growth

is

his

was popular

in the

Emo-

said to involve acceptance of

in the direction of belief."

three, Peck

is

was baptized,

9 )

as

nondenom-

presented as an act o{ love.

sort of spirituality that

Then,

God. (People "grow

in 1980, at the age of forty-

he reveals in the introduction to

second book, People of the Lie, a discussion of evil and possession. ("We must ultimately belong either to God

demonic

or the Devil," he warns. 10 ) His third book, The Different Drum, is

a

paean to community and

a description of his

own accom-

plishments as a leader in community building techniques,

which draws on Robert

book, Habits

Bellah's trend-setting 1985

of the Heart.

Despite his conversion, Peck

is

the least doctrinaire of the

popular Christian writers and so the most accessible to nonChristians with

God

amorphous

that emerges from his

spiritual yearnings.

books

is

a cross

The image

between

of

a gentle

and a New Age life force. Although Peck has devoted an entire book to the subject of evil, and occasionally notes that life is hard, he shares the optimism and belief in salvation oi most popular Christian writers, and like virtually all selfpatriarch

help writers, he assures readers that everything

you master the solve

all

right techniques.

"With

is

possible once

total discipline

we can

problems," he promises in the opening pages of his

God first

As

book, and discipline

for evil,

Is

Good

a

Parent Too

only a "system of techniques."

itself is

"strangely ineffective as a social force," 11

it is

127

which

would surprise anyone who has even heard of genocide. Through Christ, "the defeat o{ evil is utterly assured," 12 and "the

human

race

is

spiritually progressing.

.

.

We

.

are growing

toward godhead." 13 reading a million fortune cookies,"

"It's like

Peck's ing,

first

book, until

I

got used to

it.

I

thought about

Contemplating

suffer-

redemption, and various existential uncertainties, he

is

Hamlet played by Polonius.

What

there to analyze in

Sometimes

tions? is

is

We learn

"Oh."

and profoundly false

is

all

books of platitudes

you can say

that

"human

similar," 14

billed as revela-

in response to his assertions

beings are profoundly different

and "truth

unreal." "Ultimately love

is

is

reality.

That which

is

everything," he says, para-

phrasing the Beatles, promising us that "the mystery of love will

be examined in

soon learn that love the "means of

Even

Peck's

later is

portions of this work." Indeed,

the "energy for discipline," which

human

spiritual evolution." 15

we

is itself

Oh.

most avid readers would probably have trouble

explaining his ideas. Talking about Peck's theology, people often talk simply

about Peck:

He

is

loving, wise, patient, firm yet

kind, they say, describing the perfect parent (and the

emerges from most of these books). erally

Or

God who

they ruminate very gen-

about themes and buzzwords that run through most con-

temporary self-help spiritual

growth

literature

— self-awareness and self-esteem,

(or evolution),

and the discovery oi a

loving,

omniscient force outside yourself.

Submission to

this force

— voluntary surrender of the self to

God — is, of course, a primary religious impulse, perhaps a basic human one. At least on occasion, everyone wants to let go. Whether that's a measure of holiness or weakness, God knows. The

experience of self-surrender

is

idiosyncratic

and probably

128

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

impossible to apprehend secondhand. attest that

surrender to

God

is

Some

religious people

not bondage but the

soul's libera-

power

tion from the temporal, material world. But respecting the

and passion of

their private religious experiences,

I

can't

still

help worrying about the public impact o{ a mandate to submit,

which appears

in

its

simplest,

most vulgarized form

much

in

popular religious literature as well as in the recovery movement. If

will.

salvation, or recovery,

Peck defines

is

a struggle,

tempting to think that the problem of evil .

.

There are only two

.

goodness or the

own

will

—

forces o( evil.

16

states of being:

lies

.

.

.

it's

almost

in the will

submission to

itself.

God and

submit to anything beyond one's

refusal to

which

a struggle o( the

it is

the "unsubmitted will

evil as

refusal automatically enslaves

one

to the

good thing you can

Ultimately, the only

will

willingness.

is

Liberals, romantics,

find this chilling.

and any student of totalitarianism may

There

is

surely

enough recent

historical evi-

dence associating submission, not independence of enslavement to can distinguish

evil.

with

will,

In their eagerness to submit, not everyone

God

from the

devil.

Popular religious writers tend to address this problem briefly or breezily, or incoherently,

bashed authoritarian,

is

if

at

James Dobson, an una-

all.

concerned with the problem of

missiveness, not submission.

per-

An expert on the family, he seems

obsessed with vanquishing rebellious children, asserting that the task of a parent

is

to

"conquer the

will."

concedes that there are "cultic leaders" of submissiveness: "Any minister

unquestioning obedience

he

says.

"With

all

is

who

17

Charles Swindoll

who

requires blind loyalty

suspect,"

he

says,

up we

are

now

that cleared

take advantage

but that

and

is

all

ready for some

positive input into the correct mentality of a servant," he con-

cludes,18 as a homily.

if

M.

the Holocaust might have been prevented with Scott Peck muses abstractly about the difference

God between

and true

false

religions,

not find helpful: "Truth in religion

and paradox.

Falsity [by]

a Good Parent Too

Is

129

which readers may or may is

characterized by inclusivity

onesidedness and failure to integrate

the whole." 19

To true

believers,

and the true Stewart's

is

I

suppose, the difference between the false

simply self-evident. Supreme Court Justice Potter

famous remark about obscenity,

"I

know

it

when

I

see

may be all we can finally say about God. But that isn't saying much in a world in which some die and kill for Allah, some for it,"

Christ,

and some

for ideologies, while others

send their savings

to Jim Bakker. I'm not suggesting that religious writers are

responsible for curing mass hysteria, meanness,

and bad

faith.

But writers regarded

bad judgment,

as experts

preach submission share some of the blame for

its

on God who consequences.

Swindoll, Dobson, Peck, and others would probably respond that they only lead readers toward what's true (and

take their

word

for that).

Or

we can only

they might deny that they ignore

the problem of submissiveness, pointing to the occasional

sentence acknowledging

Peck admits that there

it.

is

such a

thing as "unhealthy nationalism," 20 but he doesn't blame

the abdication of will he preaches, to which

it on we owe the Nu-

remberg defense. It is,

at first, a little surprising to see

more

rhetoric about

submission than individual freedom of action and thought in

what

are, after all,

about submission

American are,

on

self-help books. Religious teachings

their face, at

odds with the mystique

of individualism and the self-willed, self-made man. Individual-

ism

is

rather out of fashion,

and

religious writers rail against

but it is still an important strain of Americanism. To an American audience it would still seem important at least to it,

explain that in voluntary submission to

God

lies

freedom.

Fulton Sheen did this eloquently in his best-selling 1949 book, Peace of Soul:

130

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

To the extent that we abandon our personality take possession of our will

and work

tible suggestions that rise

up from within.

we

are never conscious of being

to

Him becomes

will

.

.

He

suggests to us;

under command. Thus our service

the highest form o( liberty. 21

Popular religious writers today rarely heights; literacy

.

Him, He

to

by almost impercep-

in us ...

and standards

in the past forty years.

But

rise to

Sheen's rhetorical

for popular writing

it is

also

have declined

worth noting that Sheen

was writing in opposition to emerging postwar personal develop-

ment movements: Peace to

of Soul

is,

in

some ways, an answer

Joshua Liehman's Peace of Mind and a powerful diatribe

against psychoanalysis.

Not writing from within the tradition

he was attacking (as religious self-help writers partly do), Sheen

could explore the nature of submission directly, without subterfuge. His

message about submission

luted by the rhetoric about doing

it

is

complex but

your way that

clear, undiis

common

Nor does he seem compelled to profess no special insights about God, as selftoday are expected to do. That's how they make

in self-help literature.

periodically that he has

help writers

their authority palatable for self-surrender

—

how

they reconcile the mandate

with the quest for self-improvement.

Self-help writers, religious or not, also like to present themselves as

mere

facilitators of spiritual, personal, or professional

development, saying that saving yourself or succeeding individual process: everyone has his or her

own

is

an

road to traverse.

on a tradition of pietism, in some American way. But the individualizing

Self-help generally carries

peculiarly mercantile

of religious experience, or spiritual journeys,

is

no one independent of God. Only the process is not the ultimate truth that the process is aimed

partial, leaving

individualized, at uncovering.

There may be many roads but only one destination

and only God. Often the experts share

— the true

in His glory.

God

a Good Parent Too

Is

131

Like secular self-help writers, religious ones are rarely honest

on

the subject of authority and submission.

They almost always

claim a fellowship with their readers, admitting their

book

to his

and neuroses

a character disorder.

fesses

own

—

Gordon MacDonald devotes a repentance of adultery; M. Scott Peck briefly con-

fallacies, sins,

But disclaiming expertise,

proclaimed experts can only be

liars

self-

or frauds. Peck mentions

the need to tolerate ambiguity and talks about not leading,

but he always sounds quite sure of himself, and he's marketed as a leader

authorities

which he

and a seer. He bemoans our tendency to "let our do our thinking for us," 22 but it's a tendency on

thrives.

That Peck views himself should submit

is

who

and groups involved

him

challenge

at best, spiritually

an authority to

whom

others

clear in his descriptions of encounters with

individual patients

People

as

in

community

building.

are generally presented as evil

or,

unevolved; in any case they're always wrong.

A psychologist who drops out of one of his community building workshops, claiming that a group of nearly sixty people cannot

become

a

community

in

two days, apparently

gets her

come-

uppance: after she leaves, "the remaining 58 o{ us became a

community," Peck reports, another claim we can take only on faith.

People

who

"slip

away" from

munity has been formed perhaps love,"

Peck muses. 23 People

munity and disrupt

who do

workshops once com-

his

"just

cannot bear that much

not share his vision of com-

his groups are "evil"; virtually his only re-

ported failure in community building

blamed on an evil power and "gain[ed]

is

woman member who can match his enough allies against me to polarize the group and way." 24 Somehow I long to hear her side of it. I

wonder about be the ones

it

that

his individual therapeutic failures too, as well

as his successes. Practically the

to

keep

who

only patients he can't help seem

willfully reject his wise authority.

132

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

not exactly that Peck

It's

to err only

on the

than they

better

never wrong;

is

it's

just that

he seems

side of goodness, believing people can be

are.

His case studies are hard to believe, partly because his creation o( dialogue

is

so clumsy. (He has

no

ear;

re-

everyone

Case studies are routinely fictionalized; maybe we're not meant to take them literally. Peck's cases are pat, selfsounds

alike.)

serving

little

moral

tales that often

end with

his startlingly in-

cisive diagnosis: he likes telling patients "face to face

what

[he]

thinks o( [them]," which rarely takes more than a paragraph.

one patient, he cures her of promiscuity and leads her to a happy life: "From among her dozens of lovers Marcia immediately picked one and estabBy revealing

his "positive feelings" for

lished a meaningful relationship with led to a highly successful

Lucky Marcia. Charlene

is

a

more

interesting figure, perhaps

the most interesting of Peck's patients

who

will

him which eventually

satisfying marriage." 25

and

not be redeemed. She

is

— the archetypal evil one

dishonest, withholding infor-

mation "for no other reason than to keep control of the show."

(Maybe she

didn't trust him.)

just haplessly

and he

is

promiscuous

She

toward patients

I

who

also sexually aggressive, not

Marcia; she comes

like

repelled, "nauseated,"

lence. "Certainly

is

which

usually have

no

is

a clue to

on

to him,

her malevo-

difficulty feeling

warmly

entrust their love to me," Peck assures us. 26

Peck presents Charlene as quite sick (he later discovers she's bad) and works with her for nearly four years. She does not

one point she rejects God, crying out that she does not want to live for Him. What further proof have progress; indeed at

we

of Charlene's evil?

