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Stellar Fire: Carl Jung, a New England Family, and the Risks of Anecdote
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Additional Information Copyright © 2006-07 Cora Finch | Last updated 18 May 2008 Contact the author Helen Hazard with Carol and Charles, about 1924, from a portrait by Lydia Field Emmet .
Photo from the Getz East Africa Expedition, 1927-8. By permission, Holland Museum, Holland, Michigan.
Leonard Bacon, late 1930s.
The Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Rhode Island Historical Society Library were used extensively in constructing this account of Rowland Hazard and his acquaintance with Carl Jung. I am indebted to the staff members of both libraries for their patience with this amateur researcher. Michael StGeorge provided invaluable assistance as I was compiling this material. His knowledge of historical issues in recovery was a great help. He also reviewed several drafts. Errors are my own. Although this work represents an individual perspective, I have had the benefit of a range of insights from others interested in AA history. Jared Lobdell, in particular, was helpful in directing my attention to the 1927-28 interval. Thanks also to Michael for creating the diagram of family relationships. 1. The Labor and the Wounds The siege is over. And the walls are down In Alcoholics Anonymous tradition, storytelling is a prominent part of recovery. Through telling their stories, new members learn to shape their experiences in a way that enhances identification with the group. Individual stories often recapitulate themes from the history of the fellowship itself. The relationship between personal histories and the history of the group complicates the study of the origins of AA. A common view is one summarized by William White:
This paper explores the beginning of the thread described by White. Zurich was the location where Rowland Hazard3, an American suffering from alcoholism, consulted Carl Jung. AA tradition identifies their conversation as the first event in a causal chain leading to the founding of the fellowship in 1935. The labyrinth metaphor is especially appropriate to a story with Jungian themes. Mythological motifs, as expressions of the psyche, are common in popularized versions of Jungian psychology. Joseph Campbell, among others, stressed the importance of the "hero's journey" as a model of psychic development. This focus on personal narrative and myth made archetypal psychology particularly useful for the recovery movement. For those who have struggled with alcohol or drug problems, it is reassuring to see past and present crises as stages in life's journey. However, they were not a part of Jung's message as reported in AA's foundational document, the book Alcoholics Anonymous:
The book was written anonymously, but the author of that passage (and a good part of the book) was Bill Wilson. He did not give a specific source for the reconstructed conversation. The man in the story, Wilson assured his readers, had regained his sobriety through the methods outlined in the book. Carl Jung is not known to have said this to any other patient. He certainly had patients relapse after being in therapy with him for some time, and some were analyzed intermittently for years. His circle of wealthy Americans included a few whose problems were chronic, and as long as they could afford him he did not turn them away.5 Would alcoholism have been a reason to give up on a patient? Although occasionally capable of humility, Jung had emerged from his own psychic near-death experience with the impression that he knew a great deal about the life of the spirit. To believe that his methods had no value, he would have to believe that alcoholism was unlike any other problem. Jung's other writings do not suggest that he held this belief. Bill Wilson's friend Ebby Thacher was close to Rowland Hazard for several years, and Rowland was Ebby's chief mentor in the Oxford Group. In 1954, Ebby gave his recollections of Rowland at an AA conference in Texas. It is difficult to judge the independence of Ebby's memory, in view of the notoriety Wilson's version had received. However, it is interesting to note which details were prominent in Ebby's mind:
In 1961, Bill Wilson reported that the Jung-Hazard conversation occurred "around 1931."7 By the 1990s, AA researchers were attempting to fill out the story using Hazard family papers at the Rhode Island Historical Society. Rowland Hazard had in fact been in Europe during 1931, but on a 2-month family vacation. His travels during that time can be partially traced, and only about 2 weeks would have been available for visits with Jung. Other than that trip, in the years between 1930 and 1934 his whereabouts were well enough documented to exclude a therapeutic visit to Europe.8 The youngest Hazard son, Charles, was 11 years old at the time of the 1931 trip. He was interviewed in the early 1990s and did not recall any reference to Jung, although he did have a recollection of staying in France with his older siblings while his parents made a trip to Zurich.9 There were other problems with the story. Rowland and Helen Hazard had divorced in 1929 and remarried less than two months before leaving for Europe. The likelihood that Rowland could have been drinking destructively in proximity to a reunion with Helen seems remote. Also, the single trip does not explain Wilson's account, which involved a relapse and a return visit. Crossing the Atlantic took about a week at the time. In 1961, Bill Wilson had sent a letter to Jung, recounting the story of "Roland H." Jung's reply supported the accuracy of the story. Perhaps that should have been enough, but after so many years it is hard to be certain that Jung really remembered the actual patient, whose name was incomplete and misspelled, and the specifics of the conversation. Jung knew something about Alcoholics Anonymous10 and may have seen the letter primarily as an opportunity to show his support. In addition, Ronald Hayman has said of Jung's correspondence in his last years,
Hayman did not supply a source for this information, but he was presumably thinking of something Jaffe said in 1969 to Gene Nameche (the transcript of the interview is in the Countway Library of the History of Medicine, Boston). She said that she had sometimes composed entire letters, for a period of time following Emma Jung's death, when Jung was too depressed to dictate them. According to Jaffe she no longer did this once Jung recovered from his depression. However, the "autobiographical" book Memories, Dreams, Reflections illustrates how accustomed Jaffe was to writing in Jung's voice and it would be difficult to rule out the possibility that she contributed to the composition of letters. 2. Nursery of the Heart
