Documentation, assessment and social control: ASI and the shaping of the discourse on addiction

Abstract

This article comments upon the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) instrument as a system of notation and documentation, a governmental practice, which conditions communication about addiction and dependency and thereby influences the behaviours and conduct of those involved. The discourse of ASI is viewed as a language game. The ASI as a technology for reforming individuals aims at helping individuals to help themselves. To compel addicted persons to help themselves, they have to be transformed into calculable, accountable subjects. The ASI is described as a map, with certain characteristics that guide the players in the game. Among these are gaze, number, presentism and nominalization. The application of ASI varies within different contexts, and can lead to more or less obliging and universalizing interpretations and practices and more or less involvement of clients. The author suggests, however, that one ontological foundation of the ASI discourse is an understanding of addiction as otherness in terms of lack of freedom.

• Addiction Severity Index
• language game
• governmentality