Authors: Ernest Kurtz
Harry M. Tiebout, “Alcoholics Anonymous — An Experiment of Nature,”
QJSA
22: 52-68 (1961); for clarity as well as brevity, the quotation is directly from the CAAAL abstract, #9449;
H. M. Tiebout, “The Act of Surrender in the Therapeutic Process,”
QJSA
10: 48-58 (1959);
cf
. also Tiebout, “The Ego Factor in Surrender in Alcoholism,”
QJSA
15:610-621 (1954), and Tiebout, “Psychological Factors Operating in Alcoholics Anonymous,” in B. Glueck (ed.),
Current Therapies of Personality Disorders
(New York: Grune & Stratton, 1946), especially p. 165;
for this intuition by others, coming from very different directions,
cf
D. Anderson, “The Process of Recovery from Alcoholism,”
Federal Probation
8 (#4): 14-19 (1944), and C. L. Brown, “A Transference Phenomenon in Alcoholics,”
QJSA
11: 403-409 (1950);
also suggestive although hardly profound is C. R. Woodruff,
Christian Conversion of the Alcoholic in the Context of the Protestant Parish Fellowship
, unpublished dissertation, Southern Baptist Seminary, 1966, reported by CAAAL #12235;
on larger implications of the parallel intuited here,
cf.
Gerald Heard, “The Ad Hoc Religions,”
Fortnight
, 15 December 1954 (vol. and pp. unavailable); O. Hobart Mowrer, “Alcoholics Anonymous and the ‘Third’ Reformation,”
Religion in Life
34: 383-397 (1965); Thomas C. Oden, “The New Pietism,”
Journal of Humanistic Psychotherapy
12: 24-11 (1972); O. R. Whitley, “Life With Alcoholics Anonymous: The Methodist Class Meeting as a Paradigm,”
JSA
38: 831-848 (1977).
21
Wilson to Oliver J., 13 June 1956: “The Catholics call it salvation, the psychiatrists call it integration, and I call it growth.…;”
cf
. the discussion of
I2&12
in
Chapter Five
, above; for the briefest summary statement, “The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety — by Bill,”
AAGV
14:8 (January 1958).
For the focus on
faith
in the alcoholism literature,
cf.:
A. E. Carver, “The Psychology of the Alcoholist,”
British Journal of Medical Psychology
11: 117-124 (1931);
E. B. Allen, “Alcoholism as a Psychiatric Medical Problem,”
New York State Journal of Medicine
38: 1492-1505 (1938);
R. G. Heath, “Group Psychotherapy of Alcohol Addiction,”
QJSA
5: 555-562 (1945);
R. V. Seliger, “About Alcoholism,”
Industrial Medicine
18: 481-482 (1949);
A. D. Button, “The Psychodynamics of Alcoholism,”
QJSA
17: 443-160 (1956);
P. A. Bensoussan, “L’abord psychologique de l’alcoholique (Psychological Approach to the Alcoholic),”
Vie Medical
38: 442-444 (1957);
E. S. Lisansky, “The Etiology of Alcoholism: The Role of Psychological Predisposition,”
QJSA
21: 314-343 (1960);
D. B. Wine and A. E. Edwards, “Intemperance: Psychological and Sociological Concomitants,”
QJSA
25: 77-84 (1964);
J. I. Hurwitz and D. A. Lelos, “A Multilevel Interpersonal Profile of Employed Alcohlics,”
QJSA
29: 64-76 (1968);
M. Tremper, “Dependency in Alcoholics; A Sociological View,”
QJSA
33: 186-190 (1973);
these of course do not speak explicitly to the A.A. Steps, but the historical development of this perception to explicitness may readily be traced in them.
For one specific application of the alcoholism literature to the A.A. Steps,
cf
. Leach and Norris, “Factors,” in Kissin and Begleiter, pp 458-463.
22
That most in time “came to believe,”
cf
. Wilson,
12&12
, p. 112: “From great numbers of such experiences [with early doubters], we could predict that the doubter who still claimed that he hadn’t got the ‘spiritual angle,’ and who still considered his well-loved A.A. group the higher Power, would presently love God and call Him by name.” The main “experience” offered is the story of “Ed” (almost certainly Jim B. of Big Book “radical” notoriety), in the Tradition Three discussion in
12&12
, pp. 147-149.
On Wilson’s fascination with Buddhist success in A.A., his many references in passing to the phenomenon led me to confirm it with NW, interview of 16 November 1976;
cf. AACA
, p. 81; for Dr. Tiebout,
cf.