The inheritance of the Hazard family was a distinguished one. Seventeenth-century ancestors were among the earliest settlers of southern Rhode Island. They began as farmers, expanding into textile manufacture and then chemical works. Rowland Gibson Hazard (1819-1888) was not only an industrialist but a writer, primarily in philosophy. A friend of the founder of American Unitarianism, William Ellery Channing, Hazard also corresponded with John Stuart Mill.13 His granddaughter, Helen Hazard Bacon, remembered having dinner with Herbert Spencer when he visited the family in Peace Dale.14 Caroline Hazard was another granddaughter. Born in 1856, she went to school in Europe at the age of 12. She then attended Brown, although the university did not grant degrees to women at the time. She spent the next 25 years working for family businesses and philanthropic organizations. One of her projects was a welfare center in Peace Dale, devoted to the practical education of needy women. She authored many books of poetry, essays and local history.15 From 1899 to 1910, Caroline Hazard served as president of Wellesley, leading the college through a period of rapid growth. After her retirement from Wellesley, she spent much of her time in Santa Barbara, California where she continued to write and work on charitable projects. Her sister-in-law Mary Hazard, Rowland's mother, also spent part of each year in Santa Barbara after the death of her husband, Rowland Gibson Hazard II, in 1918. Two cousins of Rowland Hazard have particular importance to our story, Leonard Bacon and his sister Susan. Susan's husband was Elmer D. Keith, who had graduated from Yale a year after Leonard and studied in Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. Keith worked in various fields, primarily in printing and publication during the early part of his career. Later he became known as an expert in antiquities and architecture. Susan and Elmer Keith were members of Frank Buchman's "First Century Christian Fellowship" during the 1920s. They were active in both the American and English branches of the Group.16 Rowland Hazard's maternal grandfather was George Bushnell, a Congregationalist minister and brother of Horace Bushnell. His Hazard grandparents were founders of the Peace Dale Congregational church. Rowland himself appears to have had little church involvement during the 1920's, if his extensive list of charitable donations is any indication. He was giving to many causes including divinity schools, Christian charities and occasional church building funds, but not regularly to any specific church. Later records indicate that he was received into the Episcopal Church in 1936.17 Rowland grew up in Peace Dale and went to Yale, graduating in 1903. He then worked for several family businesses in Chicago, Peace Dale and upstate New York. In 1910 he married Helen Campbell of Chicago. He became active in Rhode Island politics, was a delegate to the 1912 Republican National Convention, and served in the state senate 1914-16. He was an Army captain during the first World War. After the war he was again involved with family businesses. He also was associated with an investment firm, Lee Higginson of New York. Rowland had residences in Rhode Island, New York, Vermont, California and later New Mexico. His various responsiblities kept him on the move. The Hazard family had for years been dominant in the chemical industry, particularly in alkali production. In 1920, five companies merged to form Allied Chemical and Dye. Rowland served on its board of directors. The overall impression given by the papers and letters is of a man of generosity and charm. It is obvious that at some point, certainly by 1925, he had become a source of great anxiety to the family. In 1926, Caroline wrote to Leonard with renewed optimism. Rowland — referred to in family letters as Roy — was amazingly improved, and Caroline attributed much of the credit to an analyst recommended by Leonard. Back to Table of Contents3. Master of Fire We sit thick crowded in the Gothic Nave. Leonard Bacon, Animula Vagula18 Leonard Bacon was six years younger than his cousin Rowland. Because of his career as a writer (he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1941), he was one of the best-known members of Rowland's family. On his father's side his ancestors were academics and clergy, including Leonard Bacon (1802-1881), theologian and abolitionist. Like Rowland, Leonard grew up in Peace Dale and went on to Yale. Five of his relatives (four of them from the Bacon side) were Yale faculty when he was a student. Irving Fisher, an uncle by marriage on the Hazard side, was a professor of political economics at Yale and a prominent supporter of Prohibition. After college, Leonard worked briefly on family business projects before starting graduate school at Berkeley. He stayed on as faculty, leaving only for a few years of service during the first World War. At Berkeley, Leonard met Rudoph Schevill and his wife Margaret, an ethnologist who was later a patient and student of Jung. Through Margaret he became friends with Chauncey S. Goodrich, a San Francisco attorney whose hobby was the study of Native American culture. Goodrich collaborated with Margaret Schevill (whose later married name was Link) on studies of the mythology of the Southwest.19 He and his wife Henriette were analyzed by Dr. Jung in 1923, and maintained close relationships with the small group of dedicated Jungians in California.20 Leonard's ambition had been to support himself as a poet and translator of poetry. By 1923 his books were selling so well that he could resign his position at Berkeley and move to Carmel. Unaccountably, he became depressed after the move. "I was perfectly married, I had three lovely children, I had enough money for our modest necessities. Ulug Beg was out. A new book had been accepted, another was on the way. And yet two-thirds of my energy was being eaten up in ridiculous agonies … I tried psychiatrists, exercise, alcohol …"21 In early 1925 his friends persuaded him to go to Zurich to be treated by Dr. Jung. After some preparatory sessions with Toni Wolff, "the fog of melancholy seemed to have blown away." But it was only a temporary honeymoon before the painful work of analysis began.
