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 Dedication

This book is dedicated to Dorothy, Aggie, Paul, John, Chris,

Mary, Bobby, Dave, Wayne, Bette, Dee, Robin, O’Neal,
Janice, Linda, Ellen, Joe, Darnell, Roy, and all those in
recovery or struggling with addiction issues.

Special thanks go to my brother, Paul Schoen, an addictions

counselor, and my good friend Rita Breath, a clinical
psychologist, for their feedback, consultation, and helpful
suggestions throughout the book.

I’d like to thank Nancy Cater at Spring Journal Books for

choosing to publish this book. Thanks also to Robert Freehill
for his generosity and encouragement in typing the final drafts
of my manuscript, as well as to Sondra Johnson, who worked
very hard on the initial draft and revisions. I would also like to
acknowledge and thank Sylvia Ruud for her conscientious
copy editing. Thanks to Matthew Schoen, my son, for
designing the cover, and Peggy, my wife, for being so
supportive and giving me the space and time I needed to
write and pull all the pieces together and for helping me with
“e-mail.”
 Contents

Author’s Note
Preface
Introduction
Definition of Addiction

CHAPTER ONE: Setting the Stage: The Bill W. – Carl Jung

Letters
Bill W.’s Letter
Carl Jung’s Letter

CHAPTER TWO: The Psychodynamics of Addiction:

Development of a Typical Addiction
Stage 1 – The Ego/Persona Identification Alignment with the
“False Self”
Stage 2 – The Development of the Personal Shadow
Stage 3 – The Introduction of the Potentially Addictive Behavior
Stage 4 – The Creation of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex
Stage 5 – The Addiction-Shadow-Complex Takes Over the
Psyche
CHAPTER THREE: An Exploration of Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil as an Essential Ingredient in
Addiction
An Overview of Concepts of Evil
Clinical and Theoretical Formulations of Unintegratable Aspects
of the Psyche
Images of Addiction and Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil in
Fairy Tales, Myth and Religion
Why People are Drawn to Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil
Clarification of Definitions of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil

CHAPTER FOUR: The Healing Process of Recovery through

the Twelve Steps of A.A.
A. Turning it Over: The First Three Steps of A.A. and the First
Three Stages of the Psychodynamics of Recovery
B. Shadow Work: A.A. Steps Four through Ten and Stage Four of
Psychodynamics of Recovery
C. Staying in the Light: A.A. Steps Eleven and Twelve and
Stages Five and Six of the Psychodynamics of Recovery

CHAPTER FIVE: “Using Dreams” of Recovering Alcoholic

and Addicted Individuals
“Feels Great” Using Dream Reactions
“Feels Awful” Using Dream Reactions
“Somewhere-in-between” Using Dream Reactions

Conclusion
Notes
Index
 Author’s Note

W hen The War of the Gods in Addiction was first published in

2009, I was hoping it would be a true contribution toward a
better understanding of the complex and complicated nature of
alcoholism, addiction and recovery. I hoped it would shed light on
why the 12 Steps of AA work and why. I hoped it would add to the
theoretical exploration of the psychodynamics in the creation of
alcoholism and addiction.
In the 11 years since its publication I have presented all over the
country and have been immensely gratified and humbled at the
reception and validation I and the book have received. My biggest
concern was whether what I had written would “hold water” so to
speak? Did it ring true to recovering alcoholic and addicted
individuals? Did it accurately reflect their experience of addiction, AA
and recovery? The response from the recovering 12 Step community
has been overwhelmingly affirming. A number of alcoholic individuals
have come up to me after reading my book and hearing my
presentation to tell me “I don’t know how you know what you know
about alcoholism and AA but somehow you know it?”
I am not recovering personally from alcoholism and addiction so
this was the greatest compliment I could get from the people on the
inside who really know because they have lived and experienced it.
My book has been used in study groups, book clubs and discussion
forums. It has been used as a primary text at Pacifica in California for
its course on addiction. I continue to have individuals contact me
about the book, its ideas and availability.
I am grateful to Chiron for agreeing to republish The War of the
Gods in Addiction after it had gone out of print for several years. My
previous publisher closed up shop. I have wanted it to continue to be
a part of the discussion on alcoholism, addiction, AA and recovery
going forward. This reprinting and rerelease assures that it will be!
Thank you, Chiron. Deo Gratias!
David Schoen
 Preface

