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Bill Answers Questions Page 10

34Q - What contribution did Dr. Carl Jung make to A.A.?

34A - Few people know that the first taproot of A.A. hit paydirt some thirty years ago in a physicians office. Dr. Carl Jung, that great pioneer in psychiatry was taking to an alcoholic patient. This is in effect what happened:

The patient, a prominent American businessman, had gone the typical alcoholic route. He had exhausted the possibilities of medicine and psychiatry in the United States and had then come to Dr. Jung as to a court of last resort. Carl Jung had treated him for a year and the patient, whom we shall call Mr. R., felt confident that the hidden springs underneath his compulsion to drink had been discovered and removed. Nevertheless, he found himself intoxicated within a short time after leaving Dr. Jung's care.

Now he was back, in a state of black despair. He asked Dr. Jung what the score was, and he got it. In substance, Dr. Jung said, "For some time after you came here, I continued to believe that you might be one of those rare cases who could make a recovery. But I must now frankly admit that I have never seen a single case recover through the psychiatric art where the neurosis is so severe as yours. Medicine has done all that it can for you, and that's where you stand."

Mr. R's depression deepened. He asked, "Is there no exception, is this really the end of the line for me?"

"Well," replied the doctor, "There are some exceptions, a very few. Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them. In fact, I have been trying to produce some emotional rearrangement within you. With many types of neurotics, the methods which I employ are successful, but I have never been successful with an alcoholic of your description."

"But," protested the patient, "I'm a religious man, and I still have faith."

To this Dr. Jung replied, "Ordinary religious faith isn't enough. What I'm talking about is a transforming experience, a conversion experience, if you like. I can only recommend that you place yourself in the religious atmosphere of your own choice, that you recognize your own hopelessness, and that you cast yourself upon whatever God you think there is. The lightning of the transforming experience may then strike you. This you must try - it is your only way out." So spoke the great and humble physician.

For the A.A.-to-be, this was a ten strike. Science had pronounced Mr. R. virtually hopeless. Dr. Jung's words had struck him at great depth, producing an immense deflation of his ego. Deflation at depth is today a cornerstone principle of A.A. There in Dr. Jung's office it was first employed on our behalf.

The patient, Mr. R., chose the Oxford Groups of that day as his religious association and atmosphere. Terribly chastened and almost helpless, he began to be active with them. To his intense joy and astonishment, the obsession to drink presently left him.

Returning to America, Mr. R. came upon an old school friend of mine, a chronic alcoholic. This friend - whom we shall call Ebby - was about to be committed to a State Hospital. At this juncture another vital ingredient was added to the synthesis. Mr. R., the alcoholic, began talking to Ebby, also an alcoholic and a kindred sufferer. This made for identification at depth, a second cardinal principle. Over this bridge of identification, Mr. R. passed Dr. Jung's verdict of how hopeless, medically and psychiatrically, most alcoholics were. He then introduced Ebby to the Oxford Groups where my friend promptly sobered up. (N.Y. City Med. Soc. Alcsm., April 28, 1958)

35Q - What effect did Ebby's message have on you?

35A - Well, by this time I knew how hopeless my alcoholism was, and yet I still rebelled - the idea of a dependency on some intangible God who might not even be there. Oh, if I could swallow it, but could I! I went on drinking for a number of days and gradually I got jittery enough to think about the hospital and then it came to me "Of a sudden" one day - "Fool! - why should you question how you're going to get well, why should beggars be choosers? If you had a cancer and you were sure of it and your physician said "This is so malignant that we can't touch it with our art and even if your physician came along with the improbable story that there were many who got over cancer by standing on their head in the public square crying 'Amen' and if he could really make a case that it was so, yes Bill Wilson, if you had cancer, you too would be out in the public square ignominiously standing on your head and crying 'Amen'- anything to stop the growth of those cells and that would be the first priority, and your pride would have to go."

And then I asked myself "Is my case different now? Have I not an allergy of the body; have I not a cancer of the emotions - yes, and maybe I have a cancer of the soul which has resulted in an obsession which condemns me to drink and an increasing tolerance of liquor which condemns me to go mad or die. Yes, I'm going to try this. And then there was one more flicker of obstinacy when I said to myself, "But I don't want any of these evangelical experiences, I mean it will have to be a kind of intellectual religion that I'll get, so just to be sure that I don't go into my emotional tizzy, I believe I'll go up to see dear old Dr. Silkworth and have him dry me out. (Memphis, Tenn., Sept. 18-20, 1947) .

Another Answer

35A - What then did happen at that kitchen table? Perhaps this speculation were better left to medicine and religion. I confess I do not know. Possibly conversion will never be fully understood.