Jung, unlike Freud, encouraged intense interaction, even close personal entanglements, between patients who were in therapy. These relationships were often continued at seminars given by Jung. "Everyone was insanely confidential or insanely reticent. And no thin ray of humor penetrated our dark spirits."22 The timing of Leonard's analysis was particularly fortunate, as he completed it in time to attend Jung's third series of English seminars, in Swanage. In later years he kept up an active correspondence with Toni Wolff, Kristine Mann and others who were close to Jung. Carl Jung and his wife, Emma, once stayed with the Bacons, probably when Jung spoke in Providence in 1936.23 His cousin Carol (daughter of Irving and Margaret Fisher, whose married name was Sawyer and later Baumann) moved to Zurich some time in the late 20s. She married a relative of Jung's son-in-law, studied with Jung and lectured on Jungian psychology. Through the 1930s, Leonard returned to Zurich periodically to visit the Jungs, Carol Baumann and Toni Wolff. Leonard had written poetry during his analysis, and in 1926 it was published as Animula Vagula ("wandering little soul"). There was no mention in the book of Jung or therapy. The book sold well, and reviews were good. The poetry editor of the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Leonard is a philosopher-poet … One can easily imagine him the centre of a cult."24 The book records the journey of a soul: first a descent into chaos, the confrontation with the shadow, integration and the return to the surface. It was a vision of "fire and vapor of the nether sky/ That Dante's self had not the art to sing,"25 a classic hero's quest. Not long after Leonard's Zurich visit, he lost both of his parents within a few months of one another. For the first few months of 1926 he traveled frequently between his home in California and Peace Dale, to settle their estates. During one of these trips, he was asked to help resolve a crisis involving Rowland. Rowland and Helen Hazard had been on vacation in Bermuda with Rowland's sister and her husband. Rowland apparently lost control of his drinking, an argument developed, and Helen sent him home by himself.26 The letters are vague, but there is an implication that the crisis was precipitated by a revelation of infidelity on Rowland's part. Helen cabled Leonard asking him to meet Rowland in New York when he arrived on 25 March and take him to Dr. Riggs' sanitarium in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.27 After listening to Rowland's side of the story, Leonard suspected that the marital problems were more prominent than the drinking. He encouraged Rowland and Helen to consider a different plan. In a letter from Bermuda, Helen wrote, "I agree with you that Dr. Riggs does not seem to have had the ability to help Roy to help himself."28 Helen returned in early April, and Leonard continued to meet with each of them, separately. They agreed that going to Europe to see Dr. Jung together would be the best thing. George Porter, an old friend of Rowland, supported Leonard's campaign of persuasion.29 Rowland and George were in the same class at Yale, and George was an usher in Rowland's wedding. George Porter was a former patient and active supporter of Jung. Jung's popularity with wealthy Americans had begun with his treatment of Porter's friend, Medill McCormick, in 1908. By 17 April 1926, Rowland and Helen were on a steamer bound for Europe. After short stops in London, Paris and Brussels, they arrived in Zurich 6 May. A letter from Rowland to Leonard, dated only "May 15,"30 is written on the stationary of the Dolder Grand Hotel of Zurich. Details in that letter match closely those of a letter from Jung to Leonard dated May 16th, 1926 ("Hazard and his wife are here").31 Both letters indicate that Rowland had begun work with Jung, and Helen with Jung's assistant, Toni Wolff.