T his book has evolved gradually over the past thirty years. It is
rooted in both my personal and professional experience as an
alcohol and chemical dependency counselor, clinical social worker,
and Jungian analyst. A number of my siblings and close relatives are
recovering alcoholics with many years of sobriety now. Alcoholics
Anonymous literally saved their lives when nothing else could touch
them. I have the greatest respect for and appreciation of A.A. and the
Twelve Steps, because I saw firsthand how my brothers and sisters
were lost and now they are found—thanks to A.A. I must confess my
bias: that I have very little patience and tolerance for ignorant,
theoretical “A.A. bashing” (a number of such books can be found on
the shelves of many of the major bookstores), because of my
profound personal experience of its powerful effectiveness in
changing and transforming individual lives, especially of those I love.
In the process of studying Jungian psychology and becoming a
Jungian analyst I realized how little many in the mental health,
Jungian, and psychoanalytic communities really know and
understand about addiction, and about A.A. and how it works.
Conversely, I found a corresponding lack of knowledge and
information regarding Jungian psychology on the part of many in the
A.A. and recovering communities, even though Carl Jung was such a
key figure in the process of the original founding of A.A.
Living in both worlds, I recognized, as Jung did, how much A.A.
and Jungian psychology have in common; how similar the Twelve
Steps are to the different stages and processes of individuation; how
spirituality is central to both; how the relativizing of the ego, its not
being the supreme god of the psyche, is the same in both systems,
each having its own language for the phenomenon; how similar the
concepts of the Self and the Higher Power are; how profoundly both
appreciate the absolutely destructive transpersonal qualities of evil—
A.A. with its concept of alcoholism and addiction and Jungian
psychology with its concept of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil;
and how dreams can greatly assist one on the journey of both
addiction recovery and in exploring the vast psychological territory of
the unconscious.
Through the years I have lectured and given various workshops
and seminars on these subjects. While presenting in Kansas City a
number of years ago, I realized that all of the ingredients I needed
had been cooking and simmering in one of those gigantic Louisiana
gumbo pots on a very low fire in the back of my brain for a very long
time. I realized they had finally mixed, melded, and come together
enough to create something greater and more integrated than all the
separate ingredients—there was a bigger picture, a synthesis, which
was now ready to put over brown rice, to serve and to share with
others. So in the metaphor of gumbo, I offer you my hopefully well-
cooked, ready to imbibe and digest book on the psychodynamics of
addiction. In this spirit, I hope it will feed and nourish both the A.A.
and recovering communities as well as the mental health, Jungian,
and psychoanalytic communities in a process of mutual dialogue,
exploration, understanding, appreciation, respect, and service to
humanity. I hope it will help individuals struggling with addiction, their
families, and their friends in their healing journey of recovery toward
the wholeness of their beings.
 Introduction

