Now It's Neurotics Anonymous

Despite the decor--rows of balloons and cupids cut from red paper--the meeting more nearly suggested a religious service than the first annual convention of Neurotics Anonymous. All of the 250 delegates gathered in the ballroom of Los Angeles' Royal Palms Hotel were confessed neurotics. But to most the designation was a source of pride, not humiliation. When a man in his 20s --one of the few young delegates--rose to report that he had found God again through N.A., his announcement was greeted calmly; after all, nearly everyone there could say the same.

"I was hurting at gut level, if you know what I mean," said another speaker, a middle-aged Negro woman. She predicted cheerfully that dissolving her emotional problems "layer by layer" would probably take a lifetime. From a reformed alcoholic, the conventioneers drew vicarious inspiration. "I was an old man at 16," he said, "and now I feel like a kid. It's sure swell to see a whole bunch of kooks like us get together. It's a miracle."

Suicide Attempts. Miracle or no, Neurotics Anonymous, a nonprofit self-help program for the emotionally disturbed, can justly claim a modest success. It was founded six years ago by Grover Boydston, a Florida psychologist who, like all members, is generally known by first name only. N.A. now has 5,000 members in 250 chapters from Hollywood to Haifa. As with nearly everything else about N.A., the figures must be taken on faith. Noses are casually counted, and any member can open a new chapter of the group any time he cares to.

For Grover, N.A. is the serene culmination of a misspent life: an unhappy childhood, five suicide attempts before he was 21 and a long downhill slide to alcoholism. Along this anguished course, Grover somehow earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from George Washington University. That and a therapeutic experience with Alcoholics Anonymous set him to thinking about applying A.A.'s principles to other fields of human distress.

Like A.A.'s host of imitators (Addicts Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, etc.), Neurotics Anonymous is a direct plagiarism--fully approved, to be sure, by its model. Each N.A. meeting faithfully follows the A.A. procedure, down to a reading of some part of A.A. principles, perhaps the "Twelve Suggested Steps" to salvation, modified to suit N.A.'s different objective. Thus, in A.A.'s Step 1--"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol"--the last word has been replaced by "our emotions." Unlike formal group therapy, in which the meetings are supervised by a professional, N.A. meetings are little more than hash sessions. Problems are ventilated in a climate deliberately kept free of critical judgment. Every day the N.A. member promises himself that "I will criticize not one bit, and not try to improve anybody except myself."

As in A.A., Neurotics Anonymous members are expected to refer their problems to a greater power, preferably but not necessarily God. To an avowed atheist, one of Grover's lieutenants proposed in all seriousness that an ordinary spoon could serve as a divine surrogate. Grover himself has even suggested that nonbelievers acknowledge the law of gravity as a higher power.

Grover claims the same "cure" rate as A.A.--70%. In an exuberant mood, he will raise that percentage to 100%, arguing that "the program never fails for anyone who follows it." He can recite the usual dramatic case histories --like that of Elly, a housewife who joined N.A. after 13 years in futile psychiatric treatment. A few months later she filled a salad bowl with her collection of tranquilizers, sleeping pills and other drugs and flushed them all down the toilet.

Dental Comparison. Wishful thinking may well account for some of the impressive results that N.A. claims. The organization defines the neurotic as "any person whose emotions interfere with his functioning in any way to any degree whatsoever as recognized by him" --a definition unscientific enough to horrify formal psychotherapists. Hence the program tends to attract people who want to believe that emotional problems are as correctable as a toothache--a comparison frequently drawn by N.A. members. "You have to keep going back to the dentist if you want to take good care of your teeth," says Grover. No one "graduates" from N.A., he adds, any more than the churchgoer graduates from church.

Neurotics Anonymous must be doing something right. It has gained the recognition of the California Department of Mental Hygiene, which considers it a useful adjunct to formal psychotherapy. The state's parole board distributes N.A. literature to parolees, as do mental hospitals and Veterans Administration hospitals elsewhere in the U.S. If N.A. works at all, it is because it allows people to share their emotional distress with other troubled but sympathetic members. "It's not the specific therapeutic factors involved but the responsiveness and effective human relationship that are doing good," says Dr. Edward Stainbrook, head of the Department of Human Behavior at the University of Southern California. "It's sort of pathetic, in a way, that the quest for human warmth has to be disguised as a therapeutic quest."

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