Scripting Addiction: The Politics of Therapeutic Talk and American Sobriety

by E. Summerson Carr

Gaming the language of addiction treatment

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."

Genres: Anthropology, Academic

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Jennifer J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most amazing piece of analysis I have read in a while.

I wrote a full review of this book for the Somatosphere weblog. You can read it here: http://somatosphere.net/2012/10/book-...

[Mike Mena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing book on language ideologies, performativity, and the potentials of interpellation. Makes use of all the big names in linguistic anthropology, particularly the Bauman, Briggs, Silverstein circle.

[Autumn Nester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Out of all the books that I have had to read for my anthropology class, I would say that this is the best one that we have discussed. I really enjoyed the diagrams that the author included and the evidence through transcripts that show provides definitely exemplifies her argument.

[Dafna · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Welcome to the world of mainstream American addiction treatment, where disease is conceived as so many illegible signs that can only be read by the sober” (p.2). Overall, the book shows that addiction is often conceptualized as a disease of insight, and that such a conceptualization is inspired by the many mainstream cultural and political assumptions. This book is brilliant! If you're interested in learning about the cultural logic that fuels AA and similar programs and about mainstream ideas about "the self," this book is a must. It is a beautifully written ethnography with very rich and nuanced analysis.

[CORSAK fan · Rating 4 out of 5]

E. Summerson Carr has managed to create what should be considered a linguistic anthropology masterpiece of a book.

Using data from transcripts of interactions she has with clients and therapists / staff at Fresh Beginnings, a chemical dependency treatment center, Carr details how clients portray themselves according to expectations and premises given & maintained by Fresh Beginnings therapists / staff.

Well-written and incredibly thorough, Scripting Addiction explores how addiction is, in part, created and maintained through language, or lack thereof.

[Completelybanned · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carr's first book is an impressive synthesis of Chicago-style linguistic anthropology and an anthropological approach to social work. Carr extends many concepts familiar to linguistic anthropologists: varidirectional discourse, interpellation, etc. For me, this book is extremely valuable as an example of the latest work on language and health; specifically, scholarly literature that demonstrates how language use determines access to healthcare resources, or other resources which enable one to quickly take advantage of healthcare resources.