On 24 June 1926, Rowland's bank account showed an expense of $5,002.50, "to cover charge put through by F.L. & T. Co. a/c sum cabled to RH on his request." It is itemized to "travel."33 The equivalent in today's dollars would be more than $50,000. Some of the money would have been needed for hotel expenses and meals, but even the Hazards could not have spent very much of it on travel. Most of the money was presumably needed to cover Jung's fees. The New York Times social notes column of 24 July 1926 included a mention that "Mr. and Mrs. Rowland Hazard of Peace Dale, RI are at the Ritz-Carlton." By 2 August, Rowland was back in Peace Dale. He told Aunt Caroline about his analysis and showed her the drawings he had made ("The drawings are quite astonishing, symbolical things — Roy seems well and vigorous").34 Back to Table of Contents4. Gold In the Ore
The issue of Carl Jung's significance to AA is inseparable from the contribution of the Oxford Group movement. When Rowland told his story to his Oxford Group associates, he was offering evidence that objective medical opinion supported conversion as the only hope for the hopeless alcoholic. This context was an important part of the message. The Oxford Group was an evangelical fellowship, but in many ways a unique one. It was started by a Lutheran minister and YMCA director named Frank Buchman. Working initially with college students, he developed a method of personal evangelism he called "soul-surgery." Although often effective at bringing about intense emotional conversions, his techniques made him unwelcome on some college campuses as he acquired a reputation for obsession with sexual confession.36 Buchman moved his center of operations to England and shifted his focus to prominent, successful adults. Some of his new followers were well-educated and psychologically astute. Biblical scholar B.H. Streeter met Buchman in 1922 and later joined his movement. In 1925, Streeter wrote of a continental psychiatrist (unnamed, but probably Jung) who had said that " 'as a result of his therapeutical practice he had come to the conclusion that for complete psychological health mankind requires, either a religion, or some substitute for Religion which has not yet been discovered.' And he obviously regretted that he himself did not intellectually see his way clear to either alternative."37 Buchman's success was always accompanied by controversy. On both sides of the issue, there was a perception that the "wash-out" technique used by Buchmanites resembled the "abreaction" of dynamic psychiatry. Both were overwhelming emotional experiences involving confession, possibly aided by psychological techniques to induce an altered state of consciousness. Outsiders wondered if the soul-surgeons trained by Buchman were practicing psychotherapy with an incomplete understanding of the hazards involved.38 Here is the response of Buchman to one interviewer's questions about the controversial aspects of his movement:
Jung, on the other hand, always insisted that he was a scientist. His exploration of mythological themes in human thought was based on observations begun early in his career, and to him they were no less scientific than any other form of research. He was influenced by nineteenth-century romanticism, by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, but there was nothing in his medical training to suggest that these were unreliable sources. He was always a careful observer of patients and, in his own mind, an empiricist. One aspect of scientific thinking at the turn of the century had a particular significance to Jung. It was often stated as the "phylogenetic law," that embryonic development recapitulates the evolutionary development of the species, beginning with lower life forms. The short form of the rule was "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," and during its ascendancy it became a source of error in both biology and social science. For Jung, these assumptions led to a respect for what he saw as the "primitive" potential of the psyche, the two-million year old person in each of us. It also shaped his approach to religious experience. As Phillip Rieff has said,
In 1920, Jung made a trip to the northern coast of Africa. It opened his eyes to the possibility of learning psychic truths by studying people who were still practicing the ancient spiritual traditions. The belief that "primitive" places had special value in the search for renewal was shared by other creative thinkers of the time. Jung was then emerging from a long psychological crisis of his own, the "creative illness" following his break-up with Freud. During a trip Jung made to the United States in 1924-25, friends arranged a visit to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. A small group of Californians, including Leonard Bacon's friend Chauncey Goodrich, had been hoping to bring him to the Southwest. Jung had often backed up his psychological theories with material from non-western cultures, but his knowledge of those cultures was second-hand. His American followers felt he would benefit from some direct observation. George Porter provided most of the funding for