How does he "sum

up" the "alien" force

in her? Well, there's her attitude toward the weather. Charlene

only liked "grey days

made

.

.

.

dismal days," either because "they

the rest of us miserable," Peck suggests, or because "she

love[d]

them

for their ugliness

and

vibrate[d] to

something

in

God them

Is

a Good Parent Too

we have no name

so utterly alien that

for

it."

27

133

Maybe

she was simply depressed. Despite her perversity, Peck it

is

patient

and compassionate,

seems, as usual. Charlene's ultimate failure as a patient

just that

—

her

not

failure,

his.

She

leaves

is

uncured mainly

because of "her failure to regress," to become a child with him,

innocent and truly trusting. 28 Unless you trust Peck absolutely,

whether Charlene was

plays.

What he

and

evil

that their relationship,

if it

it is

impossible to

know

does seem

likely

incurable.

existed,

apparently disliked most about her, apart from

sexual aggressiveness, was her willfulness trol:

It

was fraught with power

make

"Charlene's desire to

and

desire for con-

a conquest of me, to toy with

me, to utterly control our relationship, knew no bounds." she does enjoy a "petty" victory over

him

And

in the end, termi-

nating the relationship over his objections in a "remarkable tour de force." 29 Charlene's case so is

much

is

worth describing not just because Peck takes

time with

it,

so predictable; that

to choose as

but because as a depiction of is,

she

who

evil,

she

what you would expect Peck

an embodiment of

controlling female patient will

is

evil

—

a sexually aggressive,

challenges his authority

not play the child to his perfect parent. Peck's most

and

mem-

women; apart from Charlene there are a dreadful dominatrix and a couple of selfish, narcissistic mothers. Peck suggests in passing that bad mothers

orable evil characters are stereotypically evil

cause schizophrenia:

M I

frequently found the mothers of schizo-

phrenics to be extraordinarily narcissistic individuals." 30 Readers

an inheritable disease and judgment. But maybe they

aware o{ evidence that schizophrenia

may question

Peck's motives

can't bear that

much

is

love.

For some people even loving psychotherapy tive (in hindsight

is

not redemp-

Peck says he might recommend an exorcism

134

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

for Charlene). Despite their

maintain a belief in the darker side of

ally

original sin.

and

tions lies

optimism, Christian writers gener-

The

we

insistence that

personalities

is

a

common

human

beings, or

each born with disposi-

are

theme, which partly under-

traditional religious opposition to psychoanalysis.

nurturance over nature in explanations of religious writers

human

chose

It

behavior,

complain: conceiving of every infant as tabula

psychoanalysis absolved people of ultimate responsibility

rasa,

for their acts,

blaming

their parents instead. Psychoanalysts

were also accused of ignoring the destructive force of individual will

—

they chose instinct over

Fulton Sheen asserted

will,

—

not to mention Satan.

What popular religious writers human will unaided can also be

don't recognize a force for

that good, healthy people are those

them

to

is

right,

is

a

not God's, and marrying is

it

to

own

31

But perhaps

sense of what

what you want

but they add that only

God

Fulton Sheen

said,

altar. (It's just that, as

His suggestions are almost imperceptible, so we don't being

led.)

without

Of course,

God

is

corrupts people with

people," It is

mere

faith in the

fundamentally

without God, then religion it

to do.

the marriage of principle and desire. Be-

lievers, like Peck, essentially agree,

can lead us to the

good. Peck says

desire."

matter of maintaining your

Perhaps goodness

that the

who "do what God wants

do rather than what they would

goodness

is

lies.

Mary McCarthy

possibility of

irreligious. If there

we're

being good

is

goodness

at best, a fairy tale; at worst,

is,

"Religion

said.

feel

is

only good for good

32

probably neither reasonable nor

realistic to

expect pop-

ular religious writers even to entertain the possibility of godless

people being good. (Harold Kushner, a rabbi, does admit that atheists

ness

is

may be

good, but they can't be happy.) Instead, good-

presented as proof that

His grace, and grace proves the

God

exists.

futility

of

Goodness proves

human

striving. In

God Peace of

Mind Joshua Liebman

a Good Parent Too

Is

135

describes the self as an achieve-

ment, but the popular Protestant writers would probably

Out

agree. self

emerges as a kind of

to be transcended; grace

cursed

dis-

of popular teachings about salvation by grace the liability, a is

burden

to

be shed, a cage

the blessing that saves us from the

self.

Focusing on grace, popular Protestant literature offers readers

not only the promise of salvation but the assurance that they

need not push themselves too hard or "Grace says you have nothing to

give,

to pay," Charles Swindoll writes in

fret

about their

failures.

nothing to earn, nothing

Grace Awakening. 33 This

reminder that you cannot earn God's love duplicates, or duplicated by, the recovery

movement message

is

that a good

parent loves you unconditionally; and discussions of grace are

blended with popular psychology as religious writers address

what they claim tionism

among

is

the special problem of burnout and perfec-

Christians striving to be good but feeling bad.

You have to love yourself as your neighbor, almost everybody says.

You have

Self-esteem today, least,

to love yourself in order to receive

is

God's

grace.

hardly an original theme for self-help writers

and perfectionism

is

part of

what more

secular or, at

nondenominational writers consider the disease of code-

pendency. Twelve-step groups are

filled

with people bemoan-

ing their drive to be perfect, low self-esteem,

and the "shaming"

behavior of their abusive parents. "Christians can be such shamers!" Swindoll remarks, 34 shamelessly borrowing some jargon.

Christians are said to be particularly prone to burnout and perfectionism because of their ethic of service, not to mention their high

moral standards. But Christians also have a special

cure for stress

and overachieving, and when they

aren't psychol-

ogizing about the perils of gracelessness, the experts are upbeat

about the promise of grace, which has the appeal of what

is

136

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

condemned

otherwise

been surrounded by too many

"do's and don't's," Charles

Swindoll says,35 offering readers freedom from behavior. Not belief: the

But

that Swindoll

is

is

on the

liberating

is

strict rules

down

loath to set

doctrine oi salvation by works

his focus

long we've

as permissiveness. For too

rules

about

about

heresy, he proclaims.

power o(

realizing

you are

not held accountable for your deeds, only for your willingness

you need not

to believe;

your way to heaven: "In ord

—

fact,

favor than the individual life."

grossly unfair.

who

has

made

rec-

That the doctrine of grace can

is

that people

are blessed with grace naturally

is

who embrace

behave

without

much

time

left

for

well.

less.

heaven

heaven

The

Christ and

who come

to Jesus

good behavior, which

Charles Stanley has the salve for

is

is

But the promise

arouse resentment in their victims or other people

sinned

it

excuse, encourage,

a familiar charge.

of salvation extends, o( course, to sinners late in life,

wreck and waste

a

find this comforting, others will think

equally familiar reply

in

work

the individual whose track

or at least trivialize bad behavior

may

yourself or

36

some people

If

— justify

morally pure has no better chance at earning God's

is

o( his

cannot

this:

who

not everyone

equal, he explains in Eternal Security, envisioning

as a sort of fiefdom in

are aristocracy

and sinners

which people who

led

good

lives

are the serfs. 37

Popular proponents of grace rarely consider

its

conceivable

inequities, however, or feel the need, as Stanley does, to assure

us that

God

cept of a fair

is fair.

God

Swindoll would probably as

an Old Testament

condemn

legalism:

the con-

Grace means

no good deeds go rewarded while no bad deeds go punished. The good news is that God isn't fair. Legalism, which Swindoll associates with Judaism, is one of his favorite diabolisms, along with intellectualism and humanism

— a belief in the efficacy of human endeavor. Writing about

God

Is

we

"this Satanic pressurized system

a Good Parent Too call

137

the world" 38 Swindoll

partakes in the traditional evangelical disdain for worldly activity

that has been tempered in recent decades by the religious

right's political activism.

He

partakes even

more passionately

in the tradition of anti-

and inacademics, and

intellectualism, describing reason as a barrier to faith

cluding

among

his favorite targets intellectuals,

the Ivy League. To express disdain for religious pluralism, he

mocks what he

calls

"the Harvard approach" to spreading God's

word: "The thinking behind this

Since

the world's religions.

it's

method no one

genuine and pseudo-intellectuals

...

Some most

Swindoll

lectualism

He

if

is

Let's discuss all it

both

attracts

ever gets saved!" 39 right

about

intel-

and the problem of "secularism" of which it is a part. thought" as a dangerous virus from which

sees "secular

Christians are not his

damned,

likely get

is:

reason centered

mind

to the

lectualism,

immune: "Many

a believer has surrendered

world system .... Humanism, secularism,

Swindoll would vigorously deny the obvious courages readers not to think.

It's

true that he

— that he enbemoans the

a pornographer be-

decline of reading, but that's a

little like

moaning the decline of moral readers to think as he does, and

values. Swindoll only

a Maoist,

he

lays

down

subversive thinking; for liberalism, If

intel-

and materialism have invaded our thinking." 40

with

its

subtle

intellectualism

is

rules

as Christ did before

wants

him. Like

about proper and improper or

him the enemy within is "European narcotic of humanism and socialism." 41

a sin, Swindoll

is

a virtuous

man. His

books are disorganized, derivative collections of anecdotes, platitudes, complaints

about modern

tions of Scripture. Chatty, colloquial, cal,

Swindoll

is

the

Andy Rooney

life,

and frequent evoca-

and not always grammati-

of conservative Christian

up to here with Rooney declaring that

preachers. "Yourself, yourself, yourself. We're self!"

he announces,

42

sounding

just like

138

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

he's sick

and

tired

of digging through the Cracker Jacks to find

common man

the prize. Swindoll's carefully cultivated is

at

He

the center of his hooks.

talking,

care to

commonsensical, amiable, and tell

image

presents himself as a plain-

us several times that he

virile preacher,

taking

an ex-marine. He

is

is

a

muscular Christian, a "champion of purity," an archetypal nineteenth-century Protestant American male.

Hebrews were

He's also anti-Semitic.

Godly,"

43

but

legalistic

also,

Swindoll implies, hypocritical:

man

they considered God's relationship to they failed to keep their end o( let

"religious but not

it.

If

a bargain, a deal,

The Hebrews whom God

out of Egypt were a "thankless crowd," always complaining

and incapable of faith, even ing of the sea. I'm not sure

in the face of miracles like the part-

how God

felt

about their skepticism,

but Swindoll, for one, "cannot excuse their forgetting [His] unconditional promise." 44 In another discussion of "the Exodus crowd," Swindoll suggests that the Holocaust was a kind of

recompense

I

guess.

Oh make

and other

sins

may

a

"warning" of where

lead you

—

to

Dachau,

45

well,

no

writer can please everyone,

clear that his

he makes most of a

away from God,

for turning

idolatry, carnality,

books

and Swindoll does

are intended for Christians; in fact,

his intentions clear repeatedly.

Swindoll has

genuine talent for assembling the same book several times,

blending the popular cultural wisdom of the religious beliefs into "bite size

Sometimes the

chunks

...

moment

with his

we don't gag

on." 46

results are bizarre. In his collection of inspira-

Come Before Winter, he blithely mines the sacred random sequences of inspirational sound bites. mundane in and

tional writings,

One

instant he's talking about sleeping in church; then he's

delivering thirty-second

sermons about

jealousy, determination,

and the problem of witchhunting. After some living with pain,

he

lists

platitudes about

twenty-five character traits "generally

God

Is

a Good Parent Too

139

in creative, innovative people." All this appears in a

found

that's billed as advice for people in times of stress

Swindoll

bound by

not one to be

is

a

and

book

sadness;

theme. Between bites

"Why Do We Suffer," he offers advice how to write Letters of Reference. Maybe he's simply postmodern. Like a newscaster who can

about "Tough Days" and

about

an update on world hunger and fashion trends between

recite

commercials without segues, Swindoll tial

to the practical, devoting as

such topics

as

shifts

much

"remembering names"

as

from the existen-

time and passion to

he does to his views

on salvation. Maybe no topic is too small for God's attention. Religious writer Gordon MacDonald takes aim at wasting time. Every minute we have must be used wisely ("Time must be budgeted!") in

"God

order for us to enjoy a

pleasing lifestyle," in order for

us to grow. "Unseized time will flow in the direction of one's relative

weakness." 47 Disorderliness

MacDonald reminds us, within for Christ,

is

a

is

not quite

kind of disorder.

sinful,

but

sin,

We must organize

who shouldn't have to dwell amid our messes.

