Neurotics Anonymous (N/A), founded in 1964, is a twelve-step program for recovery from mental and emotional illness. To avoid confusion with Narcotics Anonymous (NA), Neurotics Anonymous is abbreviated N/A or NAIL.
History The conception of Neurotics Anonymous began with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) co-founder Bill W. After achieving sobriety Bill continued to suffer from neurosis, specifically depression. In letters to other AA members he wrote about his personal experience with neurosis, its prevalence in AA, and how he and others learned to cope with it. Bill expressed that as he learned to let go of his dependence on people and situations for emotional security and replaced that dependence with "showing outgoing love as best as he could," his depression began to subside. In correspondence with another AA member about neurosis and psychoanalyst Karen Horney Bill suggested how a Neurotics Anonymous fellowship might operate.
You interest me very much when you talk of Karen Horney. I have the highest admiration of her. That gal's insights have been most helpful to me. Also for the benefit of screwballs like ourselves, it may be that someday we shall devise some common denominator of psychiatry — of course, throwing away their much abused terminology — common denominators which neurotics could use on each other. The idea would be to extend the moral inventory of AA to a deeper level, making it an inventory of psychic damages, reliving in conversation episodes, etc. I suppose someday a Neurotics Anonymous will be formed and will actually do all this. In a subsequent letter to Ollie in June 1956, Bill suggested the inventory of psychic damages include inferiority, shame, guilt and anger. He added that the effectiveness of the inventory would come from reliving the experiences and sharing them with other people. Neurotics Anonymous was created eight years later, February 3, 1964 in Washington, D.C. by Grover Boydston (August 16, 1924 – December 17, 1996). Grover was an AA member, recovering alcoholic, psychologist, and Ed.M. Grover had attempted suicide five times before the age of 21 and, like Bill W., was neurotic. Grover believed members of twelve-step programs shared the same underlying neuroses caused by self-centeredness, a view expressed in other twelve-step programs. Grover went as far as to say, "All of us are, indeed, brothers, and the variations in detail are no more than if one of us likes chocolate ice cream, and the other likes vanilla." While in AA, Grover discovered working the Twelve Steps helped remove the neuroses underlying his alcoholism. As an experiment Grover instructed a woman who suffered from neurosis, but not alcoholism, to work the Twelve Steps. He discovered that they aided her recovery from neurosis as well. He wrote Alcoholics Anonymous World Services for permission to use their Twelve Steps with the word "alcohol" in the First Step replaced with "our emotions." Permission was granted. Grover placed an ad in a Washington, D.C. newspaper for Neurotics Anonymous, and organized the first meeting from those who responded to it. N/A grew modestly until an article was published on it in Parade magazine. The Associated Press and United Press International republished the story, and N/A groups began forming internationally. By 1974 the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, at the time in second edition (DSM-II), was undergoing revision. The framework developed for the third edition (DSM-III) was no longer based on psychoanalytic principles such as neurosis. The connotation of neurosis in common language also began to change. "Neurosis" was being used, increasingly, in a facetious or pejorative sense, rather than a diagnostic sense. These combined factors could make it difficult to take an organization known as Neurotics Anonymous seriously. In current Neurotics Anonymous literature, there is not a scientific definition ascribed to neurosis. As used in N/A, a neurotic is defined as any person who accepts that he or she has emotional problems.
Demographics Grover Boydston conducted the first demographic study of Neurotics Anonymous in 1974. Such studies are rare and samples sizes are usually small as any group following the Twelve Traditions is required to protect the anonymity of their members. While researching such groups is still ethically possible, it is more difficult given this constraint.
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