the trip and was the main organizer.41 Although Porter and Rowland Hazard were friends, there is no evidence that Rowland had any interest in Jung at the time. Jaime De Angulo, whose former wife was then studying with Jung in Zurich, had spent years in linguistic and cultural study in the American Southwest and was Jung's main guide. De Angulo introduced Jung to a Hopi elder, Antonio Mirabal (aka Mountain Lake), who was willing to listen to Jung's theories and discuss Hopi mythology with him. Rightly or wrongly, Jung used material from his conversations with Native Americans during that trip to support his own points for many years after.42 Soon after returning to Zurich, Jung began preparations for his most ambitious psychological expedition ever, a five-month trip to eastern Africa. He was accompanied by his English disciple Peter Baynes (full name, Helton Godwin Baynes) and George Beckwith, an American former patient. Jung's trip began in England, where he boarded a steamer traveling along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts to Italy. He was met in Genoa by Baynes and Beckwith, who had taken the overland route. The steamer continued to the Suez Canal, through the Red Sea and along the coast to Mombasa, the "gateway to East Africa." There they boarded the railway to Nairobi. As he watched scenes of African life from the train window, Jung was overcome by a sense of familiarity, which persisted through the trip.43 A team of guides and servants led them from a settlement near Nairobi into the Rift Valley, to spend several weeks camping at the foot of Mount Elgon. The main purpose of the trip was to study the beliefs of this isolated tribe. From there they traveled to Uganda, to Lake Albert, and north on the Nile (by paddleboat, flat-bottomed boat, and then steamer) to Cairo. It was during this last leg of the trip that Jung reflected, as he recalled much later:
Jung arrived in Zurich on 14 March 1926, eight weeks before his first consultation with Rowland Hazard. Back to Table of Contents5. Africa
There is no doubt that Rowland Hazard benefited from his 1926 visit to Zurich. He returned to his usual round of family obligations through the rest of the summer, taking children to camps in New England and spending time with his mother and aunt in California. He was still working for an investment firm in New York, although his work there was probably winding down and he resigned the next year. By the summer of 1927, he was preparing for a trip to Africa. It was to be a classic safari, but it also seems that part of Rowland's motivation had to do with his experience with Jung. Rowland's cousin Susan Keith understood the trip to be in the nature of search for wholeness.46
Rowland Hazard left the United States in September of 1927. Checks written to hotels indicate that he was in London on 6 October, Paris on 17 October and Naples on 21 October.47 Like Jung, he followed the typical route to East Africa, from Genoa to the Port of Said. In November, his aunt, Caroline Hazard, received a letter from the Red Sea.48 She was impressed by the gratitude and insight in his letter. Rowland wrote that he had begun a "new cycle." In late December, however, the family received ominous news. He had contracted amebic dysentery and possibly also typhoid. These diseases were sometimes fatal to travelers of that time. Rowland had checked onto a hospital in Arusha, (in present-day Tanzania) around 15 December.49 By 21 January he was strong enough to travel to Nairobi by ambulance, about 200 miles. In Nairobi he suffered a setback, and was told he had a liver ailment. Although the doctors considered the possibility that the amoeba had formed an abscess in the liver, they knew that the liver problem could have had a separate cause.50 The possibility of alcohol-related liver damage must have occurred to them, if Rowland was honest about his medical history. On 2 March 1928, Caroline Hazard wrote to Leonard Bacon,
Leonard Bacon's sister, Susan Keith, was an enthusiastic follower of Frank Buchman and his movement, the "First Century Christian Fellowship," soon to be renamed as the Oxford Group Movement. The books Susan sent him are not named in the letter.52 Rowland's brother Pierre made the long trip to join Rowland in Nairobi.53 Rowland's recovery was now progressing well, and his liver problem (not caused by the amoeba, as it turned out) was no longer an immediate threat. In March Rowland and Pierre sailed for France. They were joined in Paris by Pierre's wife, Nancy, and Leonard Bacon.54 Pierre and Leonard attended to some family business while in Paris, and the group left for London at the end of March. Pierre and Nancy left for home soon after arriving in London. Rowland stayed at the Cavendish Hotel55 where it appears that he had an active social life. He was certainly no longer in the role of the delicate convalescent. Although Frank Buchman's followers were active in London at the time, there is no evidence that Rowland was in contact with them. Caroline Hazard had been greatly relieved concerning Rowland's spiritual state in early March, but it seems that the situation changed for the worse while he was in London. Some information about what happened next can be gleaned from Leonard Bacon's memoirs. "Troubles not my own," he writes, "took me to Europe again in the spring of 1928."56 Leonard, of course, does not identify the troubles or whose they were in his book. He sought the advice of a well-known Londoner in the solution to his dilemma. She was the manager of the Cavendish Hotel and appears to have known most of the people worth knowing. A biographer has described her as a "nanny" to the stylish and self-indulgent guests at the hotel.57