MacDonald relies less on Scripture than does Swindoll and more on popular psychology. (Sometimes Scripture is an occasion for psychologizing: John the Baptist had good parents, Bad people,

we're told.)

or, rather,

"driven" people "gratified

only by accomplishment," had bad parents and suffered "early experience^] of serious deprivation or

shame? MacDonald borrows

recovery techniques, as well as jargon; he

recommends

naling," a popular twelve-step technique, to help

speak.

He

also talks a lot

about

his

own

"jour-

you hear

God

struggle to order his

inner world, as recovery authors talk about their struggles with addiction. 48

MacDonald seems tion, considering spirit

often

means

it

to have a genuine passion for organiza-

serious business indeed:

"A disorganized

lack of inner serenity." He's a

schoolmarm:

140

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

"The Christian who wants to grow will always take notes when sermons arc being preached or Bible classes are being taught," WC

are told;

40

not taking notes

In this quest to

manage

is

time,

wasting time.

MacDonald

is

aided by an

apparent obsession with categorization, which makes him a natural self-help writer.

He

loves

dividing the universe into neat, He's

making lists, devising labels, knowable component parts.

more taxonomist than theologian. The private world,

for

five sectors, which convenbook Ordering Your Private World. Sector one is Motivation; sector two is Use of Time; sector 3 is Wisdom and Knowledge; sector four is Spiritual Strength; sector five

example, can be neatly divided into iently divide his

ifl

Restoration. Prayer should also be organized;

MacDonald

has a system: In order to systematically pray

up the continents

in

around the world,

such a way that

I

can pray

I

for

have divided each one of

them: Sunday, Latin America; Monday, Central America; Tuesday, rth

America; Wednesday, Europe; Thursday, Africa; Friday, Asia;

and Saturday, the nations of the

I

50

imagine MacDonald as one of those people with a very neat

desk.

I

imagine too that having organized

must seem quite manageable something is

Pacific.

fell

it

so well, the world

But something went awry,

to him.

out of place, because his third book in this series

called Rebuilding Your Broken World. In

fesses to adultery

and chronicles

his

it,

MacDonald con-

repentance and reordering.

am Gordon and am a sinner," he announces in the AA tradition. He tells us about the evil he discovered in himself, while exploring his inner space. He can't obliterate the evil (it's

"I

original sin), but

I

he can manage

it.

Soon he

is

listing

the four

sources of temptations, four principles of rebuilding, and seven

ways to defend against sin.

All's right

with the world once again.

God While MacDonald counsels

Is

a

Good

adulterers,

Parent Too

141

James Dobson helps

out adulterees — mostly women whose husbands have strayed — as well as the wives of batterers and alcoholics. Dobson, host of a popular radio show,

is

a psychologist, not a minister, his bellwether.

marriages,

column

by profession, but the Bible

Love Must Be Tough, his recent book

like a sacrilized

is

a Christian family counselor,

on

is

troubled

"Can This Marriage Be Saved"

woman's magazine.

in a

In the self-help tradition,

Dobson

tal conflict to illustrate his rules

uses anecdotes about mari-

about resolving

it.

Women

should not appease their errant husbands. Instead, "the vulnerable spouse"

— who always seems to be the wife — should "open and

the cage door

Love

is

a

It is

let

the trapped partner out!" 51 Call his bluff.

tough. little

disquieting to imagine

women

blindly applying

Dobson's general rules to their idiosyncratic situations, but that is

what

all

It is even more disquieting to conon which Dobson's rules are based:

self-help readers do.

template the stereotypes

marital conflicts are essentially alike only

too. In

own

Dobson's world, wives nag, sometimes

abuse: "I have seen

bands until they

set

women

belittle

them aflame with

people are

if all

facilitating their

and berate rage,"

he

their hus-

writes.

Hus-

bands are seduced by beautiful divorcees: "We must never underestimate the power of sexual chemistry existing between

an

attractive, needy, available

on the

face of the earth."

of lust but because they

Maybe some some

woman and

Women

feel

life.

FOLLOWS

into adultery not out

Maybe

by his advice. Dobson himself seems a

He prefaces

man

neglected by their husbands. 52

type, with predictable prejudices

American

any

of Dobson's readers run true to type.

are helped

this warning:

fall

virtually

about the

evils

of

stereo-

modern

a discussion of homosexuality with

"CAUTION: SENSITIVE INFORMATION

... If

you have a weak stomach or don't wish to

142

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

know

the

more unpleasant

facts

about homosexuality,

age you to skip the remainder of this section."

He

I

encour-

disdains

feminism, the "so-called woman's movement," for teaching

women

selfishness

and turning them away from God. He

women, assuming

dains

dis-

who "New

that they are malleable creatures

need to be fed the right programs.

Summing up

the

Woman," he says, "her new system of values has been programmed for her by feminist organizations and publications almost as though a computer software package were keypunched into her brain." 53

Children also are creatures to be tamed, in Dobson's view. Dare

to Discipline, a

primer on child rearing, presents the parent-

child relationship as a series of

under

ten,

power

should be spanked: "Pain

is

plays. Defiant children, a

marvelous purifier

.

.

.

the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely."

To discipline older children, remember

that "the shoulder muscle

is

a surprisingly useful source of

pain." 54

minor Dare

to

Discipline

was written

in 1970 before there

was

much

public concern about child abuse. But in his attitudes toward children

Dobson

is

no

slave to fashion. In his 1987

book,

Parent-

endorses corporal punishment, and

ing Isn't for

Cowards, he

he

preoccupied with breaking strong-willed children,

is

still

still

driven by a "raw desire for power." 55 For

—

Dobson

two types of children which he prefers), and he

there are essentially only

compliant and

begins Parenting

willful (guess

Isn't for

Cowards with

a report

on

his

own

parent poll about compliance and willfulness: Strong-willed

outnumber compliant children by about two to one; they are stressful, hard to handle, and ultimately less likely to succeed. Compliant children are better students who are more likely to become well-adjusted adolescents and successchildren

ful adults.

God These

Good

Parent Too

"facts" are interesting only as indications of

prejudices; the poll less.

a

Is

143

Dobson's

from which they were gleaned seems worth-

The terms compliant and

willful

were not defined. Parental

labeling of children was purely subjective as were parental

assessments of their children's success as young adults. In the

however, a poll

self-help world,

scholarship and helps give

But Dobson doesn't fulness

bad or

is

A

of faith.

who

what passes

him, that's an is

fact."

will-

article

more

likely

stresses that strong-willed

must be taught about "divine accountability";

they must be taught that God's laws are enforced: of sin

for

of expertise.

rebels against his parents

God, and Dobson

children especially

is

need empirical evidence that

at least problematic; for

child

to rebel against

really

like this

Dobson an aura

"The wages

death and children have a right to understand that

is

Dobson fondly

recalls his

own

mother's teachings about

Judgment Day when those who have been covered by the blood of Jesus will be separated eter-

"heaven and

from those

nally

believes in

and the

who

tough love

great

have not." 56 In Dobson's book,

does provide a measure of the

grace. If

ature,

God

He

is

fist

is

currently out of vogue,

inside the velvet glove of

portrayed as the perfect parent of recovery

is still

God

too.

unabashed authoritarianism

If this it

hell

a parent

who

liter-

expects to be obeyed. Grace en-

if we come round in the on 42d Street proclaim into their microphones, but someday it will be.) Dying in disbelief, we risk damnation. Given this omnipresent threat of dreadful retribution, God's well-publicized expectation that we obey Him

tails

end.

the promise of forgiveness only (It's

not too

out of love, not Believers

late,

fear,

preachers

seems a

little unrealistic.

might reply that loving obedience can only be expe-

rienced, not imagined or explained precisely

what

self-help writers

aim

— although explaining

is

to do. Moreover, to question

the possibility of obedience without fear

is

to question the larger

144

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL which popular Christian

religious ideal of loving self-surrender,

writers tend to present as fairly easy.

David Seamands, surrender

is

at

the ultimate

spiritual battle,"

admits that

least, crisis

he advises.

because

"It

may

it

is

hard. "Self-

represents the ultimate

it

take a long time to travel

from conversion to self-surrender." 57 Seamands describes render of the recovery

—

will to

as a process, not

guided by God's

sur-

Christ the way addiction experts describe

an event. You can promise

will ever after;

to be

but you must carry out that

promise day by day.

Seamands

on the

focuses

barriers

you encounter along the

way, between conversion and surrender, familiar barriers such as "the perfectionist

complex."

emotional problem

among

He

calls

"the most disturbing

it

evangelical Christians" (self-help

writers like hyperbole); perfectionism

characterized by "tyr-

is

anny o( the oughts anxiety [and] legalself-depreciation ism ..." The cure, of course, is grace, or rather the "process .

of growth in grace." 58

.

.

.

The

.

.

causes include "unpleasable parents"

and "unpredictable home situations." Like M. Scott Peck and the Minirth-Meier authors, Seamands is

a Christian counselor, offering instruction in

well as religion. Indeed, his basic message too

and

spiritual health are

psychology as is

that mental

entwined: "The mechanisms of our

which we use in faith are the same instruments through which our feelings operate." Religious dysfunction, then — atheism or a belief in salvation by works — is attributed personalities

to psychological dysfunctions, such as paranoia or low

self-

esteem, which are attributed to dysfunctional families and Satan.

Low

self-esteem

is

"the most powerful psychological

weapon that Satan uses against Christians." 59 Seamands thus neatly reconciles religion and psychology and provides his Christian audience with what may be genuinely helpful,

simple,

commonsensical lessons about personality

God

a Good Parent Too

Is

development and the relationship of temperament to

145

He

faith.

not as relentlessly self-aggrandizing as his colleagues, or com-

is

They are also more because Seamands ventures into what could be

petitors, so the lessons

interesting

—

dangerous ground

seem more

sincere.

the psychoanalysis of religious belief

—

except that he only psychoanalyzes disbelief.

Bad

relationships with

with parents,

or, as

God

Seamands

love receptors" can't receive

presuming

Him

to

like their parents.

derive from bad relationships

says, Christians

God's love and

be untrustworthy,

This

is

more or

in popular Protestant literature,

distort

His character,

and

"unpleasable,"

critical,

less

with "damaged

conventional wisdom

but Seamands elaborates on

with some thoughtfulness, recognizing that what you

it,

people about

God

is

"filtered

—

concedes that "the facetious remark

own

his

image'

—

a "healthy" Christian outlook reflects

—

'Man

creates

contains an element of truth." 60

does not and perhaps cannot consider

ditioning too

tell

through" their personalities.

is

God

He in

What he

the possibility that

temperament and con-

not truth.

Whether you analyze faith or the lack of it probably depends on whether you are one of the faithful. The intellectual effort to explain or categorize, to "lay bare the causes" of attitudes

and it is

beliefs,

a

is

essentially hostile, as

"method of discrediting

an antipathy."

61

But

as

William James observed;

states of

mind

for

which we have

James also pointed out, faith

a willingness, a capacity, to believe:

"Our

reflects

belief in truth itself

and that our minds and it are made what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire?" 62 The truths we choose are also functions of our temperament, and some temperaments are unable to believe in any truth at all; some "never are [or] could be converted." 63 .

