Relationship To The Oxford Group and The Formation of Alcoholics Anonymous
Rowland Hazard III's struggles with alcoholism led to his direct involvement in the chain of events that gave rise to what is today Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), where he is remembered as "Rowland H.," though Rowland himself never actually joined AA. His own efforts at recovery were markedly influenced by his consultation with pioneering psychologist Carl Jung, and his subsequent involvement with the Oxford Group, one of the most highly visible Christian Evangelical movements of the 1920s and '30s. Recent research further suggests that he may have also been treated by Courtenay Baylor, a lay therapist of the psycho-spiritual therapeutic effort known as the Emmanuel Movement.
Though Rowland is not named, his experience with Jung is described in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. According to this account, Jung pronounced Rowland a chronic alcoholic and therefore hopeless and beyond the reach of medicine as it was at the time (a credible opinion, considering Jung's unique role in the development of psychoanalysis). The only hope Jung could offer was for a life-changing "vital spiritual experience" -- an experience which Jung regarded as a phenomenon. Jung further advised that Rowland's affiliation with a church did not spell the necessary "vital" experience.
This prognosis so shook Rowland that he sought out the Oxford Group, an evangelical Christian movement prominent in the first half of the twentieth century. The Oxford Group was dedicated to what its members termed "the Four Absolutes" as the summary of the Sermon on the Mount: absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love. The Group was also dedicated to the vigorous pursuit of personal change, and to extending the message of hope through change by means of "personal" evangelism: one changed person sharing his experience with another (see Oxford Group).
Rowland was aware of the Oxford Group emphasis on personal evangelism through the example of personal change when he came in contact with an alcoholic named Ebby Thacher while Rowland and two other Oxford Group members who knew Thacher were summering in Glastenbury, Vermont in 1934. Thacher was the son of a prominent New York family who, like many well-to-do Eastern US families of the period, summered in New England, forming lifelong associations and friendships with other "summer people" as well as with permanent residents of the area. Upon learning that Ebby was on the verge of commitment to the Brattleboro Retreat (the former Vermont Asylum for the Insane) on account of his drinking, Rowland and fellow Oxford Group members Shep (F. Shepard) Cornell and Cebra Graves sought out Ebby and shared with him their Oxford Group recovery experiences. Graves was the son of the family court magistrate in Ebby's case, Collins Graves, and the Oxford Groupers were able to arrange for Ebby's release into their care. This led to Ebby's acceptance of the principles of the Oxford Group and his own sobriety. Encouraged in the example of personal evangelism, Ebby later sought out an acquaintance of his own.
Bill (William G.) Wilson was raised in Vermont near the summer homes of Rowland Hazard, Ebby Thacher and others who had found release from their alcoholism in the Oxford Group. Ebby had been a "drinking buddy" of Wilson's over many years. By late 1934, Wilson was on the verge of total alcoholic collapse, living off his wife's income in the couple's Brooklyn, New York home, when Ebby paid him a visit. Ebby shared with Bill the message of recovery through the application of spiritual principles, famously encouraging Bill to choose his own conception of God. This visit with Ebby set in motion a series of circumstances that led to Bill's own recovery from alcoholism in late 1934. Bill Wilson went on, with Dr. Robert H. ("Dr. Bob") Smith of Akron, Ohio, to carry the Oxford Group message of spiritual recovery to other alcoholics. The group of recovering alcoholics founded by Wilson and Smith would later break away from the Oxford Group to become Alcoholics Anonymous by 1939. The Oxford Group renamed itself Moral Re-Armament in 1938, and largely faded from the prominence it had enjoyed in the 1930s. Moral Re-Armament would eventually become a non-religious humanitarian organization, changing its name to Initiatives of Change in 2001.
This version of Rowland's story is commonly accepted within AA, substantially confirmed in substance if not in detailed fact by evidence such as an exchange of letters between Bill Wilson and Carl Jung in 1961, in which Jung acknowledged his acquaintance with "Rowland H." Jung also made reference to his treatment of an unnamed alcoholic member of the Oxford Group in a 1954 talk, transcribed and recorded in Volume 18 of his Collected Works, The Symbolic Life.
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