To get better, we need better questions.

The answer is lebensform, but to understand it we'll need to know the question.

Clients in the worlds of substance abuse and mental health therapy tend to share a dislike for slogans. I've played around with this in the group therapy setting by asking clients to only speak in AA slogans, using no other words. "It's all about people, places, and things for me. Just doing the next right thing, taking it one day at a time." Everyone laughs because they think of that one person at the AA or NA meetings who sincerely talks like this. When we pick the phenomenon apart, we get to the conclusion that the general dislike of the slogan and the sloganeer comes from a feeling of insincerity, as if the "bumper sticker" language misses something unique about each client's circumstance. 

And there's the rub. Each person is unique, and yet each person also shares a surprising number of similarities with other people. We are bound together through our cultural affiliations, and we develop our sense of belonging through shared language that helps to identify us as part of the group. Slogans in fact come from this very fact. Why do AA slogans exist? People repeat them as proof of the organization's effectiveness. If you know the slogan, then, theoretically, you know the process that leads to a full understanding of the slogan, and if you have that full understanding then you are likely on the road to recovery. Sadly, however, the slogans can produce the opposite effect. They can be wielded as reprimands that suggest a failure has occurred. If only you understood the difference between progress and perfection, then you wouldn't have relapsed. Or, it sounds like somebody forgot to let go and let God. When words like these are transmitted and received in a careless way, then they can produce the opposite effect for which they were intended. The same is true for mental health problems. Tell a person with anger issues to slow down or count to 10 and you might get punched in the face. Or tell someone with a personality disorder that they aren't working from a Wise Mind and you could get your tires slashed. How do we make sure that we're using language to validate individual difference and promote group belonging instead of accidentally invalidating the unique person in front of us and spurring feelings of alienation?

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