How Carl Jung Impressed the Creation of Alcoholics Nameless
There could also be as many doorways into Alcoholics Anonymous within the twenty first century as there are people who stroll by them—from each world religion to no religion. The “international mutual-aid fellowship” has had “a significant and long-term impact on the culture of the United States,” writes Worcester State University professionalfessor of psychology Charles Fox at Aeon. Certainly, its influence is global. From its inception in 1935, A.A. has repredespatcheded an “enormously popular therapy, and a testament to the interdisciplinary nature of well being and effectivelyness.”
A.A. has additionally repredespatcheded, not less than culturally, a commentin a position synthesis of behavioral science and spirituality that translates into scores of different languages, beliefs, and practices. Or not less than that’s the best way it might probably seem from browsing the scores of books on A.A.’s 12-Steps and Buddhism, Yoga, Catholicism, Judaism, Indigenous religion traditions, shamanist practices, Stoicism, secular humanism, and, in fact, psychology.
Historically, and sometimes in practice, however, the (non)group of worldextensive fellowships has repredespatcheded a a lot narrower tradition, inherited from the evangelical (small “e”) Christian Oxford Group, or as A.A. founder Invoice Wilson referred to as them, “the ‘O.G.’” Wilson credits the Oxford Group for the tacticology of A.A.: “their giant emphasis upon the principles of self-survey, confession, restitution, and the giving of 1self in service to others.”
The Oxford Group’s theology, although qualified and tempered, additionally made its manner into a lot of A.A.’s fundamental principles. However for the recovery group’s genesis, Wilson cites a extra secular writerity, Carl Jung. The well-known Swiss psychiatrist took a eager interest in alcoholism within the Nineteen Twenties. Wilson wrote to Jung in 1961 to specific his “nice appreciation” for his efforts. “A certain conversation you as soon as had with considered one of your sufferers, a Mr. Rowland H. again within the early 1930’s,” Wilson explains, “did play a critical function within the discovereding of our Fellowship.”
Jung might not have recognized his influence on the recovery transferment, Wilson says, though alcoholics had accounted for “about 13 percent of all admissions” in his practice, notes Fox. One in every of his sufferers, Rowland H.—or Rowland Hazard, “make investmentsment banker and former state senator from Rhode Island”—got here to Jung in desperation, noticed him daily for a period of several months, stopped drinking, then relapsed. Introduced again to Jung by his cousin, Hazard was informed that his case was hopemuch less in need of a religious conversion. As Wilson places it in his letter:
[Y]ou frankly informed him of his hopemuch lessness, as far as any further medical or psychiatric deal withment could be concerned. This maydid and humble statement of yours was past doubt the primary foundation stone upon which our Society has since been constructed.
Jung additionally informed Hazard that conversion experiences have been incredibly uncommon and recommended that he “place himself in a religious atmosphere and hope for the very best,” as Wilson remembers. However he didn’t specify any particular religion. Hazard discovered the Oxford Group. He may, so far as Jung was concerned, have met God as he beneathstood it anythe place. “His craving for alcohol was the equivalent,” wrote the psychiatrist in a reply to Wilson, “on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for completeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God.”
In his reply letter to Wilson, Jung makes use of religious language allegorically. AA took the concept of conversion extra literally. Although it wrestled with the plight of the agnostic, the Huge Ebook concluded that such people should eventually see the sunshine. Jung, on the other hand, appears very careful to keep away from a strictly religious interpretation of his recommendation to Hazard, who begined the primary small group that might convert Wilson to sobriety and to Oxford Group methods.
“How may one formulate such an perception that’s not misunderstood in our days?” Jung asks. “The one proper and legitimate solution to such an experience is that it happens to you in actuality and it might probably solely happen to you whenever you stroll on a path which leads you to a excessiveer beneathstanding.” Sobriety might be achieved by “a excessiveer education of the thoughts past the confines of mere rationalism”—by an enlightenment or conversion experience, that’s. It may additionally happen by “an act of grace or by a personal and honest contact with mates.”
Although most discovereding members of AA fought for the stricter interpretation of Jung’s prescription, Wilson at all times entertained the concept that multiple paths may convey alcoholics to the identical aim, even including modern medicine. He drew on the medical opinions of Dr. William D. Silkvalue, who theorized that alcoholism was partly a physical disease, “a type of metabolism difficulty which he then referred to as an allergy.” Even after his personal conversion experience, which Silkvalue, like Jung, recommended he pursue, Wilson experimented with vitamin therapies, by the influence of Aldous Huxley.
His search to beneathstand his mystical “white mild” second in a New York detox room additionally led Wilson to William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience. The guide “gave me the trueization,” he wrote to Jung, “that the majority conversion experiences, whatever their variety, do have a common denominator of ego collapse at depth.” He even thought that LSD may act as such a “temporary ego-reducer” after he took the drug beneath tremendousvision of British psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond. (Jung likely would have opposed what he referred to as “brief cuts” like psychedelic medication.)
Within the letters between Wilson and Jung, as Ian McCabe argues in Carl Jung and Alcoholics Anonymous, we see mutual admiration between the 2, in addition to mutual influence. “Invoice Wilson,” writes McCabe’s publisher, “was encouraged by Jung’s writings to professionalmote the spiritual facet of recovery,” a side that took on a particularly religious character in Alcoholics Anonymous. For his half, Jung, “influenced by A.A.’s success… gave ‘complete and detailed instructions’ on how the A.A. group format might be developed further and utilized by ‘general neurotics.’” And so it has, although extra on the Oxford Group model than the extra mystical Jungian. It’d effectively have been othersmart.
Learn extra about Jung’s influence on AA over at Aeon.
Notice: Notice: An earlier version of this put up appeared on our web site in 2019.
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Carl Jung Affords an Introduction to His Psychological Thought in a 3‑Hour Interview (1957)
Take Carl Jung’s Phrase Association Take a look at, a Fast Route Into the Subconscious (1910)
Carl Jung’s Hand-Drawn, Hardly ever-Seen Manuscript The Purple Ebook
Josh Jones is a author and musician based mostly in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
