TY - BOOK AU - Carr,E.Summerson TI - Scripting Addiction: The Politics of Therapeutic Talk and American Sobriety SN - 9780691144504 AV - GN296 .C37 2011eb U1 - 362.29 22 PY - 2010///] CY - Princeton, NJ : PB - Princeton University Press, KW - Anthropology, Cultural KW - methods KW - United States KW - Communication and culture KW - Communication KW - Culture KW - Semiotic models KW - Drug abuse KW - Treatment KW - Language and culture KW - Language KW - Medical anthropology KW - SELF-HELP KW - Substance Abuse & KW - Addictions KW - General KW - SOCIAL SCIENCE KW - Anthropology KW - Cultural KW - Substance-Related Disorders KW - therapy KW - addiction KW - femme KW - sans-logis KW - Etats-Unis KW - interaction verbale KW - relation psychothérapeute-patient KW - SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social KW - bisacsh N1 - 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; Issued also in print N2 - 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." UR - https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400836659 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781400836659 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/cover/covers/9781400836659.jpg ER -