AA: Cult or Cure? Posted at Briggsmore Beach

I've just posted Chaz Bufe's AA: Cult or Cure? in the Briggsmore Beach online library. To access the library, click here. The following are excerpts from Dr Stanton Peele's review of the book:

In conducting this evaluation, the reader feels Chaz is not an ideologue. He gives credit where credit is due, acknowledging the brilliant insights of AA-founder Bill W., represented particularly in the 12 Traditions that Bill authored for AA. Chaz sees in these a successful blueprint for ensuring the democracy of AA as an organization not beholden to commercial, political, or intellectual interests.
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Unfortunately, this strength is vitiated ... by the tyranny of the group and AA philosophy over the individual. There is little room for individual variation and none for individual questioning of AA. The AA attendee does not speculate that he or she may not be an alcoholic, or question any of the 12 steps — for example, the need to turn oneself over to a "higher power."
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Chaz also shows — often through analysis of original data sources — that AA succeeds with relatively few (5% at most) of the massive numbers of alcoholics who wander through its meetings. The data which show this are general population surveys, AA's own membership studies, and research on outcomes of AA and other 12-step treatment (which forms the overwhelming majority of treatment programs in the U.S.). But AA is not concerned with data about its effectiveness or the numbers of people it leaves out in the cold. The fundamental goal of AA is to propagate the 12-step belief system and to support the small minority that finds this approach facilitative of recovery.
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Chaz takes as his fundamental task to evaluate whether AA (and the ubiquitous 12-step treatment programs based on AA's model) comprises a cult involvement.... Examining cult philosophies and indoctrination techniques, he answers with a qualified "yes": the most important therapy group/technique in the U.S., in the eyes of the public, media, and health care system, is in many ways a brainwashing factory, one whose impact has led to no reduction in alcoholism in the U.S. In fact, by discouraging alternative approaches and free thinking about America's drinking problems, AA may have had exactly the opposite impact.

But the good news, in Chaz's analysis, is that America's honeymoon with AA is nearly over. Chaz traces this cultural shift to the recent more critical thrust of popular articles on AA and its 12-step philosophy, repeated negative court decisions on the constitutionality of forcing people to attend AA/12-step programs, and a growing awareness of AA's limited effectiveness — as well as to his own and other books, many published by See Sharp Press. In the next quarter century, Chaz predicts, what has often been AA's reign of terror over American alcoholism treatment will end.