.

.

for

that there

is

each other,

It is

a truth,

—

the failure of popular Protestant writers to recognize this

— that some people are temperamentally incapable of Christian

146

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

belief— that

I

ot their views

most troubling,

find

on

particularly in the context

end we are saved by belief even if we live well and try hard

salvation. In the

and damned by the lack o(

it,

"The Holy

to believe but cannot.

He

because we have failed to be good.

men do

'about sin, because

condemn

us

convicts us, says Jesus,

not believe in Me.' Grace brings us

to the place of real guilt, real guilt for

and

believe in Jesus Christ

does not

Spirit

our only sin

Him

trust

— failing to

for right-relatedness to

God." M

As an

article of taith, this

grace alone

is

doctrine of salvation by grace and

remarkably unappealing to me.

remarkable disregard for justice to idealize a belief over action. in a very

prefer the

old joke, and says,

whether or not It is

I

I

exist

and

"I

God who

think,

God who so values down on us,

looks

obeying

my commandments."

possible to posit moral standards in a godless world?

they answer lessness.

ethical

it

implicitly,

at least,

before rejecting

to the subject o(

raise

Most

the question, although

blaming modern immorality on god-

Harold Kushner,

humanism

Faith in a

I

wish they'd stop worrying about

start

popular religious writers don't even

book

takes,

It

Who

some god, one god,

considers the possibility of it,

devoting his most recent

Needs God? (we is

essential to

do, of course).

our construct of

moral world, he concludes. Like the Protestant writers,

Kushner

associates godlessness with moral relativism: without

God, matters of morality become mere matters of "personal taste,"

he warns. 65 But he doesn't

tastes in

God

are personal

cult for us to agree it is

for us to reach

What

and

fully

acknowledge that our

idiosyncratic too.

It is

about the nature of the one true

consensus on hard questions

difference does

as diffi-

God

as

like abortion.

God make?

Kushner addresses our deep divisions about God mostly by denying them, claiming, in the end, that we have a shared sense of injustice that comes from

God. Our

differences are

God

Is

a Good Parent Too

147

and Kushner is tolerant of different approaches to God: "Religions can disagree and still each be true." 66 He describes a sort oi moral umbrella o( monomight

differences in detail, he

theism, not insisting

say,

on the

superiority of any particular

denomination.

M.

Like

Scott Peck, Kushner speaks to a broad, nondenomi-

national audience, with vaguely articulated questions about

God, or simply

a sense o{ existential unease. His best-selling

When Bad

book,

Things Happen

reading of the

sible

Book

don't like imagining is

God

powerless to eradicate

Liebman

offers a similar

it,

to

Good

as a bully. Evil exists

explanation of evil.) Kushner

He can

that

who God

Joshua

is

refresh-

on people who

sustain

Losing your children or being crippled in a

senseless accident

rationalized or

acces-

because

suggests. (In Peace of Mind,

he

ingly critical of the platitudes inflicted terrible losses:

an

People, offers

of Job that will comfort people

is

made

not simply "for the

best." Evil

cannot be

God grieves with us over

sacred.

injustices

only give us strength to bear.

Not everyone will find solace in this view. It requires that you give up a belief in God's omnipotence and in the notion that everything happens for

good reason.

It

requires

believe in randomness, the possibility of inexplicable

you

bad

to

luck.

A lot oi us prefer to believe in sin, original or derivative, regarding evil as moral recompense or karma. Kushner's notion of evil

a challenging one;

is

even

God

Uncertainty, however,

Kushner assures us that the universe least,

presents us with a universe that

is

in his

is

not what we seek in religion, and

most recent book,

world

for

God

as

one that makes

proves

assume that mystery

Who

Needs God?,

ordered and purposeful after

he has chosen to believe that

see the

need

it

cannot entirely control.

He

exists.

itself

it is.

sense,"

"We seem

all.

Or, at

to need to

he observes, 67

as

if

our

Popular religious writers often

proves God.

M.

Scott Peck points

148

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

to recoveries he can't explain as signs o( grace, as

he doesn't understand

To describe

whatever

if

holy.

is

religion as wishful thinking

is

not to deny

its

usefulness or power. Faith can be self-fulfilling: to leap across

an abyss, you messed.

61

Or, as K&ishner says with

conviction, "You

choose

do,

become

a certain

to believe that there

universe.

by faith than doubt, James

arc better served

.

.

less

eloquence but equal

kind of person

and purpose

a pattern

is

when you

Certain things seem worth making the

.

and others seem

less scary.

.

.

And

.

to the

effort to

both you and the world

are better oft!' 69

Like most self-help writers, Kushner does sometimes seem

He

to be talking to children.

is

kind

a laborious writer, the

who

quotes an Oscar Wilde epigram and then explains

style

is

he's

counseled and references to popular culture (self-help

familiar;

he

on the

relies

writers invoke television

shows and popular songs the way

demics invoke Foucault). His most popular book confessional.

Kushner

of his son in

When Bad

is

in

tells his

own

it

—

He

there's

the shadow of a spiritual

at still

God," Kushner offers

many

popular Protestant

Good People, which anger and uncertainty to

crisis.

"It

is

all

right to be

says. 70

of the same, familiar messages found in

literature.

He

denigrates self-sufficiency,

American individualism, and competitiveness, and

way they

live.)

He

talks

celebrates

like

model

for

a

is

self-

to teach

good about themselves." 71 different vision of God and a dif-

themselves and

But Kushner does present ferent

criti-

about the importance of

esteem, asserting that "one of the goals of religion

people to

aca-

also partly

is

community. (Americans do penance by buying books that cize the

His

story about the tragic death

Things Happen

an interesting book because

angry

it.

usual anecdotes about people

feel

our relationship with Him.

God

We

a Good Parent Too

Is

God and we

can be angry with

can argue with Him.

are not called so strongly to submit. "Obedience

Kushner

the highest religious virtue,"

enough

to derive pleasure

dependence on

Him ....

to dare, even to

149

suggests.

is

We

not necessarily

"God

is

mature

from our growing up, not from our

[Religion] should call

choose wrongly

at

upon

us to grow,

times and learn from our

mistakes rather than being repeatedly pulled back from the

brink of using our

though

God

Him

It is

tionship with

God

is,

it).

The notion

that our rela-

in part, collegial qualifies the ideal of

self-surrender with self-reliance

up Mount

us, we are actively and our world. some will simply find

not a terribly popular image of God (I'm

not even sure Kushner endorses

ing

al-

in shaping ourselves

will call this heresy or hubris;

unsatisfactory.

it

minds." 72 Kushner suggests that

makes moral demands on

engaged with

Some

own

— with the image of Moses walk-

Sinai.

Alienation and anomie aside, there are worse credos for a participatory

democracy than the

Nineteenth-century

belief that actions matter.

Protestantism may have been mateand naive about the power of men, and

liberal

rialistic, imperialistic,

an occasional woman, to shape they were encouraged to

their environments,

but

at least

Now popular religion, like a twelve-

try.

step group, reminds us that we're powerless.

What's missing in a

model

much

popular religious literature today

for ethical action in the world. Focusing

vidual relationship with

God, on the

on

is

the indi-

state of individual belief,

while disparaging individualism, most popular religious writers offer

us

no

no thoughtful discussion about moral behavior, giving basis for

community. Practicing their

ism, they offer a laundry

list

own brand of legal-

of moral wrongs

—

abortion,

150

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

homosexuality, adultery, atheism, and rebellion

— but no guid-

ance in resolving moral dilemmas. Harold Kushner at

least offers

some comfort, acknowledging the pain oi placing your aging parent in a nursing home, suggesting that one goal of religion is to help us find peace when we have made "honest, painful choices about our lives." M. Scott Peck pays some attention to citizenship, calling generally for grass-roots, communityoriented activism. But people convinced of their ness as individuals don't

panionship; they

and community.

come

come

own

helpless-

together in democratic com-

together as mobs, bereft o{ both

self

The

Conclusion: Political

Problem

of SeltHelp, the Author

Idea

How

Which

Has

No

to Solve

"What makes man a political being is his faculty of acHannah Arendt wrote. Losing faith in your own willfulness and capacity to act, you eventually lose 1

tion," political theorist

freedom. That was one lesson of totalitarianism, which suc-

ceeded by organizing masses of disaffected, politically inactive, self-centered people

who felt

helpless

and

victimized, believed

they didn't matter, and sought "self-abandonment" in the

The recovery movement and other popular

state.

2

religious revivals

today are hardly analogs to Stalinism or Nazism, any more than the United States in the 1990s

Germany. Recovery is not and does not demand total recovering persons, recovery

is

Weimar movement followers; for many

analogous to

a regimented, political loyalty is

from

its

only a part of life, not the whole.

151

152

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

But an apolitical movement that helps shape the identities of a

few million people will have political consequences, and the

ideology o( recovery makes

quences might

What

me

question what those conse-

be.

are the political implications of a

mass movement that

counsels surrender o( will and submission to a higher power

Sing almost everyone as hapless victims of familial abuse?

What

arc the implications o( a tradition that tells us

—

lems can be readily solved, in a few simple steps in

which order and obedience

if

not sin?

prob-

technique are virtues and

to

respect for complexities, uncertainties, are signs o( failure,

all

a tradition

and

existential unease

The notion

o( selfhood that

emerges from recovery (the most vulgarized renditions of salvation by grace, positive thinking,

more conducive

The dangers

and mind

to totalitarianism

cure)

is

essentially

than democracy.

of exalting universally applicable techniques over

individual analysis, or instinct, are probably self-evident; even self-help experts

deny that they believe

before offering them.

The dangers

sion are obvious as well,

of will-lessness

and recovery experts

that they encourage dependence.

The

has been noticed and bemoaned, but for sociologists

"Queen

and

for a Day,"

in "quick fixes," right

and submis-

regularly

deny

popularity of victimhood it

political scientists.

remains a rich subject Like contestants

Americans of various persuasions

on

assert

competing claims of victimhood, vying for attention and support.

The

reflects

and as

intense preoccupation with addiction

an ominous sense of powerlessness that

race relations,

our view of the

What

and abuse

infects

gender

and notions of justice and heroism,

as well

self.

would call our victim syndrome is perhaps most apparent, and most remarked on, in racial conflicts. As I write this, Orthodox Jews and blacks in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn are at war over respective claims a self-help expert

Conclusion:

The

Political

Problem of Self-Help

153

of victimization, each feeling brutalized by history and the other.

The Tawana Brawley

case, involving false allegations of

motivated rape, demonstrated most dramatically the

racially

uses of victimization as a political ploy.

Long

after

her story

about being raped by members of the Ku Klux Klan was credited, Brawley

Mason,

and her

advisers,

Al Sharpton and C. Vernon

visited the Central Park jogger

gang rape

serve the differences in the court system

black victim." 3 fact,

Comparing Brawley

raped, beaten, brain damaged,

dis-

to a

between

trial to

a

woman who

and nearly

killed,

"ob-

white and was, in

Sharpton

and Mason exploited a pervasive sense of victimization among blacks that

is

almost matched by a sense of victimization

among

The racist populism of Jesse Helms and former Klansman David Duke and the rage that periodically erupts in racial

whites.

murders feed on white resentment of affirmative action and

empowerment of minorities, just as Willie Horton on white fear of black crime. Who's doing what to whom? Distinguishing victims from

the political

ads fed

oppressors seems merely a matter of perspective.

Tawana Brawley

reportedly concocted her tale of rape in order to explain her

absence from home, to appease an abusive stepfather. With different spokespersons, putting a different spin

on her

story,

she could have been a feminist cause celebre.