“When the Big I Becomes Nobody,”
AAGV
26:1 (June 1969), 37-38 — a reprint of an earlier published article which is unavailable. One significance of the affinity of A.A. thought for Buddhism is treated near the end of
Chapter Nine
, below, p. 227. On “those unconventional in belief,”
cf
. Milton A. Maxwell, “Alcoholics Anonymous: An Interpretation,” in David J. Pittman (ed.),
Alcoholism
(New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 211-222; and Jon R. Weinberg,
A.A.: An Interpretation for the Non-believer
(Center City, MN: Hazelden, 1975).
23
Cf
. Lewis Yablonsky,
The Tunnel Back: Synanon
(New York: MacMillan, 1965); Steven I. Simon,
The Synanon Game
, unpublished dissertation, Harvard University, 1974; John Burns (pseud.)
et al, The Answer to Addiction
(New York: Harper & Row, 1975); also the citations in the final paragraph to note #20 above, to which add: Nathan Hurwitz, “Peer Self-Help Psychotherapy Groups: Psychotherapy Without Psychotherapists,” in P. M. Roman and H. M. Trice,
The Sociology of Psychotherapy
(New York: Jason Aronson, 1974), pp. 84-138; Matthew P. Dumont, “Self-Help Treatment Programs,”
American Journal of Psychiatry
131: 631-635 (1974).
The affinity of this understanding of “reality” for many modern “therapies” may also be intuited in a vast variety of approaches, ranging from the aggressively “religious” to the expressly “irreligious.” Among the former: Anna A. Terruwe and Conrad W. Baars,
Loving and Curing the Neurotic
(New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1972) and O. Hobart Mowrer,
The New Group Therapy
(New York: Van Hostrand, 1964); among the latter: Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper,
A Guide to Rational Living
(North Hollywood, CA: Wilshire, 1961), and Albert Ellis,
Humanistic Psychotherapy
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974). It may be understood as basic to the therapeutic style of Carl Rogers:
cf
. Richard I. Evans,
Carl Rogers: The Man and His Ideas
(New York: Dutton, 1975), as well, of course, as Rogers himself —
cf
. “Some Hypotheses Regarding the Facilitation of Personal Growth,” “What We Know About Psychotherapy,” and “A Process Conception of Psychiatry,” in Carl R. Rogers,
On Becoming a Person
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961). For a scholarly analysis of this psychiatric approach as especially American: Patrick Mullahy,
The Beginnings of Modem American Psychiatry: The Ideas of Harry Stack Sullivan
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973); for perhaps its clearest statement, William Glasser,
Reality Therapy
(New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
For one awareness of this point giving rise to a criticism of Alcoholics Anonymous, from within A.A. itself,
cf
.
Appendix A
.
24
For James, these ideas are most accessible in Carl Georg Lange and William James,
The Emotions
(Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1922).
25
For the first Wilson-Smith meeting,
cf
. above, pp. 28-32, for the “story section” of
AA
, above, pp. 71-73, for the direct treatment of “limited control,” above, pp. 105-106.
In its earliest years, based on a survey taken in Philadelphia, A.A. claimed that “50% who come in never take another drink, 25% stumble, but then pick themselves up and make good and the other 25% never make it.” (Wilson to Howard B., 12 August 1958). Wilson’s concern from the late 1950s over “What happened to the 600,000 who approached and left?” has been treated above, as the theme of
Chapter Six
. The 20% estimate is based on this figure of Wilson’s compared to A.A.’s claimed membership of 151,606 at the time (1960) — “A.A. Growth: Active Membership,” document compiled by Jim H., in A.A. archives. Yet if the correction factor referred to above, note #2 to
Chapter Seven
, be applied, the estimate would rise to about 33%. Warren C., who entered A.A. in 1939 and in later years worked administering an alcoholism treatment program for hard-core alcoholics, estimated that “not even one in ten even begin to take the [A.A.] program seriously.” — interview, 8 September 1977.
26
Beecher is the only figure to appear in both McLoughlin,
The American Evangelicals
(pp. 128-140)
and
William R. Hutchison (ed.),
American Protestant Thought: The Liberal Era
(New York: Harper Torchbook, 1968), pp. 37-45. The McLoughlin selection, “Preaching Christ,” is used here: pp. 129 (italics Beecher’s), 130-131. The Hutchison selection, as significant, was “The Study of Human Nature.”
