When people with addictions engage directly with Spirit, they are able to move into a deeper, more creative state of consciousness that leads to recovery.

By Lisa Cedrone

Did you know that Carl Jung helped to set the foundation for the 12 Step programs of recovery?

A few years ago I came across the letters between Bill Wilson and Carl Jung, which were written in 1961, six months before Carl Jung died. Bill Wilson was a cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)—the group that developed the original 12 Steps—and Carl Jung was the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology and is responsible for concepts such as synchronicity, archetypes and the collective unconscious.

In these letters, Wilson credits Jung for making major contributions to the spiritual foundation of AA, most notably suggesting the hopeless alcoholic is powerless and that a spiritual solution is most likely the only hope for recovery from alcoholism.

During his long career, Jung’s clients included Rowland Hazard, an American businessman and a member of one of the most prominent Rhode Island textile families. Hazard was a graduate of Yale, he served in the Rhode Island state senate from 1914–1916, and he was a hopeless alcoholic. Hazard later helped Ebby Thacher, another hopeless alcoholic, and Thacher eventually shared his experience and the connection to Jung’s philosophies with Wilson.

Here is a quote from Bill Wilson’s initial letter to Carl Jung:

“My recollection of [Roland’s] account of [your] conversation is this: First of all, you frankly told him of his hopelessness, so far as any further medical or psychiatric treatment might be concerned. This candid and humble statement of yours was beyond doubt the first foundation stone upon which our society [AA] has since been built. Coming from you, one he so trusted and admired, the impact upon him was immense. When he then asked you if there was any hope, you told him that there might be, provided he could become the subject of a spiritual or religious experience—in short, a genuine conversion. You pointed out how such an experience, if brought about, might remotivate him when nothing else could. …”

Now a quote from Carl Jung’s response to Bill Wilson:

“Roland’s craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval [meaning biblical] language: the union with God. … The only right and legitimate way to such an experience is, that it happens to you in reality and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding. …

“You see, alcohol in Latin is spiritus and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.”

What does this mean? The highest form of spiritual experience counters the most depraving poison for those with addiction: alcohol.

I want to dig deeper into Jung’s conclusion through the book The Paradox of Addiction: The Call for the Transcendent, by Dr. Ashok Bedi, a Jungian psychoanalyst who is affiliated with the Kripa Foundation in Mumbai, India, which is dedicated to addiction recovery and helping people with HIV and AIDS. He wrote this book with Rev. Joseph Pereira, the founder of Kripa, and they both are strong proponents of 12 Step programs.

As they point out in the book: Jung’s insights promote a “psychology of surrender, which in Jung’s terms means establishing a bridge from the ego to the self or the soul.” The paradox itself is mirrored in the words of the Apostle Paul, says Pereira: “Virtue is made strong by weakness…when you are weak you are strong… because My Grace is enough for you.”

They propose that, according to Jung, “A crisis or trauma can provide the sand grit around which the oyster of our personality may incubate the pearl of individuation and emergence. The breakdown of the ego is an opportunity for the breakthrough of the soul.” [Jung defines individuation as the process of psychological differentiation with the goal of developing our individual personality in the quest for wholeness and finding our true Self.]

And when people suffering with addictions learn to engage with Spirit directly, the addictions subside. They are able to gain a “spiritual experience”—a deeper, higher or more creative state of consciousness. This is one of the key principles behind 12 Step Programs, they conclude: “restoring a connection with the Higher Power.”

My personal experience in recovery, which began in 2007, has left me in complete agreement. It often feels as if I’m in an elegant dance to balance inner work—such as the prayer and meditation of Step 11 (See Figure 1)—with my outer actions in the world to truly live in integrity. For me, the spiritual “conversion,” as