Read

as a parable of either race or gender, the

Brawley case

Not only may victimizamake you famous and the center of some small circle of attention, it offers absolution and no accountability and creates entitlements to sympathy, support, and reparations. As putative

delineated the appeal of victimization.

tion

victims oi racism, prosecutorial abuse, crime, or codependency,

people ton,

like

DC,

Marion Barry, recovering former mayor of Washingand New York subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz can

be self-righteous instead of remorseful, outraged instead of ashamed, and guilty of nothing but maybe a bit of bad judgment.

154

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

Of course,

conflicting claims of victimization are often at the

center of criminal cases, whether defendants allege they're being

prosecuted unfairly or that they were driven to crime by drugs,

mental disorders, or post-traumatic about our notion its

of

What's remarkable

stress.

victimhood today

is its

and

inclusiveness

spread beyond the courtroom's structured exchange of accu-

sations.

Smokers

are the victims of tobacco

teenagers arc the victims oi rock and victims o( their genes,

and

a

men and men

and whites

feel

feels

some

who

Not

vic-

looted the savings and loans, as well as by

With the

ment movement centered around fairly

still feel

assemblage of crooks and

ill-defined

their dysfunctional families.

can

Women

victimized by feminism; blacks

victimized by each other, and nearly everyone

victimized by

incompetents

feel

alcoholics are the

support group for the "Victims

o( Plastic Surgery" claims 3,500 members.

timized by

companies, troubled

roll,

rise

of a personal develop-

victimization, victimology

be called the study of our culture.

that recovery

is

entirely to blame.

The cultist fascination movement and may

with victimhood that fuels the recovery

account for political

its

success

is

complicated and partly rooted in

changes dating back to the 1960s: Warren Court deci-

sions expanding the rights of people accused of crimes helped

spawn

a populist victim's rights

movement. Feminism and the

movement underscored the historic victimization of women and minority males, demanding change that eventually made some white males feel like victims too. In its camcivil rights

paign against affirmative action, the Reagan administration

adopted the language of victimization, focusing

its

enforcement

on the "white male victims" of "reverse discrimination." Feminism engendered a men's movement and demands for men's rights. As rich white guy movie star Michael Douglas

efforts

"Guys are going through a terrible crisis because of women's unreasonable demands." 4 explained,

right

now

Conclusion:

The

Political

Problem of Self-Help

155

The men's consciousness movement, our newest major

per-

sonal development craze, celebrates the victimization of middle-

"Men

males.

class

especially,"

partly

belittling their

their fathers.

else?) their

5

mothers.

— young

men

blaming men's suffering

He

charges

women

with

husbands and encouraging boys

to disrespect

misogyny

in the men's

There

movement: Bly

now

suffering right

Robert Bly announces,

on (who

agreeable

are

is

a clear strain of

suggests that the

women

to "bust

is

them

way

for

in the

men

to deal with dis-

mouth." 6 But the fervor

with which masses of middle-class whites have responded to Bly's

men

message about the alienation of

also suggests

some

inarticulate, covert

from their fathers

resentment of the atten-

tion recently paid to the absence of father figures in poor,

African-American communities. his

laments about fathering an

Bly's

air

mythopoetic piety lends

of profundity: fathers have

demonic darkness," he explains. 7 Still, his complaints about the workaholism and emotional weakness

been "immersed

in

of middle-class fathers are

less

of children with no fathers at

compelling than the problems all,

mothers with no partners,

and young African-American males who

are less likely to sur-

vive into adulthood than their white counterparts.

cently has Bly acknowledged the

crisis

of

men

Only

re-

in the African-

American community. The recovery movement, from which the men's movement branched, offers similar sanctification to the complaints o{ middle-class people

who resent

being preempted by the pressing

problems of the poor. In recovery, whether or not you were housed, schooled, clothed, and fed in childhood, you can

still

claim to be metaphorically homeless. (John Bradshaw's television series offers you "Homecoming.") Your inner child displaced person, lost

movement's justice

and

alone.

cult of victimization

is

a

At its worst, the recovery mocks the notion o{ social

by denying that there are degrees of injustice.

It

equalizes

156 all

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

claims of abuse, actual and metaphoric.

sumes the

political,

The

personal sub-

with dire consequences for both politics

and personality development. In this dysfunctional society of victims,

and every abuser was once

a legacy o( abuse,

noia

is

perfectly logical:

it's

the specter o( child abuse

a

way of being

To be

a victim

is

its

—

it

a paranoiac's

is

it.

highly subjective to people

is

—

victims

That

you don't need to remember your abuse;

you need only imagine Truth

a victim too, para-

well adjusted.

may haunt the unconscious

sometimes makes amnesiacs of delight.

where everyone has

whose

central experience

victimization: the details, the facts of

any particular instance

who

are sure of their oppres-

of oppression, don't matter to those sion in general.

If

Al Sharpton were ever to admit that Tawana

Brawley's story was a

lie,

he might claim,

like a fiction writer,

If

Klan members hadn't attacked

Brawley, they'd surely attacked

some other young black woman,

that

told a deeper truth:

it

sometime, somewhere. ing

up crimes

in the

If

law enforcement

officials

weren't cover-

Brawley case, they'd surely covered up other

crimes against black people, at other times and places.

If

are collectively guilty of oppressing blacks, then guilt

whites

may be

assigned to individual whites arbitrarily, as arbitrarily as oppres-

sion has been meted out to blacks. It is

a perverse

individual guilt

no one crisis

is,"

form of justice that devalues truth and makes

and innocence

Hannah Arendt

"Where

8

all

and loan no one to blame. for facts combined

guilty, there's

also pointed out, a disregard

with certainty of belief is what gives mass propaganda For politically disaffected people

ment

[is]

a lie

to believe. 9

are guilty,

wrote. Or, as the savings

showed, when everyone's

As Arendt

irrelevant.

who

anyhow," the truth

is

its

power.

suspect that "every state-

simply what one chooses

The

Conclusion:

Problem of Self-Help

Political

who

This willingness of people

and out of

victimized

feel

157

control to believe anything or nothing hardly makes for respon-

Everyone knows that campaign slogans

sible political leadership.

are

lies,

so

many people who may have voted

for

George Bush

in 1988 because of his no-new-taxes pledge didn't ularly indignant

when he broke

ture of gullibility

and cynicism" 10

it.

What Arendt

also

seem

to

own

to expect

much

stickers proclaim. "Mistakes

from

who

makes victims of us at the

is

all.

don't take

their leaders. "Shit happens,"

were made," President

Reagan remarked, leaving us to wonder Truth in this world

terribly

actions or addictions don't seem

bumper

responsibility

mind

about the war in Nicaragua

or efforts to trade arms for hostages. People responsibility for their

partic-

tempered public reaction

to the Iran-Contra affair. Voters didn't

that administration officials lied

seem

called a "mix-

who made

as arbitrary as the

Anyone who has

them.

bureaucracy that

ever stood in line

motor vehicle bureau or argued with a clerk about a knows what it is to feel powerless. Being recognized

traffic ticket

as a victim

action

is

is

no

at least affirming.

Surviving as one

is

longer possible, heroes are people

Perhaps this

is

heroic

who

another legacy of the Holocaust.

It

When

wait.

severed

the tenuous connection between action and experience.

genocide can be understood, tims

who do nothing

wholly arbitrary,

it

can't

to provoke

be rationalized, To

it,

like terrorist attacks

except

on

exist,

its

If

vic-

genocide

is

airports or bystander

shootings in the Bronx. So the Holocaust gave us as heroes "survivors," victims

who endured the worst and emerged with

immeasurable moral authority, for which many compete today. Seeking the sanctity of victimhood, with cynicism or hysteria, antiabortion activists routinely claim that abortion caust,

which must make every newborn

experts,

childhood

itself is a

holocaust.

a survivor. Still,

is

a holo-

To recovery

internment in a

158

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

camp is a level of victimization that is hard to many do, as the litany of human rights abuses worldwide shows. Stateless people, AIDS victims, and people concentration

match, although

trapped in poverty in urban war zones claim their right to be

remembered It

that suffering shouldn't be recognized

isn't

not that

too.

shouldn't evoke awe as

it

much

as

its

and avenged,

infliction evokes

outrage, not that survival doesn't require shrewdness

strength as well as luck. But in

it,

if

we

felt

treat victims

The It

cult of

if

we valued action or

and

believed

the world was even partly of our making, we'd

with compassion and respect but not reverence.

victimhood

reflects a collective

sense of resignation.

responds to widespread feelings of helplessness in the face

of poverty, crime, disease, pollution, bureaucracy, taxes, deficit

spending, technology, terrorism, and whatever else composes the

crisis

of postmodernity.

It

is

the posture of people in a

Kafkaesque world of accidents, anonymous authority, and no explanations, a world in which language loses the power to

make sense and character This belief

hasn't

much

to

do with

in the individual's irrelevance

for a free society or a

vidual suffering.

It is

is

fate.

hardly a basis

compassionate one that responds to

indi-

hard to fashion a rational, secular response

to pervasive feelings of powerlessness that will keep participatory

democracy

alive.

You can

offer

if

limited expectations of

some

what

is

right for

its

own

capacity to act, people are

only modest answers: a suspen-

your actions matter), a tolerance for

sion of disbelief (act as

justice,

sake.

more

and the

self-respect to

do

own

in-

Confronted with likely to

their

seek refuge in nihilism,

fundamentalism and the Armageddon, or a sunnier belief in the dawn of a New Age (Don't Worry, Be Happy). Or they put all their faith in totalitarianism, authoritarian religious

wait for

the power of the isolated

they deny

it.

self.

Instead of giving in to victimhood,

Conclusion:

The

Problem of Self-Help

Political

159

A blinding fear of what can't be controlled probably accounted for the popularity of

Werner Erhard's

Forum. Erhard's philosophy trol,

assuring

est,

repackaged as

myth of total con-

offers people the

them that everything they do

are each wholly responsible for themselves

The

matters, that they

and wholly

in charge

of their destinies. That this makes no one responsible for any-

one

else

and quickly devolves

also part of all

its

into victim blaming

is

probably

appeal. In this world of winners, people take

the credit for success and

all

the blame for

failure, as if

good

fortune reflected a good moral character and bad fortune a

weakness oi

one

will:

you

are the hero of

your

own

life

and no

else's.

Erhard's vision

is

as terrible as Kafka's,

Nor

and

after the

Holo-

Whether the individual means everything or nothing, we have no model of heroism — if heroism includes empathy and some concern for justice — and without a model of heroism we have no model caust

it is

surely less true.

is it

particularly heroic.

of citizenship. Erhard's philosophy absolves you of a social conscience, as It

victimhood robs you of a sense of purpose.

takes a great leap of faith or the purest integrity to persist

in taking actions that

seem hopeless. In the 1960s and

activism was fueled by a belief in

we were happening

to the

its

world as

1970s,

own efficacy, a feeling that much as it was happening

to us. "It was fun to have that sense of engagement where you jumped on the earth and the earth jumped back," Abbie Hoffman recalled.11 His belief in the force of protest may have been only a little more realistic than his efforts to levitate the

Pentagon

(in 1968, in

Chicago, he claimed, protesters "destroyed

the two party system in this country and perhaps with toral politics"),12

but at

least

it

was energizing.

students seem tired politically or bored,

if

it

elec-

Now even college not

nihilistic, as

Hoffman complained. The challenge for their generation is to discover "how you struggle for social change without having

160

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

any hope," he said

in a

speech

the University of South

at

Carolina shortly before his suicide. fight

"I

wouldn't

know how

There

is

Kafka parable about

a

tance to the Law. denies

him

The

entry, with the

believes he should

a

gate to the

man, K, who seeks admit-

Law

is

open, but a gatekeeper

warning that he

gatekeeper; there are others,

is

only the lowliest

more powerful, along the way. K

have access to the Law but does not chal-

lenge the gatekeeper or try to slip past him. Instead he

sits

before the gate, pleading with the gatekeeper, bribing vain, rest

to

from that particular stance." 13

and watching him incessantly

o( his

for

many

down

him

in

long years, the

life.