My friend's story had generated mixed emotions; I was drawn and revolted by turns. My solitary drinking went on, but I could not forget his visit. Several themes coursed in my mind: First, that his evident state of release was strangely and immensely convincing. Second, that he had been pronounced hopeless by competent medicos. Third, that those old-age precepts, when transmitted by him, had struck me with great power. Fourth, I could not, and would not, go along with any God concept. No conversion nonsense for me. Thus did I ponder. Trying to divert my thoughts, I found it no use. By cords of understanding, suffering, and simple verity, another alcoholic had bound me to him. I shall not break away. (Amer J. Psychiat., Vol.106, 1949) .

Another Answer

35A - He first told me his drinking experience, accent on its more recent horrors, Of course his identification with me was immediate, and as it proved, deep and vital indeed. One alcoholic was talking with another as no one except an alcoholic can. Then he offered me his naively simple recovery formula. Not one syllable was new, but somehow it affected me profoundly.

There he sat, recovered. An example of what he preached. You will note that his only dogma was God, which for my benefit he stretched into an accommodating phrase, a Power greater than myself. That was his story. I could take it or leave it. I need feel no obligation to him. Indeed, he observed, I was doing him a favor by listening. Besides it was obvious that he had something more than ordinary "water wagon" sobriety. He looked and acted "released"; repression had not been his answer. Such was the impact of an alcoholic who really knew the score. (N.Y. State J. Med., Vol.50, July 1950)

36Q - Why do clergymen so often fail with alcoholics, when A.A. so often succeeds? Is it possible that the grace of A.A. is superior to that of the Church?

36A - No clergyman, because he does not happen to be a channel of grace to alcoholics, should ever feel that his Church is lacking in grace. No real question of grace is involved at all - it is just a question of who can best transmit God's abundance. It so happens that we who have suffered alcoholism, we, who can identify so deeply with other sufferers, are the ones usually best suited for this particular work. Certainly no clergyman ought to feel any inferiority just because he himself is not an alcoholic. (N.C.C.A., 'Blue Book,' Vol.12,(1960) .

Another Answer

36A - I thought the answer to be very simple. The Church has the spirituality, but in the case of drunks, it didn't have the communication to pave the way, one alcoholic to the next, for the Grace to descend. So you have the spirituality, of which we have borrowed, and we have the communication. Therefore we are in no competition at all; we can do together that which we cannot do in separation. (Transcribed from tape. G.S.C. 1960)

Another question, same topic.

36Q - What can ministers do to co-operate with A.A.?

36A - The approach to the alcoholic is everything. I think the preacher could do well if he does as we do. First find out all you can about the case, how the man reacts, whether he wants to get over his drinking or not. You see, it is very difficult to make an impression on a man who still wants to drink. At some point in their drinking career most alcoholics get punished enough so that they want to stop, but then it's far too late to do it alone.

Sometimes, if the alcoholic can be impressed with the fact that he is a sick man, or a potentially sick man, then, in effect, you raise the bottom up to him instead of allowing him to drop down those extra hard years to reach it. I don't know of any substitute for sympathy and understanding, as much as the outsider can have. No preaching, no moralizing, but the emphasis on the idea that the alcoholic is a sick man.

In other words, the minister might first say to the alcoholic, "Well, all my life I've misunderstood you people, I've taken you people to be immoral by choice and perverse and weak, but now I realize that even if there had been such factors, they really no longer count, now you're a sick man." You might win over the patient by not placing yourself up on a hilltop and looking down on him, but by getting down to some level of understanding that he gets, or partially gets. Then if you can present this thing as a fatal and progressive malady and you can present our group as a group of people who are not seeking to do anything against his will - we merely want to help if he wants to be helped - then sometimes you've laid the groundwork.

I think that clergymen can often do a great deal with the family. You see, we alcoholics are prone to talk too much about ourselves without sufficiently considering the collateral effects. For example, any family, wife and children, who have had to live with an alcoholic 10 or 15 years, are bound to be rather neurotic and distorted themselves. They just can't help it. After all when you expect the old gent to come home on a shutter every night, it's wearing. Children get a distorted point of view; so does the wife. Well, if they constantly hear it emphasized that this fellow is a terrible sinner, that he's a rotter, that he's in disgrace, and all that sort of thing, you're not improving the condition of the family at all because, as they become persuaded of it, they get highly intolerant of the alcoholic and that merely generates more intolerance in him. Therefore, the gulf which must be bridged is widened, and that is why moralizing pushes people, who might have something to offer, further away from the alcoholic. You may say that it shouldn't be so, but it's one of those things that is so. (Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies, June 1945).

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