27
“What booze did to me”:
cf
. Wilson to Ted S., 25 March 1940; also an unattributed, mimeograph schema, “A.A. Talks,” found in use in various alcoholism treatment centers. The tradition goes back to First Corinthians,
Chapter One
, verses 18-25. The resurrection parallel may be found in First Corinthians, Ch. 15, verse 14.
28
This sense on occasion came perilously close to surfacing;
cf.
, e.g., Wilson to Russ J., 6 May 1950: “Whenever ‘two or three are gathered together,’ an A.A. group is the inevitable result.” The proximity of Wilson’s apodosis to that of Jesus — “there am I in their midst” — is striking (Mt. 18:20);
cf
. also the echo of this in the final sentence of the “long form” of A.A.’s Third Tradition,
AA
, p. 565, where an additional parallel may be noted: that between Jesus’s “in my name” and A.A.’s “for sobriety.”
29
The “witness” is inherent in A.A.’s understanding of alcoholism as permanent condition: identification within the group remains on the basis “I am an alcoholic” rather than “I am sober.” The religious intuition is perhaps clearest in Willard L. Sperry, “A Modern Doctrine of Original Sin,” in
The Disciplines of Liberty
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1921), pp. 59-80. A point inviting exploratory thought, but not here, is the distinction between ‘“shame” and “guilt”: the classic treatment is Helen Lewis,
Shame and Guilt in Neurosis
(New York: International Universities Press, 1971); it should be supplemented with Helen Lynd,
On Shame and the Search for Identity
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1958); briefer but stimulating is David G. Edwards, “Shame and Pain and ‘Shut Up or I’ll Really Give You Something to Cry About,’”
Clinical Social Work Journal
4: 3-13 (1976).
“Alcoholic” as identity or label may be thoughtfully explored
via:
Kai T. Erikson,
Wayward Puritans
(New York: Wiley, 1966); Edward Sagarin,
Deviants and Deviance
(New York: Praeger, 1975); P. M. Roman and H. M. Trice. “The Sick Role, Labeling Theory, and the Deviant Drinker,”
Int. Journal of Social Psychotherapy
14: 245-251 (1968); H. M. Trice and P. M. Roman, “Delabeling, Relabeling, and Alcoholics Anonymous,”
Social Problems
17: 538-546 (1970); E. Sagarin, “The High Personal Cost of Wearing a Label,”
Psychology Today
9:10 (April 1976), 25-31. For the sense of “identity”:
cf
. D. A. Stewart,
Thirst for Freedom
(Center City, MN: Hazelden, 1960); R. G. Bell,
Escape from Addiction
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970); and especially “A.A. Communication Can Cross All Barriers — by Bill,”
AAGV
16:5 (October 1959), 2-4.
On the relationship between “the disease of alcoholism” and “identity,”
cf
. J. H. McNamara, “The Disease Conception of Alcoholism: Its Therapeutic Value for the Alcoholic and His Wife,”
Social Casework
41: 460-465 (1969); H. L. Hershon, “Alcoholism and the Concept of Disease,”
British Journal of Addiction
69: 123-131 (1974).
30
“To Serve Is To Live — by Bill,”
AAGV
8:1 (June 1951), 3 (italics Wilson’s); Wilson to Jim W., ? September 1960: “Give these people a good exposure to A.A. if they will stand still long enough, and then let it go at that.…You simply do as well as you can, offering the A.A. message where it will be received. If there are little or no results, that is not your fault. It is the quality of your own attitude and your willingness to try, where trying is wise, that counts. Again, I repeat, it isn’t the quantity of your successful effort, it is the quality of your trying.”
31
For American missionary endeavor,
cf
. William R. Hutchison,
The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1976), especially the treatment of George Gordon and the ABCFM, pp. 136 ff.; for this as an aspect of pragmatism,
cf
. David W. Marcell and James B. Gilbert, as cited in note #17, above, and John E. Smith as cited in note #1, above — the point at issue here is treated well but unfortunately in scattered places in these three books.
32
Beyond Hofstadter, as cited in the footnote to the preceding paragraph,
cf
. for depth Morton White,
Science and Sentiment in America
(New York: Oxford, 1972). Although my thought here follows that of Hofstadter more closely than that of White, significant aspects of it have been profoundly influenced by Professor White’s lectures on the history of philosophy in America and also by conversations with him during the anti-intellectual and anti-professional campus turmoils of 1969-1970.
33
The Eighth Tradition as “hard but healthy doctrine,” from the 1937 experience, and the quotation:
AACA
, pp. 99-101,
cf
. also, in
eodem
, pp. 114-117, and
12&12
, pp. 170-175. The incident has been treated above, pp. 63-64.