ASC 3-4

Double. Someone explains their interest in trying to change in a rather disarming way. "I guess I'm in that position now so I need it. I mean, it's my way of learning."

Resist defending a certain doctrine in extenso.

To experience and try to describe a complex, almost impossible, challenge. "From there to being able to handle it, and stand calmly, and watch. And of course, I'm also kind of upset if someone gets hurt and… For example, you read about parents abusing a child. I'm not just calm then."

Rhythm, something dynamic. That no state reigns the psyche completely at a given moment. But even this sometimes, perhaps, in a rhythmic way?

One's experiences from parents seem to be reflected in all the different "deities" that exist within the NA. Extraterrestrial civilizations, universe, mother earth, God, angels, older brothers… How to reconcile this with AMB? (Anyone who thinks we are "left" to our fate is also someone who spontaneously tells us nothing about their growing up experiences.)

I feel the presence of something bigger. But no guarantee that always feels good, sometimes feeling hopeless (g18)

It is very important that some species of NA go too far in their interpretations or generalizations. These species are not associated with these species. One person tells me that she reads certain books that she describes as "borderline cases". It's commercial, but she still has elements that inspire her. "Think of a car so it's about yours tomorrow."

According to the principle that the family is the worst, reviews sometimes seem to get well harsh about interpretations that are not really that far from their own. "Cripple", "commercially". If you're happy with the banal, that says something. If you want to distance yourself too much from the potentially banal in NA, it also says something. To include looking at life and reasoning about it based on NA seems to some of my informants to be somewhat divided. Not only because they are ashamed of me as an interviewer, but also because it puts something at risk time and time again.

There is an ideal of toughness and of enduring. Transferred to a psychotherapeutic context, one might, faced with such reasoning, reason that the person: Rationalizes? Isolates? Intellectualizing? Identify with aggressor, that is, you have earned your punishment. "Since of course it's hard to be human, but it's on hard things we learn. We do not learn otherwise, unless we go through misery" (ö52) But here it is built into the doctrine itself. NA goes out on this, does not give so much room for alternative approaches! Perhaps one has to go less on the actual wording, and more on how it is said – and what is possibly said as well, to moderate. (Ö52)

MARKERS

It's risky to have a solid, clear picture of what's right in this context. The right god, or this is what scripture says and so, it's dangerous.

Be optimistic in the big picture, but pessimistic in the small.

More philosophically… Language is a problem, discourses, putting into systems.

Someone experiences the need to complement the great perspectives of their primary doctrine, with other books that are more concrete, indicative. "You see everything in a big process and you see a pretty clear map of how it works. As a complement, it is… How do I do it? What am I supposed to do? Okay, that's how it works, but what am I supposed to do? Kind of like you see a map. Yes, but now I see how it is here or there, but how do I get to the first station? And then these other books are much more manuals" (ö60)

To talk about the "people" who have a greater responsibility than you think. Dialectally, or reflects an experience? (island2)

It is the experience of something that is interesting, not the concrete event. How to take what you're through. This then gives rise to new events that can provide the same experience. (Island66)

Something almost like "the unconscious." "It's not so black and white. [Like I'm risking burglars when I set off alarms and visualize thieves coming.] It's kind of intention in thinking, and the charge, and it's about other things." (Island66)

A complex picture of the biblical figure of Jesus. A vision of Jesus in a church. And he wasn't sugary as you're used to from the pictures, but looked cheeky and cheeky. It was liberating to see him (ö5) Also read to Marianne Fredriksson that he lived a normal life, with family. But did all the amazing things too. Asked how the different parts can be reconciled (previously told about Jesus as a model for something very sublime and exalted), the interviewee becomes hesitant and seems a little ashamed (ö5) Is this ambivalence, or more divided, not sufficiently thought out?