Wendy Dossett

University of Chester | UC · Theology and Religious Studies

Drawing on qualitative data, this article attempts to clarify the language of spirituality as used in relation to addiction and recovery. It explores what is meant by ‘spirituality’ in the context of 12-step programmes followed in the numerous anonymous mutual help groups which address the problem of addiction to a variety of substances and behavio...

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) suggest that the solution to alcohol addiction may be found in ‘a power greater than the self’. Carl Jung, who engaged in a correspondence with one of AA’s founders, asserted that medicine, even analytical psychology, could be of limited use to a sufferer. He agreed with AA that the problem was of a spi...

Commentary to: Is Alcoholics Anonymous religious, spiritual, neither? Findings from 25 years of mechanisms of behavior change research

By considering transformative ideas and experiences which are explicitly articulated or implicitly structured in languages of religion and spirituality, Alternative Salvations probes concepts including 'religious', 'secular', 'spiritual', 'post-Christian', and 'post-secular', providing a series of studies which question the functionality of these b...