The Laundry List occupies a foundational position within the Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA) corpus, functioning simultaneously as diagnostic instrument, identity-constituting document, and therapeutic threshold. Authored by Tony A. in 1978 and comprising fourteen behavioral and psychological traits, it serves as the basis for ‘The Problem,’ read aloud at the opening of most ACA meetings. The depth-psychological significance of the document lies in its articulation of what the ACA literature calls ‘survival traits’ — adaptive responses to chronic family dysfunction that calcify in adulthood into patterns of self-abandonment, fear, compulsive caretaking, and impaired affect regulation. A critical theoretical tension runs through the corpus: the Laundry List traits are distinguished from defects of character, resisting the removal procedures of Steps Six and Seven in favor of integration — a process requiring gentleness, patience, and recognition of the traits’ original protective function. The list’s reach is deliberately expansive, applying equally to adults from alcoholic, addicted, emotionally ill, sexually abusive, or otherwise dysfunctional households. Its workplace adaptation further extends its diagnostic reach into occupational relational patterns. Scholars of peer-recovery literature will note that the Laundry List operates as a vector of identification, community formation, and the dismantling of denial — a piece of foundational recovery literature whose clinical resonances extend well beyond its twelve-step origins.