How Carl Jung Helped Inspire Alcoholics Anonymous

In the early 1930s, a rich man from Rhode Island visited Carl Jung for help with the man's alcoholism. According to Alcoholics Anonymous, Jung concluded that the man's problem was "medically hopeless" and that spirituality was the solution. He directed the man to the religious organization known as the Oxford Group. After experiencing the beginnings of personal transformation, the Rhode Island man then recruited several of his former drinking buddies, including a man named Bill Wilson. Wilson was initially hesitant about the grand claims made by his friend and the Oxford Group, but following a stint in a hospital for alcoholism treatment, he had a spiritual experience that led him to stop drinking for good and inspired him to help others with alcoholism.

Decades later, correspondence between Wilson and Jung that detailed Jung's influence on AA went public. "That conversation between you was to become the first link in the chain of events that led to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous," Wilson wrote of his friend's visit to the psychiatrist (via Acta Psychopathologica).

"His craving for alcohol was the equivalent of ... the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed ... as the union with God," Jung wrote back, concluding his letter with, "Alcohol in Latin is 'spiritus' and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula, therefore, is: spiritus contra spiritum."

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