"Never ask permission,"

I

once took the moral

settle for a low-level no," a friend suggested,

to be.

"Never

remembering what

on his first day at Harvard over twenty years ago. and waits, and in the end he is an old man talking

he'd learned

But

K

sits

to the fleas in his fur collar, begging the fleas to get the gate-

keeper to

let

him

This parable for a

is

crime that

in.

told by a priest in is

The

K

Trial.

is

being tried

never revealed to him, by an omnipotent

court with no discernible rules.

At

reason with the Court, but, like a

man

first

K

tries to argue, to

in quicksand, the

more

he struggles the deeper he sinks. Verdicts are always inevitable,

he learns. His

You can read

guilt

this as

tance o{ passivity. trusting the

argument

is

not just presumed;

an argument

it's

for faith

Maybe K should have done

assigned. 14

and calm accepnothing.

Court would have saved him. You can read

for nihilism

Maybe it

as

an

— "Curse God and die," Job's wife tells

him, while he's complaining that

God

isn't fair.

Or you

can

read K's story as a cautionary tale about the perils of victim-

Conclusion:

hood, the

perils of

The

Problem of Self-Help

Political

choosing blind

161

faith or nihilism, the virtues

of leaving some dilemmas unresolved.

There

are,

however, no dilemmas

like this in recovery,

higher powers are always entirely benign and faith

— overwhelmed with shame (the legacy and cut

of his abusive, "shaming" father) reality" (he

was always

where not in

would be considered

general a subject for debate. Today, Kafka terminally codependent

is

intellectualizing).

off

from

his "feeling

A recovering person

would probably dismiss it by saying that K was thinking with his head and not his heart, pointing out that you cannot reason your way to faith or recovery. interpreting K's story

But

if

faith

is

by nature profoundly

quate as a guide to worldly

your way to

faith,

affairs.

but neither can you base

as personal choices solely

on

able people in recovery, but the it

seems

like just

Rational, left-brain thinking

Not

also inade-

political as well

of course,

are,

movement

many

itself

reason-

so discredits

another symptom of codependency. is

generally associated with "denial."

movement

that the recovery

it is

revelation, as recovery's ideology

might encourage you to do. There reason that

irrational,

Perhaps you cannot reason

is

wholly responsible for the

movements in mind cure and positive

denigration of reason. Personal development

America tend

to be anti-intellectual:

thinking chose faith over reason too. In this respect the personal development tradition religious

than

The emphasis on

secular.

experience, or sensation, was the

American Protestantism. religion of the heart,"

pervaded "practically a "flight tuals

from

all

more

mark of nineteenth-century

Pietism, the individualistic, "intuitive

was exalted by

'reason' "

is

personal, emotional

revivalist

movements

the denominations."

by the churches was a

15

One

flight

that

result of

of intellec-

from the churches. According to historian Sidney Mead,

"Americans since 1800 have, in

effect,

been given the hard

162

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

choice between being intelligent according to the prevailing standards in their intellectual centers or being religious according to the standards prevalent in the denominations." 16

Personal development

movements have been even more conthan the churches Mead describes,

sistently hostile to intellectuals

and they have perversely combined the sumers may

idealize intuition,

but they tend to

And, looking outside themselves they're

anti-intellectualism of

myth of expertise.

the pietistic tradition with a

for

guidance on

encouraged to view the world solely

The measure

on the

self.

well as

any relationship,

Unconfined

Self-help con-

rely

on

experts.

how

in terms of

to be, effect

its

of any political or social event, as is

how

makes you feel. realm and bereft of any genuine

to the spiritual

appeal to intuition, pietism

it

reduced to a passive solipsism

is

The "mass man" organized by state, Hannah Arendt observed,

that threatens political freedom.

the Nazis

was the

and merged

into the

man who would

dignity" to maintain his

— belief, honor,

"sacrifice everything

own

security.

destroy than the privacy

and

There

is

surely a lesson

"Nothing proved

for acolytes of recovery in this:

who

private morality of people

thought of nothing but safeguarding their private It is

easier to

lives."

17

one of the oddities of American culture that heightened

concern for private

interests

— the "selfism" of recovery — can

coincide with the devaluation of privacy. People want to talk

about themselves, but in groups or on TV.

It

irony of history that in 1990, as Eastern Europe

Union seemed

to

is perhaps an and the Soviet

be moving toward democracy, we may have

been unwittingly eroding

its

foundation

as active, willful political beings.

personal development ethos

is

I

— a view of ourselves

can't help

wondering

if

the

contagious. Shortly after the

aborted August 1991 coup by hardliners in the Soviet Union,

which occurred while that

I

I

was immersed in

this

book,

I

dreamt

attended a raucous session of the Russian Parliament to

Conclusion:

The

Problem o{ Self-Help

Political

163

observe the beginnings of democratization. People were de-

nouncing the Communist specificity, until a

her

you

I

podium and

woman said,

party, reciting

its

crimes with

much

presiding over the session leaned into

"Enough

facts,

my

friends. Tell us

how

feel."

waver between being amused by personal development move-

ments and disturbed by them, which,

in the end,

Borrowing blithely from so many sources

priate.

religion, positive thinking,

are entitled to

be happy

seems appro-

— psychology,

and the presumption that Americans

—

the recovery movement, for one,

may be too confused ideologically to ever pose a serious threat. The personal development tradition in general is rife with inconsistencies

and outright contradictions. Pietism

pragmatism: the primacy of feelings

macy of techniques. Individualism

is

coexists with obeisance to

the crowd: the drive for individual fulfillment

maybe

coexists with

rivaled only by the pri-

is

rivaled,

and

surpassed, by the desire to conform. Perhaps this only

American democracy itself, which survived two hundred years of self-help

mirrors the contradictions in

remind myself,

has,

I

and

will

probably survive a few more.

The packaging of conventional wisdom about

personality de-

and gender roles as and individualism with the reality of majority rule and a hunger to belong. Eager for rules on how to be an individual, Americans consume millions oi self-help books every year, choosing from an array of velopment,

spirituality, family

self-help reconciles

American

experts as wide as the array of

and

social acceptance, they

success,

TV dinners. Eager for company

form support groups to make sure

the quest for self-actualization

of individuals to shape their

life,

ideals of choice

isn't lonely.

own

Glorifying the power

identities,

they seek experts,

gurus, guidance from someone, anyone, other than themselves.

164

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

The

self-help industry exploits

singular,

if

singularity

alone. In doing so, literature

it

for self

performs a political function. Self-help

tends to ensure that the selves readers find or make

and

are standardized

socially congenial.

tive quest for individual identity

The

readers' fears of being

its

means embarking on the search

is

The

potentially disrup-

collectivized.

perverse relationship between popular notions of

actualization

and self-effacement

is

most

self-

clearly delineated

by

cults: selves are actualized

by obedience, worship of a higher

and submersion

regimented, insular collective. This

self,

does not

Moonie

mean

in a

that every self-help

or that every expert

is

consumer

is

a potential

obsessed with power. Cults are

the extreme end of a continuum, beginning with support

at

groups, that most people don't traverse; in personal

development seem too

ing your past lives with Shirley step

silly

and many

to be dangerous. Explor-

MacLaine or chanting

mantra with your support group may be

entertainments. But there

is

exercises

a relationship

fairly

a twelve-

harmless

between the hunger

on individual development, inspiring the silliest help fads, and the abdication of individual responsibility;

for rules

relationship

To

is

criticize

dramatized by

self-

that

cults.

the conformity implicit in self-help you needn't

deny the solace people find

in collectivity or suggest that they

are better off pursuing their

bad habits individually than

re-

forming them in groups. You needn't question the sincerity o( recovery proselytizers or even the benefits offered by a few profiteers:

we

only books. ity

are

We

and search

reflects?

The

all

better off

if

self-proclaimed addicts

will all survive recovery.

consume

But what of the

for simple absolutes the recovery

passiv-

movement

putative message of codependency literature

—

and shouldn't spend our lives pleasing or heeding others — is undermined by the medium in which it is conveyed. Merely buying a self-help book is an

that

we

are responsible for ourselves

Conclusion: act of

dependence, a

The

refusal to

a solitary creative act

and

that are the price of

its

What

I

to

Problem of Self-Help

experts rely

on

all

165

confront the complexities of

endure the loneliness and

failures

surprises.

miss most in the self-help tradition

provisation. For

ality

Political

their talk

about

is

a spirit of im-

intuitive, "feeling realities,"

readers' willingness to surrender not just ration-

but intuition, by which they might lead themselves to

unsuspected places. Experts exalt intuition, but they don't actually

value

it.

How could they? It would threaten their business

much more than

intellectualism ever has or could.

Imagine America without self-help books. Imagine everyone

and forging their identities, using and powers of analysis and maybe some help from their friends. Imagine that. I can't. I have no cure for America's self-help habit and no advice to offer on how to find one. (This is what publishers disparage as a "negative" conclusion to a book.) I have no expectations that the "problem" of self-help ever will be solved. Instead, I expect more selfgrappling with their problems

their

own

intuitions

help books, not

less,

market to exploit

—

now

that publishers have a broad

Codependency books may soon be but the self-help genre

will

as passe as last year's diet,

always be in fashion. Self-help books

market authority in a culture that

idealizes individualism

not thinking and fears the isolation of being

be the axe for the frozen sea within is

how we

skate.

new

wanna-be-"wild" middle-class men.

us,"

free.

but

"A book must

Kafka wrote. Self-help

.

Notes

Introduction 1.

Sigmund Freud,

Civilization

and

Its

Discontents

(New

York: Norton,

1961), 49. 2.

Robert A. Becker, Addicted

Communications,

Misery (Deerfield Beach,

to

Men

3.

Beverly DeAngelis, Secrets About

4.

(New York: Delacorte Press, 1990), 156. Edwin McDowell, "What Students Read To,"

New

Fla.:

Health

Inc., 1989), 60.

York Times, July

ONE — Chances

9,

Every

Woman

Should

When They

Know

Don't Have

1990, sec. C, p. 16.

Are, You're Codependent Too:

Recovery Books 1

"Co-Dependency:

A Special Report from the First National Confer-

ence" (Deerfield Beach, 2.

Melody

Beattie,

Fla.:

Codependent

U.S. Journal Training, Inc., 1989).

No More (New

York: Harper &. Row,

1989), 31.

A

3.

"Co-Dependency:

4.

Conversation with Peter Vegso, Health Communications,

December 5.

Special Report," 6. Inc.,

1989.

John Bradshaw, Bradshaw On: The Family (Deerfield Beach, Health Communications, Inc., 1988), 43, 26.

Fla.:

6. Ibid., 10. 7. Ibid., 77.

8.

Charlotte Davis Kasl, Women, Sex and Addiction

& Fields,

(New

York: Ticknor

1989), 31.

167

168 9.

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

Anne Wilson

Schaef, Co-Dependence: Misunderstood

(New York: Harper

&

Row, 1986),

10.

Bradshaw, Bradshaw On: The Family,

11.

Anne Wilson Harper

&

When

Schaef,

Row,

Schaef, Co-Dependence: Misunderstood Schaef,

14.

Carla Wills-Brandon,

Society

Is

It

Love or

Is

It

Mistreated, 67. 5.

Sex? (Deerfield Beach, Fla.:

(Deerfield Beach, Fla.: Health

1989), 152.

Inc.,

Jeremiah Abrams, ed., Reclaiming the Inner Child (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1990),

1.

Codependent N'o More, 114-115.

17.

