Diseases of the Will: Alcohol and the Dilemmas of FreedomWhile associated with comfort and pleasure, alcohol continues to be a 'problem' substance, both for medical and political authorities and for many drinkers. In this broad-ranging and innovative historical-sociological investigation, Valverde explores the ways in which both authorities and individual consumers have defined and managed the pleasures and dangers of alcoholic beverages. Paradoxically, excessive drinking has been perceived to weaken 'the free will' and to be simultaneously caused by a weakness of the will. Valverde explores how the notion of a free will has been challenged by ideas about addiction. Based on years of original research, and drawing on North American, British and other sources, this book discusses nineteenth century 'dipsomania', the history of inebriate homes, postwar American notions of 'the alcoholic personality', Alcoholics Anonymous, fetal alcohol education, and liquor control and licencing. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Diseases of the will | 2 |
an uneasy relationship | 5 |
Alcohol and governance | 9 |
Continuity and change in the genealogy of freedom | 14 |
Disease or Habit? Alcoholism and the Exercise of Freedom | 23 |
Drinking and the soul | 24 |
The dissemination of the twelve steps | 29 |
the virtues and perils of eclecticism | 110 |
alcohologys solution to Americas postwar dilemmas of ethnic diversity | 115 |
The Power of Powerlessness Alcoholics Anonymous Techniques for Governing the Self | 120 |
Powerlessness | 128 |
Anonymity | 129 |
No crosstalk | 130 |
The Higher Power | 133 |
slogans for daily living | 135 |
habit | 35 |
Repairing Diseased Wills Victorian Science and Pastoral Medicine before Alcoholism | 43 |
monomania and dipsomania | 45 |
the genealogy of addiction | 50 |
maternal drinking and heredity debates | 51 |
The will in Victorian science | 59 |
building up the will through pastoral medicine | 62 |
The Fragmentation of Inebriety | 68 |
The medicalization crusade in North America | 69 |
The British experiment with habitual drunkard legislation | 76 |
the retreats | 78 |
the inebriate reformatories | 83 |
the Salvation Armys work with drunkards | 88 |
The return of habit | 92 |
The end of legal inebriety | 94 |
Enlightened Hedonism The Emergence of Alcohol Science in the United States | 96 |
Personality dependency and masculinity | 104 |
AAs ambiguous pragmatism | 137 |
The Liquor of Government and the Government of Liquor | 143 |
the contradictions of liquor control | 145 |
the imaginary saloon in the postrepeal period | 153 |
Aboriginality alcohol and the fear of excess | 162 |
Reducing Risks Replacing Fluids | 171 |
controlled or moderate drinking | 172 |
from mothers of the race to guardians of fetal health | 179 |
Replacement fluids | 182 |
Judicial Diagnostics Intoxicated Automatism and the Resurrection of the Will | 190 |
the legal disease of automatism | 192 |
The resurrection of the will | 199 |
The dispersal of diseases of the will | 201 |
The Twelve Steps | 206 |
Notes | 207 |
241 | |
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Diseases of the Will: Alcohol and the Dilemmas of Freedom Mariana Valverde No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
AA members AA's aboriginal Addiction Research Foundation alcohol problems alcohol studies alcoholic identity Alcoholics Anonymous alcoholism treatment alcohology American asylums beer behaviour British P.P. Canada Canadian chapter clinical Coca-Cola codependence consumed consumption criminal culture cure Daviault debates degeneration dipsomania discourse disease drinkers drugs drunkard drunkenness effects ethical excessive drinking experts Foucault Foucaultian freedom governance habit harm harm reduction Higher Power history of alcoholism hybrid Indian Indian Act individual Inebriates Acts Inebriety vol insanity Inspector institutions intoxication defense Jellinek liquor control liquor licencing London medicine mental monomania moral treatment neoliberal neurasthenia nevertheless nineteenth century one's Ontario organization patients personality physicians popular practices programmes prohibition psychiatry psychological recovery reformatories regarded regulation retreats risk saloon Salvation Army sexual social Society soul specific spiritual techniques temperance movement term theory Toronto twelve steps twentieth century United United Kingdom University Press Victorian willpower women