The Cybernetics of “Self”: A Theory of Alcoholism by Gregory Bateson

In which Bateson argues that the efficacy of Alcoholics Anonymous is (in a Western, Cartesian context) comes at least in part from providing a more correct epistemology/ontology that subsumes a reified "self" into a larger system/circuit. The alcoholic is, by "hitting bottom," forced to shift from a destructive symmetrical to a complementary pattern of relation with the system.