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Scripting Addiction : The Politics of Therapeutic Talk and American Sobriety / E. Summerson Carr.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2010]Copyright date: ©2011Edition: Course BookDescription: 1 online resource (336 p.) : 2 halftones. 11 line illus. 2 tablesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691144504
  • 9781400836659
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 362.29 22
LOC classification:
  • GN296 .C37 2011eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. Considering the Politics of Therapeutic Language -- CHAPTER ONE. Identifying Icons and the Policies of Personhood -- CHAPTER TWO. Taking Them In and Talking It Out -- CHAPTER THREE. Clinographies of Addiction -- CHAPTER FOUR. Addicted Indexes and Metalinguistic Fixes -- CHAPTER FIVE. Therapeutic Scenes on an Administrative Stage -- CHAPTER SIX. Flipping the Script -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index
Summary: Scripting Addiction takes readers into the highly ritualized world of mainstream American addiction treatment. It is a world where clinical practitioners evaluate how drug users speak about themselves and their problems, and where the ideal of "healthy" talk is explicitly promoted, carefully monitored, and identified as the primary sign of therapeutic progress. The book explores the puzzling question: why do addiction counselors dedicate themselves to reconciling drug users' relationship to language in order to reconfigure their relationship to drugs? To answer this question, anthropologist Summerson Carr traces the charged interactions between counselors, clients, and case managers at "Fresh Beginnings," an addiction treatment program for homeless women in the midwestern United States. She shows that shelter, food, and even the custody of children hang in the balance of everyday therapeutic exchanges, such as clinical assessments, individual therapy sessions, and self-help meetings. Acutely aware of the high stakes of self-representation, experienced clients analyze and learn to effectively perform prescribed ways of speaking, a mimetic practice they call "flipping the script." As a clinical ethnography, Scripting Addiction examines how decades of clinical theorizing about addiction, language, self-knowledge, and sobriety is manifested in interactions between counselors and clients. As an ethnography of the contemporary United States, the book demonstrates the complex cultural roots of the powerful clinical ideas that shape therapeutic transactions--and by extension administrative routines and institutional dynamics--at sites such as "Fresh Beginnings."
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400836659

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. Considering the Politics of Therapeutic Language -- CHAPTER ONE. Identifying Icons and the Policies of Personhood -- CHAPTER TWO. Taking Them In and Talking It Out -- CHAPTER THREE. Clinographies of Addiction -- CHAPTER FOUR. Addicted Indexes and Metalinguistic Fixes -- CHAPTER FIVE. Therapeutic Scenes on an Administrative Stage -- CHAPTER SIX. Flipping the Script -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Scripting Addiction takes readers into the highly ritualized world of mainstream American addiction treatment. It is a world where clinical practitioners evaluate how drug users speak about themselves and their problems, and where the ideal of "healthy" talk is explicitly promoted, carefully monitored, and identified as the primary sign of therapeutic progress. The book explores the puzzling question: why do addiction counselors dedicate themselves to reconciling drug users' relationship to language in order to reconfigure their relationship to drugs? To answer this question, anthropologist Summerson Carr traces the charged interactions between counselors, clients, and case managers at "Fresh Beginnings," an addiction treatment program for homeless women in the midwestern United States. She shows that shelter, food, and even the custody of children hang in the balance of everyday therapeutic exchanges, such as clinical assessments, individual therapy sessions, and self-help meetings. Acutely aware of the high stakes of self-representation, experienced clients analyze and learn to effectively perform prescribed ways of speaking, a mimetic practice they call "flipping the script." As a clinical ethnography, Scripting Addiction examines how decades of clinical theorizing about addiction, language, self-knowledge, and sobriety is manifested in interactions between counselors and clients. As an ethnography of the contemporary United States, the book demonstrates the complex cultural roots of the powerful clinical ideas that shape therapeutic transactions--and by extension administrative routines and institutional dynamics--at sites such as "Fresh Beginnings."

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Jul 2021)