Leonard's letters to his wife indicate that he lost patience with Rowland during their stay in London. He tried to persuade Rowland to go to Zurich, but was not sure if he had any influence. Roy, he wrote, was worse than ever and "drink is the least part of it."59 When Leonard left for Zurich (around April 5), his understanding was that Rowland might or might not follow later. Apparently Rowland did not. On April 14, Leonard wrote to his wife "I gave up Roy in London. Unless he saves himself everything is lost as far as he is concerned." Rowland settled his bill at the Cavendish on April 13 and his ship, the Berengaria, left Southampton the next day.60 Unfortunately, Rowland is rarely mentioned in letters to or from Leonard Bacon after April 1928. Not all letters are preserved, so it is difficult to be sure what this means. There may have been a rift in their relationship. Whatever the reason, Rowland's activities are more difficult to follow without Leonard as a source of information. Whether or not Jung recommended against analysis, Rowland did in fact return to analysis the next year. He was treated by a close associate of Jung (Peter Baynes) who was then in California. If Jung recommended a religious fellowship, Rowland showed no sign of following the advice. His involvement with the New York branch of the Oxford Group was still years away. Back to Table of Contents6. The Test of Time
After returning to the United States, Rowland Hazard went into treatment with Dr. Edward S. Cowles in New York City.62 Dr. Cowles subscribed to an allergy theory of alcoholism. The allergy, he believed, irritated the membranes of the brain and spinal cord. His treatment included repeated lumbar punctures. Dr. Cowles believed that drawing off spinal fluid would decrease the pressure and protein content of the cerebrospinal fluid, and that this would eliminate the craving for alcohol. His methods were unorthodox and controversial, even by the standards of the time. Judging by his check ledger, Rowland had frequent treatments from late May through July, 1928. The resilience of the human body is amazing, and by the fall of 1928 Rowland had returned to his busy life of cross-county travel and family responsibilities. His drinking problem was apparently in remission. Jung's associate, Peter Baynes, had a practice in northern California that year and Rowland was seeing him intermittently. Helen had told Rowland before he left for Africa that she would be filing for divorce, and the couple lived apart after his return. Letters suggest63 that Rowland had at least one affair during the 1926-28 interval, but by 1929 he was repentant and trying to save the marriage. Early in 1929 Rowland purchased land near Alamogordo, New Mexico, "something like a thousand acres … of absolutely wild land with one or two springs upon it, but no water development."64 He spent the next few years developing the land, building a house and establishing a clay products business. His reasons for choosing this area are unclear. The reputation of New Mexico as a pristine, healing environment may have been a factor. The Southwest had long been a traditional destination for health-seekers. New Mexico was also an area of interest to Carl Jung and his American disciples. After Jung's visit to the Taos pueblo in 1924, he wrote and spoke of the area and its spiritual significance. One thing Rowland would not have found in New Mexico at the time was a branch of the Oxford Group.65 Whether he had any involvement with them in London, or had only read their literature around the time of his conversion, he was evidently not seeking them out at this point. Rowland and Helen divorced in February of 1929. Attempts at reconciliation continued afterward, however, and they remarried on 27 April 1931. Caroline Hazard wrote to Leonard and Patty, who were then living in Italy.
In June through September of 1931, the Hazards and their four children (then aged 11-20) toured Europe. They went to England, France and Italy, and Helen and Rowland apparently visited Switzerland without the children.67 There would have been time for a brief visit to Jung, although whether such a visit occurred is unclear. All indications are that Rowland was neither drunk nor depressed at the time, and it would be difficult to imagine Helen traveling to Europe with him if he had been. Rowland and Helen may simply have wanted to tell Jung about their happy ending. There were difficult times ahead. Rowland was hospitalized for alcoholism in February and March, 1932.68 He gave an account of what happened later that year at an Oxford Group event, in 1935.
