Modern Man In Search of Soul – Bill W’s 2nd and final letter to Dr. Carl Jung from the AA book ‘Pass It On.

Bill W’s letter to Dr. Carl Jung crediting him for his contribution to AA and Dr. Jung’s very insightful response about his own inability to help an alcoholic (Roland H) recover but his recognition of the alcoholic ‘craving for alcohol as the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God’ are relatively well known. Less well known is a final letter Bill W sent back to Dr. Jung. After receiving and greatly appreciating Dr. Jung’s response, Bill wrote this final letter to Dr. Jung shortly before Jung’s death. It thus had no response. This letter may help us gain compassion for how deeply our thirst for alcohol aligns with our thirst for wholeness and meaning in our lives. And in this compassion, we may find a way to embrace those parts of ourselves we find most objectionable and dark. Bill’s letter also may help us begin to see that the epidemic growth in addiction (in all its many forms including alcoholism) may have much of its origins in a materialism that may feed the stomach but rob the soul. – Bruce M.

Your observation that drinking motivations often include that of a quest for spiritual values caught our special interest. I am sure that , on reflection, thousands of our members could testify that this has been true for them, despite the fact that they often drank for oblivion, for grandiosity, and for other undesirable motives. Sometimes, it seems unfortunate that alcohol used in excess, turns out to be a deformer of consciousness, as well as an addictive poison.

Years ago, some of us read with great benefit your book entitled ‘Modern Man in Search of A Soul’. You observed, in effect, that most persons having arrived at age 40 and having acquired no conclusions or faith as to who they were , or where they were, or where they were going next in the cosmos, would be bound to encounter increasing neurotic difficulties; and that this would be likely to occur whether their youthful aspirations for sex union, security, and a satisfactory place in society had been satisfied or not. In short, they could not continue to fly blind toward no destination at all, in a universe seemingly having little purpose or meaning. Neither could any amount of resolution, philosophical speculation, or superficial religious conditioning save them from the dilemma in which they found themselves. So long as they lacked any direct spiritual awakening and therefore awareness, their conflict simply had to increase.

These views of yours, Dr. Jung, had an immense impact upon some of the early members of our AA Fellowship. We saw that you had perfectly described the impasse in which we had once been, but from which we had been delivered through our several spiritual awakenings. This ‘spiritual experience’ had to be our key to survival and growth. We saw that the alcoholic’s helplessness could be turned to vital advantage. By the admission of this, he could be deflated at depth, thus fulfilling the first condition of a re-motivating conversion experience.

So the foregoing is still another example of your great helpfulness to us of AA in our formative period. Your words really carried authority , because you seemed to be neither wholly a theologian nor a pure scientist. Therefore, you seemed to stand with us in that no man’s land that lies between the two – the very place that many of us had found ourselves. Your identification with us was therefore deep and convincing. You spoke a language of the heart that we could understand.

Note – To this letter there was no reply from Dr. Jung. Two months after it was sent, Dr. Jung died.