Martin Blinder, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco - With a series of incisive insights Michael Edelstein cuts through the psychological jargon and makes clear how all of us can effect powerful changes in our psyches, in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) has been so successful at disseminating its distinctive views that many people suppose these views are not controversial. For example, AA holds that "once you're an alcoholic, you're always an alcoholic," and that alcoholism is a disease for which there is no cure. Many researchers who have studied problem drinking do not agree with any of this.