It should come as no surprise that he left Jung out of the story. In the Oxford Group, as today in Alcoholics Anonymous, stories were somewhat bound by convention. Rowland also left out his earlier exposure to Frank Buchman's movement, through Susan Keith. Rowland also failed to mention a relapse in 1933, during which he was under the care of Courtenay Baylor.70 Baylor was trained as a lay therapist by Elwood Worcester and Samuel McComb, Episcopal priests who were familiar with the growing field of dynamic psychiatry. Worcester had worked with Dr. Isador Coriat to develop group classes and counseling techniques for those with "nervous disorders," including alcoholism. According to historian Nathan Hale, Coriat "was not interested in religious dogmas, yet endorsed religion's sublimating virtues."71 These mentors gave Courtenay Baylor a suitable background to help a patient who had both Jungian and Buchmanite leanings. Sam Shoemaker once described Samuel McComb, who had trained Baylor at Emmanuel Church, as a man "whose skill at helping people in religious need makes him one of the marked religious forces of our day."72 The Emmanuel Movement placed more value on psychotherapeutic concepts than the Oxford Group, and lacked the Group's evangelical tone. Rowland's close relationship to Courtenay Baylor suggests that this broader vision was attractive to him. It would be difficult to imagine him rejecting the value of all his previous experiences and attributing his recovery entirely to one conversion experience. Under the influence of the Oxford Group, however, he apparently did just that. Back to Table of Contents7. Toiling Upward Where the golden-rod and aster Leonard Bacon, Animula Vagula pp 36-7 The story of Rowland Hazard's return visit to Carl Jung is still incomplete, but it may be possible to draw some conclusions from the available evidence. I have not found any indication that Rowland visited Zurich between 1926 and 1931, or that they met at any other location, although evidence of such a visit may well emerge. There may have been time for a quick stopover at the beginning of Rowland's Africa trip in 1927, and he had been drinking before he left the United States. However, Rowland apparently felt that his drinking was in control at that time73, so there would have been no desperate need to consult Jung. In assessing the influence Jung had on Rowland, it is possible that some inferences can be made from indirect evidence. In particular, the perspective of Leonard Bacon may provide some clues. Leonard, after all, was the one who had persuaded Rowland to go to Zurich in the first place and was Rowland's primary connection to Jung over the next few years. Carl Jung had a great deal of respect for Leonard Bacon, and spent several days with him during Rowland's 1928 crisis. Although a nominal Episcopalian, Leonard was ambivalent about organized religion. His sister, Susan Keith, did persuade him to have tea with Frank Buchman in 1929. During that year, the Keiths were in Oxford and the Bacons were living in Florence. Susan learned at a dinner with Buchman that he would soon be traveling to Florence, and gave him Leonard's address. She was happy to find out later that they had spent some time together.74 There are indications in a 1933 letter that the Keiths' involvement with the Group had created some strain in Susan's relationship with Leonard. She wrote to him, "I know you have been uneasy about our connection with the so-called 'Oxford Group Movement.' Of late we have felt that we have graduated from the need of their leadership … now we are going on in the ways that are the most Christian in our eyes."75 It is possible that Leonard's negative opinion of the Group developed over time, but even in 1928 he may not have been happy to have his cousin place too much of his faith in an evangelical fellowship. The collapse Rowland suffered in the spring of 1928 had come immediately after a religious "awakening" under the influence of literature sent by Susan, who was devoted to Buchman's movement. When an alcoholic gets drunk again immediately following a conversion experience, most people would not assume that a conversion experience is what he needs to get sober. It would be difficult to imagine Jung endorsing any such logic. Did Jung have the conviction that serious alcoholics would not benefit from his methods? Most would agree that an actively drinking alcoholic is unlikely to benefit from insight-oriented therapy, but in Wilson's understanding Jung went beyond that observation. He was apparently saying that even if an alcoholic stays sober long enough to complete a successful analysis, long-term recovery is unlikely unless the patient has a peak experience and becomes part of a religious group. This is problematic for two reasons: Jung's confidence in the spiritual potential of the spiritus rector and the soul's own capacity to achieve integration; and his many negative remarks about traditional western religion. Did he believe that alcoholics were totally different from the rest of humanity? Some of his known patients were alcoholics and appear to have maintained the improvement they achieved under Jung's care. Jungian analyst James Hillman, in correspondence with the author of a paper on the Minnesota Model, mentioned Jung's previous experience with Medill McCormick.76 To Hillman, it seemed likely that Jung's experience with McCormick had persuaded him that analytic psychology was ineffective with alcoholics. This presumably informed Jung's assessment of Rowland's chances of recovery. McCormick was certainly one of the most important patients Jung treated early in his career. When he went to Zurich in 1908 he was Jung's only American patient, besides being wealthy and prominent. Medill was an alcoholic and had several relapses during his involvement with Jung, which continued over several years. However, he apparently remained sober from 1911 until his death in 1925. Many of Jung's early American patients came to him through recommendations from the McCormick family, and he remained in close touch with Medill. A story concerning Medill McCormick appears in Memories, Dreams, Reflections.77 There is no evidence that religious conversion played any part in McCormick's recovery. Whether in fact he gave up drinking because of Jung's therapy, Jung certainly regarded him as a therapeutic success. It would seem unlikely that McCormick's case would have suggested to Jung that his approach would not work for a serious alcoholic. At least one other patient whose problems included alcohol has left information about Jung's work with him. Henry (Harry) Murray, a Harvard psychology professor, was treated by Jung in 1925. Much of the therapy focused of Harry's fascination with Herman Melville and the archetypal significance of Moby Dick. Murray, who was married, also had a conflict surrounding a woman in whom he had developed an interest. Harry Murray's friend Christiana Morgan went to Zurich with her husband in June, 1926. When Jung analyzed Harry Murray the year before, he had used his own relationships with his wife and mistress to illustrate "that it was possible and at times necessary for a man to divide the women in his life into categories formulated for his own masculine comfort and support" as biographer Deirdre Bair puts it.78 Jung explained the situation similarly to Christiana Morgan. She wrote to Murray,
Morgan and Murray began an affair shortly afterward, forcing painful accommodations in the lives of their spouses. Jung had advised extramarital involvements to male patients earlier in his career,80 although there is no evidence that he gave this advice later than the 1920s. Jung was neither particularly respectful of religion nor particularly despairing of alcoholics. He may, however, have used both concepts as a form of confrontation, in an attempt to shock a patient whose repeated relapses were not responding to anything else. There are stories of Jung treating some patients very harshly, although he does not seem to have done so often.