Melody

18.

Bradshaw, Bradshaw On: The Family, 2^6.

19.

York:

1989).

Inc.,

Lvnne Namka, The Doormat Syndrome

Communications,

—

Becomes an Addict,

Health Communications,

16.

(New

1988).

13.

15.

Mistreated

47.

Society Becomes an Addict

12.

When

—

35.

Harlan

&

Beattie,

J.

Wechsler, What's So Bad About Guilt?

(New

York:

Simon

Schuster, 1990), 170.

mka, The Doormat Syndrome,

rman Vincent

75.

The Power

Peale,

of Positwe Thinking

(New

York:

Fawcett Books, 1952). 22.

William G. McLoughlin,

Modem

Revivalism

(New

York: Ronald Press,

1952). 23. Ibid., 84. 24. See

Stanton

Peele,

The Diseasing

of

America (Lexington, Mass.:

Lexington Books, 1985). 25.

Bradshaw, Bradshaw On: The Family, 92.

26. Ibid., 199.

THREE Thinking

Don't Worry, Be Happy: Positive

to est

The Power

1.

Peale,

2.

Norman Vincent

of Positive Thinking, 70, 20,

Peale

and Smiley Blanton,

York: Fawcett Books, 1950), 28. 3. Peale,

The Power

4. Ibid., 33,

of Positive Thinking, 70, 30.

127, 122.

ix.

Faith

Is

the

Answer (New

.

Motes

5.

Ibid., 29,

169

124.

6. Ibid.,

124.

7.

Ibid.,

125.

8.

William James, The

Varieties of Religious

Experience

(New

York:

Penguin Books, 1985), 87. 9. Ibid., 95.

10. Ibid., 96, 11.

163.

Donald Meyer, The

Positive Thinkers

(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan

University Press, 1965), 279. 12. Peale,

The Power

13. Ibid.,

100.

of Positive Thinking, 65, 94.

14. Ibid. 15. Ibid.,

157.

16. Ibid.,

135.

17. Ibid.,

134.

18.

Napoleon

Hill,

Think and Grow Rich (New York: Fawcett Books,

1960). 19. Ibid., 15, 16.

20. Ibid., Publisher's Preface. 21. Ibid., 53. 22. Ibid., 29. 23. Ibid., 49.

24. Ibid., 67. 25. Ibid., 214. 26.

Mark

Twain, Christian Science (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books

v

1986), 44. 27.

Mary Baker Eddy,

Science

and Health (Boston: Christian Science Pub-

lishing, 1906), 97.

28. Twain, Christian Science, 72. 29.

Meyer, The

30.

Abraham H. Maslow, The

Positive Thinkers, 77.

Farther Reaches of

Human

Nature (New

York: Penguin Books, 1971), 13, 24. 3

1

Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1968), 155.

32. Ibid., 21. 33. Ibid., 10.

of Being (Princeton,

N

.].:

170

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

34. Ibid.

Human

J5.

Maslow, The Farther Reaches of

36.

Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being,

Nature,

9.

159.

37. Ibid., 79. 38.

Ellen

Herman, "Being and Doing: Humanistic Psychology and the

Spirit of the 1960s " in

Barbara L. Tischler,

(New Brunswick,

Rutgers University Press, forthcoming).

N.J.:

39.

Maslow, The Farther Reaches

40.

Quoted

of

Human

ed., Sights on the Sixties

Nature, 57.

Herman, "Being and Doing: Humanistic Psychology and

in

the Spirit of the 1960s." 41.

Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being,

42.

Abbie Hoffman, The

Best of

57.

Abbie Hoffman (New York: Four Walls

Eight Windows, 1989), 42. 43. Ibid., 41. 44.

Herman, "Being and Doing: Humanistic Psychology and the

Spirit

o( the 1960s." 45.

Maslow, The Farther Reaches of .

ce Brothers,

Hou

to

Human

Nature,

7.

Get Whatever You Want Out of Life (New York:

Ballantine Books, 1978). 47. Ibid.,

1.

48. Ibid., 28-31. 49. Ibid., 48-51. 50. Ibid., 44. 51. Ibid.,

145.

52. Ibid., 57-58,

62

157.

53. Ibid., 146-147. 54. Ibid., 163-169.

55. Ibid., 96. 56. William

Warren Bartley III, Werner Erhard (New York:

Potter, 1978), 167.

57. Ibid., 62, 108, 147. 58.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Off Center (New York: Dial Press, 1980), 197-220.

59. Bartley,

Werner Erhard, 199.

60. Harrison,

Off Center, 206. and Health, 207.

61. Eddy, Science 62. James,

The

Varieties of Religious Experience, 362.

Notes

FOUR —

Groups

In Step: Support

1.

"Clean and Sober

2.

Trish Hall,

—

and Agnostic," Newsweek, July 8, 1991, 62-63. to Treat Alcoholism Discards Spiritualism of

"New Way

AA; New

York Times,

—

December

24, 1990, sec.

A,

p.

1.

and Agnostic," Newsweek.

3.

"Clean and Sober

4.

I

5.

"Unite and Conquer," Newsweek, February

6.

171

am quoting Nancy Rosenblum, paraphrasing Conor Cruise O'Brien. 5,

1990, 50.

"The Trauma Story: The Psychiatric Care of Refugee Survivors of Violence and Torture," in Frank M. Ochberg, ed., Post-Traumatic Therapy and Victims of Violence (New York: Richard

Mollica,

F.

Brunner/Mazel, 1988), 297, 309-310. 7.

Richard ment: for

F.

Mollica and Russell R. Jalbert,

The Mental Health

"Community of ConfineThe World Federation

Crisis in Site Two,"

Mental Health, February 1989,

14.

8. Ibid.

SIX 1.

— Stop

Making

Shirley MacLaine,

It's

Sense:

New Age

All in the Playing

(New

York:

Bantam Books,

1988). 2.

Stephen R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly York:

3.

Simon

& Schuster,

Twain, Christian Science,

Effective People

(New

1989).

21.

4. Ibid., 70. 5.

Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly

6. Ibid., 7.

Effective People, 47.

48-49, 52.

Michael Lewis, "Every

Man

a Milken,"

New

Republic,

October

29,

1990, 16. 8.

Will Nixon,

ber 9.

7,

"The

Flight from

New Age,"

Publishers Weekly,

Decem-

1990, 32.

"Programs," Werner Erhard &. Associates, 1989.

10.

Richard Leviton, "Meditation Goes High-Tech," East West, March

11.

Nixon, "The Flight from

1990, 57.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.,

23-24.

New

Age,"

21.

.

172

I'M

14. Ibid., 15.

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

26-30.

Robert Bly,

John (Reading, Mass.: AddisorvWesley, 1990).

Iron

16. Ibid., 98, 249. 17.

Thomas, "Following the Beat of a

Jack

August

21,

Different

Drum," Boston Globe,

1991, 43.

SEVEN - God

Is

Good

a

Parent Too: Self-Help

and Popular Theology 1

M.

Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

(New

York:

Simon ck

Schuster,

1978), 172.

3.

M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 123. James Dobson, Lote Must Be Tough (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1983).

4.

David Seamands, Healing

2.

Books, 1981), 5.

Charles Swindoll, 111.:

6.

Damaged Emotions (Wheaton,

for

111.:

Victor

11.

Come

Before Winter

and Share

M>

Hope, (Wheaton,

Living Books, 1985), 406.

Robert Hemfelt, Frank Minirth, Paul Meier, Love ville:

Thomas

Is

a Choice (Nash-

Nelson, 1989), 277.

7.

See Katy Butler, "Spirituality and Therapy: Toward a Partnership,"

8.

Fulton Sheen, Peace of Soul (New York: Whittlesey House, 1949),

9.

Peck, The Road Less Traveled, 223.

L'tne Reader,

10.

M.

Januarv February 1991, 75-83.

Scott Peck, People of the Lie

(New York: Simon

&

70.

Schuster,

1983), 83. 11.

Peck,

The Road

Less Traveled, 16, 77, 279.

12. Peck, People of the Lie, 205. 13. Peck,

The Road

14. Peck,

The

15. Peck,

The Road

Less Traveled, 161, 270.

Different

Drum,

16. Peck, People of the Lie,

17.

176.

Less Traveled, 44, 22, 81.

78-79, 83.

James Dobson, Parenting

Isn't for

Cowards

(Dallas:

Word

Publishing,

1987), 89. 18.

Charles Swindoll, Improving Your Serve (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1982), 83, 84.

Notes 19. Peck,

The

Different

Drum,

173

240.

20. Ibid., 288. 21.

Sheen, Peace of Soul, 188.

22. Peck, People of the Lie, 258.

23. Peck,

The

Different

Drum,

130.

24. Ibid., 124. 25. Peck,

The Road

Less Traveled, 170, 171.

26. Peck, People of the Lie, 154, 155. 27. Ibid., 173. 28. Ibid., 159. 29. Ibid., 176.

30. Peck,

The Road

Less Traveled, 163.

31. Peck, People of the Lie, 78. 32.

Mary McCarthy, Memories

of a Catholic Girlhood

(New

York: Har-

court Brace, 1946), 23. 33. Charles

Swindoll,

Grace Awakening (Dallas:

Word

Publishing,

1990), 87.

34. Ibid., 231.

35. Ibid., xv. 36. Ibid., 25. 37. Charles Stanley, Eternal Security (Nashville: 38. Swindoll,

Come

Thomas Nelson,

1990).

Before Winter, 114.

39. Ibid., 148-149. 40. Swindoll, Improving Your Serve, 133. 41. Swindoll,

Come

Before Winter, 164.

42. Swindoll, Improving Your Serve, 39. 43. Charles Swindoll, Strengthening Your Grip (Dallas:

Word

Publishing,

1982), 197.

44. Charles Swindoll, Dropping Your

Guard (New York: Bantam Books,

1987), 35, 38.

45. Swindoll, Strengthening Your Grip, 199, 200. 46. Swindoll, Improving Your Serve, 48.

47.

Gordon MacDonald,

Ordering Your Private World (Nashville:

Nelson, 1984), 68, 75. 48. Ibid., 31, 45. 49. Ibid., 116, 111-112.

Thomas

174

I'M

50. Ibid.,

51.

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

156.

Dobson, Love Must Be Tough,

45.

52. Ibid., 150, 16. 53. Ibid., 54.

164, 159.

James Dobson, Dare

Discipline

to

(Wheaton,

Living Books,

111.:

1970), 16. 55.

Dobson,

Parenting Isn't for Cowards, 110.

56. Ibid., 106, 57.

107.

David Seamands,

Putting

Away

Childish Things (Wheaton,

111.:

Victor

Books, 1982), 122, 125. 58.

Seamands, Healing

59. Ibid.,

60.

for

Damaged

Emotions, 79-93.

117, 49.

David Seamands, Healing

of

Memories (Wheaton,

111.:

Victor Books,

1985), 100-103, 91. 61. James,

The

Varieties of Religious Experience,

The Will

62. William James, 63. James, 64.

The

to

Believe

(New

11-12.

York: Dover, 1956),

9.

Varieties of Religious Experience, 204.

David Seamands, Healing Grace (Wheaton,

111.:

Victor Books, 1988),

137.

65.

Harold Kushner,

Who Needs God! (New York: Pocket Books,

1989), 71.

66. Ibid., 196. 67. Ibid., 32.

68. James,

The

69. Kushner, 70.

Will

Who

Harold Kushner,

Avon Books,

Who

to Believe,

59.

Needs God',

When Bad

1981),

34.

Things Happen

to

Good

People

(New

York:

108.

71.

Kushner,

72.

Harold Kushner, When All You've Ever Wanted Isnt Enough (New

Needs God?,

198.

York: Pocket Books, 1986), 127, 132.

Conclusion 1.

