LIFE STORIES AND SHARED EXPERIENCE

Illness narratives have become a central issue In medical anthropology . Many researchers have made use of narratives as data in a meaning-ce ntered approach, analysing personal illness accounts as a kind of copi ng strategy by which human beings ascribe cultural meaning to sufferin g. Often such narratives are being presented as clinical case stories or as patients' accounts told in interviews to a researcher. But apart from being methodologically created data personal stories also have t heir own life. They are a way of expressing experience, and as reality manifests itself as experience in us, stories are fundamental to huma n understanding. In many therapeutic groups personal stories are told as a way of sharing experience in order to solve common problems. This article focuses on the social and processual nature of personal narra tives as they are presented in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) groups. The a rticle is based on a study of AA and Minnesota Model treatment of alco holism in Denmark from 1990 to 1993. Various genres of personal narrat ives told at AA meetings are identified and analysed referring to indi vidual as well as social and cultural levels. By focusing on interpers onal relationships and the creation of a shared identity in the groups , the article suggests that the ongoing telling of personal narratives in Alcoholics Anonymous Lakes place in a continuum between autobiogra phy and myth. Thus, individual and collective experience are merged in to the same therapeutic process. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.