One possibility is that Rowland, when he told the story to his Oxford Group friends in the mid-30s, was remembering part of a conversation that took place in 1931. Rowland's mother had the impression in 1930 that he had experienced a spiritual awakening, and by 1931 he was reunited with his wife and had been sober for some time. Perhaps Jung's remarks were by way of explaining a recovery which had already occurred. This has the advantage of placing the conversation in the year Wilson guessed, but it would hardly have been the same conversation. It would be a reasonable guess that some strict warning given by Jung, at a point when Rowland was in fact in relapse, was the origin of the conversation Rowland eventually described. There is no way to know how close the relationship was between this original conversation and the one reconstructed by Bill Wilson. Of the two men involved in the conversation, Rowland Hazard would have been the one more familiar with James' philosophy. He was a well-educated American who had read literature recommended by followers of Frank Buchman.82 Back to Table of Contents8. Epilogue
For many years, AA membership was a voluntary choice, as Oxford Group membership had been. The changes were incremental, but by the 1980s the involvement of outside authority in recruitment to AA was substantial. AA itself was officially uninvolved, but unofficially cooperative, in the legal and institutional alliance funneling new members, and not everyone in the fellowship was happy with the growing population of non-voluntary attendees. In professional recovery literature, references to the Jung story became common during the same period. The increased attention can be partially explained by an increase in recovery literature, professional and non-professional, during that time. Also contributory was the increased popularity of Jungian concepts during the 1980s and 90s. However, my sense is that the prominence of the story grew for other reasons as well. The "Jung connection" may have acquired importance to the recovery community precisely because success had brought new criticism. Forced participation exposed AA's philosophy to public scrutiny. The "spiritual although not religious" claim, in particular, required examination. In response, advocates of the program had two options. Those aligned only with the original, communal AA, would insist that treatment and monitoring programs were outside issues. For those who worked in treatment and monitoring, the situation was more complex. Jobs in the recovery industry were generally available only to those with a commitment to AA, however. The value of the program could only be questioned from the outside. The distance between AA and its evangelical predecessors has often been illustrated by pointing out that Bill Wilson rejected the "Four Absolutes" of the Oxford Group. This shows, as the reasoning goes, a sensible rejection of religious absolutism and an affirmation of pluralism. What is less often pointed out is the derivation of those "absolutes." At the turn of the century, evangelist Robert Speer had devised a way to get the ethical message of Jesus down to just eight words: absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute selflessness, absolute love. His primary model for this was the Sermon on the Mount. One could easily argue with both the effort itself and the result, which is in fact a little ridiculous by the standards of a century later. However, any Oxford Group contemporary of Wilson could have told him that perfection was never the point, any more than it has been a requirement in any other tradition based on the words of Jesus. The need to achieve some distance from religion is understandable, but other aspects of the Oxford Group legacy may have been more problematic than the Four Principles. Belief in human powerlessness, for example, is characteristic of a particular theological position. The insistence that it must be accepted, as a condition of recovery, limits and distorts our perception of human capabilities. The religiosity of the 12 steps has often been an issue for critics of the program, and it is a valid criticism when the steps are used in secular programs. AA meetings, which generally include prayer and witnessing, are appropriate only for those who are comfortable with that approach. Required participation erodes respect for the range of spiritual and non-spiritual ways in which people recover. There is a devaluation of religious liberty implied by the influence of the steps in the recovery field and beyond. When Jung's contribution to AA spirituality is mentioned, it is often in an attempt to minimize the significance of AA's evangelical beginnings. This can lead to the false conviction that spirituality and religion can be separated, and may deepen the public perception that religion is irrelevant. There are valuable insights at work in the recovery field. With luck, the essential and useful will be increasingly distinguished from the merely nostalgic. My own hope is that the past, however fascinating, can be appreciated for its own value and not forced to become the pattern for the future. Back to Table of ContentsNotes
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