Identity in the Empathic Community: Alcoholics Anonymous as a Model Community for Storytelling and Change

This article reviews the dynamics of healing in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) through interviews with two women who are long-term members of the AA program. Donnel Stern’s relational psychoanalytic theory is used to describe how change might occur through the process of claiming one’s story and interpreting it through the structure of an empathic storytelling community. As the two women were recently married and locate their personal healing in the AA program, I consider how their alternative community influenced their coming to relationship. I conclude by imagining what the AA program might teach the Christian community, claiming that Christian congregations need to consciously and purposefully form relational and storytelling norms that foster an empathic listening environment.