Hannah Arendt,

Crises of the Republic

(New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1972), 179. 2.

Hannah Arendt, The

Origins of Totalitarianism

Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 305-389.

(New

York: Harcourt

Notes

175

3.

Ronald Sullivan, "Police Said to Ignore Warnings on Jogger Suspect,"

4.

Quoted

5.

Bly, Iron John, 27.

New

York Times, July 31, 1990, sec. in

Women (New 6. Faludi,

2, p.

3

(photo caption).

Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War on American York:

Crown,

1991),

121.

Backlash, 310.

7.

Bly, Iron )ohn, 100.

8.

Arendt, Crises of the Republic, 162.

9.

Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 382.

10. Ibid. 11.

Hoffman, The

Best of

Abbie Hoffman, 382.

12. Ibid., 65. 13. Ibid.,

402.

(New

14.

Franz Kafka, The Trial

15.

Sidney Mead, The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity

America (New York: Harper

York: Schocken Books, 1974), 213-215.

& Row,

1963), 125-130.

16. Ibid., 129. 17.

Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 338.

in

Index

Abortion,

19,

Academics,

Cambodian

146, 149, 157

Abrams, Jeremiah,

102-3, 137, 148

41, 43, 59,

Adult Children of Alcoholics,

27, 29,

African-Americans, 4-5, 53, 88, 152-56

Anonymous,

1-2, 12, 16,

9, 10, 13, 21, 25, 27, 29,

70-75,77-78,81, Alcoholics Allport,

154. See also

Anonymous

Gordon, 57

9,

Celebrities, confessions of, 4, 29, 98, 112

151,

Asian

Cambodian

Child within,

26-27, 78, 87,

18,

the. See Inner child

113, 124

156, 157, 162

refugees

also

God, Religion

Cinderella complex,

Clinton,

Bill,

10,

19

102

Codependency, 2-4, 9-28,

Bakker, Jim, 129

Melody,

43, 70,

73-74, 78, 87-90, 94-96, 99-100,

114

Barry, Marion, 153 Beattie,

12,

Christianity, 19-20, 119, 135-36. See

Arendt, Hannah,

Bantam Books,

9,

90, 133, 135, 142-43, 152, 156

Christian Science, 46, 55, 66, 104,

12, 13

refugees. See

64

31, 63,

theory

American Humanist Association, 74 Anorexia,

Carnegie, Dale,

Child abuse,

70-77, 80, 99, 140

Alcoholism,

Carnegie, Andrew, 52, 54

Carter, Jimmy, 42

70, 74, 77-78, 81

Alcoholics

refugees, 81-85

Campbell, Joseph, 115

17

115, 121, 124, 153, 161,

10,

11,

18,

99

164-65;

definition of, 10

Codependents Anonymous,

Becker, Robert A., 7 Bellah, Robert, 126

70, 73-74,

78

Bly, Robert, 87,

115,

Bradshaw, John,

4,

155

11-15, 19, 27, 39,

80, 94, 99, 155

Brawley, Tawana, 153, 156

Conferences,

self-help,

Confessions, 16-17,

87-100

19, 99,

148;

celebrity, 4, 29, 98, 112. See also

Testifying

Brothers, Joyce, 19, 61-63

Covey, Stephen, 102, 106-7

Brown, Helen Gurley, 37

Cultism, 22, 154, 164; different from

Bundy, Ted, 18

recovery programs, 77

Bush, George and Barbara, 29, 157

177

178

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

I'M

Davidson,

DeAngehs, \

106-7, 116; in self-help literature, 119-50. See also Christianity, Religion

29

12,

Beverlv,

Democracy. Denial,

M

Joy,

Davis, Tatn,

Goetz, Bernhard, 153

7

Grief work,

22, 46, 60, S3, 105, 15

26, 28, 90,

Divine, Father,

1M

121,

160

5

Dobson, James, Donahue. Phil.

13, 36, 88, 89, 91

Guilt, 18, 20, 47, 62-63, 90, 146, 156,

120, J5,

121, J7,

128-29, 141

»,

Gulf War,

42, 84

41

Doubledav, 108

Harper, selt-help publishers,

Douglas, Michael, 154

Harrison, Barbara Grizzuti, 64

N

Dowling, Colette. Drugs.

J,

10,

9,

Hawking, Stephen,

114

Health Communications,

-

11

Inc.,

11,

88,

97

M

Dukakis. Kitty, 29,

Helms,

Duke. David

Hill,

Jesse,

1

5

Napoleon,

3

46, 51-53, 64-65, 106,

113

Man

Eddy,

Bake*

45, $5, 67, 104. 113

Erhard, Werner, 45, 53, 63-67, 99, 159 108-9, 159. See also

7,

Forum Evil,

concepts

18-19, 49, 57, 67,

of,

3,

152,

154;

Homosexuality,

33,

Horton,

15

Willie,

Hubbard,

L.

141-42, 150

3

Ron, 99

potential

movement, 64

Inner child theory, 17-18, 20, 36, 8c

Families, 21, 23-24, 30, 37, 78, 91, 144,

Holocaust, 27, 80, 128, 138, 157, 159

Human

131-34, 140, 147

128,

Hoffman, Abbie, 59-60, 159-60

systems theory,

97, 101, 105,

155

12-14. See also Child, Parents

Feminism, 142,

92-94, 103, 115-16,

31, 89,

153-54. See also

Women

James, William, 48-49, 67, 120, 123, 148

145,

Finnev, Charles Grandison, 22-23

Hying bov svndrome, 87, 89-91 Forum, The, 67, 108-13, 116, 159.

Jargon,

13,

See

New

Age,

Jewish perspectives, 20, 120, 134, 136-38, 146-49, 152

also est

Franklin, Ben, 45

Freud, Sigmund,

Jones, Jim, 22 2,

Fulghum, Robert,

18,

124,

Journaling, 13, 139

125

7

Julia,

Raul, 112

Jung, Carl,

Garvey, Marcus,

15, 61, 64, 67;

101-17

17,

105, 115

5

"Geraldo" (televison talk show),

32,

Kaye, Yvonne, 88, 92

Glieck, James, 114

God, and recovery movement,

Kafka, Franz, 20, 120, 158-61, 165 Kasl, Charlotte Davis, 14

33, 34, 37

2,

14,

Khmer Rouge,

81, 82, 85

19-20, 22-23, 47-48, 50-51, 55-56,

Kimbra, Dennis, 53

58, 66, 70-71, 74-76, 91, 100, 104,

Klein, Joe, 102

Kushner, Harold, 120, 134, 146-50

Index

Lazaris (channeling entity), 101, 109

Norman

Vincent,

45-51,

21, 35,

53-54, 57, 62-63, 66, 113

Lee, John, 87, 89-91, 98, 100

Left-brain thinking, 16, 101-3, 113,

M.

Peck,

Scott, 120-121, 125-29,

131-34, 144, 147, 150

161

117,

Peale,

179

Pan complex,

Lewis, Michael, 107

Peter

Liebman, Joshua,

Philadelphia, self-help conference in,

123, 130, 135, 147

10

88-99

McCarthy, Mary, 134

Pietism, 161, 163

MacDonald, Gordon, MacGraw, AH, 29 MacLaine,

131,

139-41

Playboy philosophy, 92 Political action,

Shirley, 45, 101, 109, 164

117, 137,

59-60, 79, 94, 105,

149-65

Huron Statement,

Maslow, Abraham, 54, 56-60

Port

Mason, C. Vernon, 153

Positive thinking, 45-67, 119, 152, 161

Mead, Sidney,

Men,

59

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),

161

movement,

15-16, 113; men's

13,

81-85, 154

Powell, Colin, 42

87-92, 115-16, 154-55, 165

Meyer, Donald, 49

Prayer, 53, 140; Serenity, 70, 72, 75

Middelton-Moz, Jane, 93-94 Miller, Joy, 95-96

Prentice Hall,

Mind

cure, 49, 54, 55, 66, 113, 119, 152

Minirth, Frank, 124

Minirth-Meier

11

Psychology, 120, 123, 130, 133, 144-45;

humanistic, 57-61; psychotherapy, 30, 79

clinic,

19, 124,

144

Publishing industry, recovery,

11,

15,

Moon, Reverend, 99

19, 88, 97,

Moyers,

163-65. See also individual publishers

Bill,

115

Namka, Lynne,

16,

20

Rational Recovery, 74

Reagan, Michael, 29

Narcissism, 18, 27, 133

Anonymous,

Narcotics

25, 70, 72-73,

75-76

Reagan, Ronald and Nancy,

12, 154,

157

New Age

mysticism,

9,

14-15, 17, 19,

23, 45, 53, 67, 101-17, 119, 126, 158

New New

108, 114-15, 120-21,

Thought,

5,

45, 53, 119, 123-24

York Times, 11

Newsweek,

74,

Recovery movement, Religion,

3,

9-28

and recovery movement,

God,

161-62. See also Christianity,

80

3,

18-23, 30, 53-54, 92, 104-13, 119-50,

Jewish perspectives Rivera, Geraldo, 32, 33, 34, 37

"Oprah"

(television talk show). See

Winfrey,

Oprah

Orwell, George,

Overeaters

10,

Rogers, Carl, 57

Ron, Dr., 36-37 105

Anonymous, 73-74

Schaef,

Anne

Wilson,

10,

11,

14

Schwarzkopf, Norman, 42 Parent,

2,

12, 26, 78, 135;

God

119-50. See also Child, Family

Peak experiences, 58, 64

as,

Scientology, 64, 99

Seamands, David,

122, 124, 145

Self-actualization, 54, 56-62, 101, 105

180

I'M

DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL

Self-esteem, 9, 26, 33, 35-36, 46, 70,

144

79, 88, 96, 123, 127, 135,

Selfism. :;. 40, 59,

t>4,

10,

13,

16.

>3, 69,

74

69-85, 105, 125, 135, 139, 164

U

47 Volker, Marilyn, 87, 98, 99

ft

\

90, 135, 161

Sharpton, Al, 153, 156

War,

Sheen. Fulton, 125, 129-30, 134

Wealth, 51-53, 61, 65, 107-13

Shopping addiction,

Wechsler, Rabbi Harlan

Smoking,

25. 26.

),

4,

10

Stanley, Charles,

15,

16, 42, 84,

Whitfield, Charles,

154

1

Winfrey, Oprah, Woitetz, Janet,

129, 131, 152

20

2,

14, 25,

69-85

Women, and

1,

5,

35-43, 100

recovery, 14-16, 19, 45,

89-95,

50, 73-74,

Sw.ndoll. Charles. 12-21, 128-29, 135,

Cambodian, 81-85;

137-39

33,

11

Swaggart, Jimmy, 19

113,

141,

for Sobriety, 74

Workshops,

Tarcher, Jeremy, 115

self-help,

Television, 4, 8, 29-43, 51, 70, 93, 98, 162. See also Winfrey,

Oprah

and testimony, 109,

Confessions

2,

29-43,

111-13. See also

Zen Buddhism, 64

154-55;

self-image of,

36-37. See also Feminism

Women

75, 79,

J.,

11

Wills-Brandon, Carla, 16

\6

Submission, and surrender, 21-22,

Support groups,

117

Whitman, Walt, 48

Somers, Suzanne

Testifying,

17, 28,

152-58

36, 84, 95,

Visualisation, 20, 66; "picturize," 21,

Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous,

Shaming.

19,

Victimhood, and survivorship,

115-16, 132-33, 141. 153;

homosexuality; 33, 141-42. 149; sex

60.

11

6^-70, 87, 95,

19,

addiction. 19,

Nelson, religious press,

Twain, Mark, 55, 66, 104 Twelve-step programs, 1-3, 21, 25, 36,

123

Sexual issues in recovery movement, 8,

Thomas

87-100

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