B y education and training I am a sociologist, a clinical social

worker, a chemical dependency addictions counselor, and a
Jungian analyst; by temperament and philosophy I am a
“phenomenologist.” A phenomenologist is a person whose primary
interest is the study of phenomena—the study of things as they
actually are. However, I make no special claims to an ability to more
objectively or absolutely understand reality or any other
phenomenon. My subjectivity, limitedness, blindnesses, and biases
are at least equal to, if not greater than, those of others. The only
advantage, I believe, in being a phenomenologist is that I hold no
fundamentally absolute allegiance or loyalty to any theory or
perspective per se, including Jungian psychology. My allegiance to
theories or perspectives is only to the extent that they accurately
reflect and help me to understand some aspect of a phenomenon or
process. The closer a theory is to accurately capturing and reflecting
the reality of something, the more value and weight it has for me. The
reverse is also true, in that the further away a theory or explanation is
from what seems to me to be an accurate representation of what is
going on, the less interest I have in it. All theories are hypotheses,
maps, or lenses that try to create a picture or a formula that as
accurately as possible reflects and represents a phenomenon. Some
maps are better than others.
In the arena of alcoholism and addictions, there are many
competing and sometimes confusing maps that try to explain the
phenomena. Some are more helpful in capturing one aspect of
addiction than another. Some maps are so inaccurate that they
remind me of the story where the man in the rental car keeps getting
hopelessly lost trying to find his way around Detroit until he realizes
he’s been driving around using a map of Chicago.1
In my opinion, all of the present psychodynamic maps of addiction
fail to accurately represent the phenomena and account for the
essential and unique aspects of addiction that are crucially important
in psychologically understanding the nature of addiction and what
can be helpful in its treatment. This book will not go into already
known history or existing theories regarding the nature of alcoholism
and addiction. It will not explore ideas of alcoholism as moral failing
or character weakness, or as a symptom of other underlying
diseases, physical or psychological.2 It will not emphasize the
DSM:IV diagnostic view of alcohol abuse versus dependence, or its
similar categorizing of other mood-altering drugs or particular
behaviors, as part of the psychiatric view of mental/emotional
disorders. It will not explore views of addiction as neurological,
hereditary, behavioral, cultural, familial, or social.
This in no way is meant to diminish or devalue the significance or
validity of these contributions, theories, ideas, or sources of
information. It is worth the considerable time and energy to explore
and understand them all, but the intention of this book is not to
provide a comprehensive survey of what is already known and written
on the addiction landscape, which can already be found in many
other places. This book means to break new ground on the subject.
There are elements of alcoholism and addiction that are genetic,
hereditary, physiological, neurological, nutritional, biochemical, social,
environmental, and cultural. These are all significant pieces to the
puzzle of addiction and need to be further explored, studied, and
understood. My focus, however, will be only on the psychological—
specifically, the psychodynamics of addiction, by which I mean the
specific psychic ingredients and psychological processes involved in
its creation and development, seen primarily from a Jungian point of
view. At this time, I feel that only the Jungian view of the psyche can
adequately explain, psychodynamically, the incredible complexity and
unique aspects of the addiction and recovery process.
 A.A. has intuitively, instinctively, pragmatically, and experientially
discovered these dynamics, and addresses them in a very practical,
implementable way in its Twelve Steps, but A.A. has never been able
adequately to translate its experience into the psychodynamic
language spoken by most mental health professionals. I am not
criticizing A.A.—their job is to get and keep people sober. They are
rightly more concerned about what works than about whether those
of us in the psychoanalytic and mental health professions “get it” or
not. But it is important that we do “get it,” and that this gap between
“what works” and “why it works” is bridged for the future. The bridge
could be a winwin-win for those in active addictions, as well as for the
A.A. recovering and mental health communities. Many people’s lives
will depend upon it.
A.A. has established irrefutably that its Twelve Step Program is,
far beyond any other, the most effective and successful treatment
approach in getting and keeping alcoholic individuals sober. A.A. has
also done a good job in communicating “how” its Twelve Step
Program works; what they haven’t been able to explain well enough
is “why” it works. The “why” is what I want to address in this book,
especially for the skeptics, agnostics, and nonbelievers. I believe I
can explain why the A.A. program works with addicted individuals
when everything else has failed. What is it about this phenomenon of
A.A. that makes it different? Why is A.A. effective when other
approaches fail? We would ask the same questions if we suddenly
found a drug or treatment that cured AIDS or cancer or heart disease;
we would want to know how it works and why.

DEFINITION OF ADDICTION

The phenomena I am talking about affects seven percent of the

population of alcoholic truly addicted individuals. Research indicates
that 20 percent of the population have problem drinking abuse issues.
Let me begin by defining my terms. The first important question is:
What is a psychological addiction? Psychologically, addiction is not
just a tendency to overindulge in alcohol, drugs, sex, or fudge.
Addiction is not laziness, bad habits, or just being human. It is not
simply a lack of will-power, motivation, self-discipline, initiative,
education, or information. Addiction is not merely an extension of the
abuse of substances or be-haviors until they become dependencies.
It is not merely moral or spiritual character weakness. It is not the
inability to resist temptation. It is not just overwhelming appetite or
craving; it is more than excessiveness. It is not the use of alcohol or
drugs or sex or gambling or food as a temporary response to stress,
grief, or a reactive situational depression. It is more than sociopathic
superego lacunae. Though many of these factors, elements, and
dynamics may be involved in an addiction, they are not sufficient in
and of themselves to define or adequately explain it.
My definition of psychological addiction for the purposes of this
book has two key components. First, the addictive substance, activity,
or behavior must ultimately take over complete and total control of
the individual, psychologically. That is, it must take over control of
normal ego functioning—thoughts, emotions, perceptions,
motivations, judgments, decisions, actions, and behaviors. And the
second part of this definition is crucial: the addiction takes over
control in an inherently destructive and ultimately life-threatening
way. It is not an addiction unless it is a death sentence—not life in
prison, not fifty years, with probation or time off for good behavior. It is
a death sentence of the mind, of the emotions, of the body, and of the
spirit. It is a death sentence to the addict’s career, community,
marriage, family, and friends. It is not an addiction unless it has the
lethal capacity and potential, the power to kill the individual. It is not
an addiction unless it is the most powerful, controlling, possessing,
dictating, and determining agenda in the psyche. It must take
precedence over everything else.
Francis Nemerck, OMI, and Marie Coombs, Hermit, in their book
on addiction viewed through the lenses of St. John of the Cross (the
great medieval Spanish mystic of “The Dark Night of the Soul” fame)
and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (the great Jesuit philosopher,
theologian, and scientist who explored the question of the
development and influence of Christ-consciousness upon the
biological and spiritual evolution of the cosmos), define addiction in
very much the same way as I do:

Addiction … is a pathological relationship. It uses persons,

objects or events for purposes that they cannot possibly fulfill.
The addiction becomes the all-absorbing focus, the provider of
ultimate meaning, and the sole reason for being of the addict.
Everything s/he does revolves increasingly around the object of
desire. In that way, the addiction becomes a god to which the
addict is completely subjected.3

A psychological addiction truly takes possession of the person in

the deepest and most sinister sense of “being possessed.” I do not
use this term in merely an imaginal or metaphorical sense.
There are medical definitions of addiction that use biological and
physiological criteria—dealing with changes in the body, structurally
and biochemically; measuring things such as metabolism, cravings,
serotonin uptake, buildup of toxicities, organ deterioration, and so on.
Medical, physical definitions of addiction for a long time only
addressed substances such as alcohol or drugs. They failed to
account for behaviors and activities such as gambling, sex addiction,
dysfunctional relationships, overwork, etc. More recent neurological
and biochemical research has confirmed that many of the same
reactions occur in the brain, nervous system, and physiology in all
types of addictions, regardless of whether the addiction is to
substances, behaviors, or relationships.
All physical addictions have a psychological behavioral
component, but not all physical addictions are also psychological
addictions. There can be physical dependence or addiction without
psychological addiction per se. There are cases I know of where
people were overmedicated during medical treatment or painful
surgeries and their bodies became dependent and addicted, usually
to pain medication, but their psyches did not. Once physical detox
and withdrawal from the pain medication was complete, there was no
deep, lingering psychological craving to continue to indulge in the use
of the addictive substance. These people were physically addicted
but were never really psychologically addicted. Of course there is
always an interactional relationship connection between soma (body)
and psyche (soul) in a wholistic, yin/yang way. But as interesting as
these theoretical, medical, and physical nuances, distinctions, and
questions might be, they are not the real focus of this book.
A further note of clarification involves what some people describe
as “positive addictions,” meaning habits, activities, behaviors,
obsessions, possessions, and substances that are viewed as healthy,
helpful, life-giving, and spiritually enriching. I use the term “addiction”
in this book in the current clinical sense of a negative, destructive
dependency, as pathology—and not in the older Latin sense of
“addictus,” as in “devoted to” someone or something, where the
meaning could be positive, such as one being addicted to the service
or love of God, etc. Once again, as interesting and fascinating as it
might be to digress, the main objective and focus of this book is a
more accurate, comprehensive psychodynamic explanation of
addiction. On this basis, the term “positive addictions” is not helpful
for our purposes, because it only confuses and muddies the waters of
diagnosis and discernment when we describe good habits as
addictions. Jogging, falling in love, gardening, being a sports fan,
fishing, praying, or watching your diet are not addictions. Nor is being
well organized (anal), hyper, or highly opinionated. None of these is a
death sentence. They do not fit the ultimately destructive, life-
threatening criteria of a true psychological addiction. If everything is
an addiction, then nothing is an addiction, and the term becomes so
overused, generalized, and watered down it becomes meaningless
and of no use in a clinical sense to help describe and understand the
phenomenon.
The following example illustrates the problem that this kind of
definition-confusion can bring. Gerald May’s book Addiction and
Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions is wrestling
with some of these same questions about healing and addiction. May
agrees that all addictions are bad, and that what is necessary to
address addiction is a transcendent spiritual force that he simply calls
“grace”:

Understanding will not deliver us from addiction, but it will, I

hope, help us appreciate grace. Grace is the most powerful
force in the universe. It can transcend repression, addiction and
every other internal or external power that seeks to oppress the
freedom of the human heart. Grace is where our hope lies.4

Grace, for May, equals the Higher Power of A.A., which equals the
Self in Jungian psychology, and I believe he is on the right track with
this idea. My problem with May’s approach is his definition of
addiction as “any compulsive, habitual behavior that limits the
freedom of human desire.”5 He does not distinguish between mere
bad habits and behaviors that have the potential to kill you. He sees
everyone as suffering from addiction, as part of the human condition.
This approach may be democratic and inclusive of all humanity, but it
really isn’t helpful in understanding the phenomenon of clinical,
pathological addiction and the psychodynamic processes involved.
It is necessary to contrast and compare phenomena to better
understand them, and when someone claims a phenomenon is so
common and universal that it is everywhere in everyone all the time,
then how can we define it as anything but human nature in general?
May includes, under his categories of attraction addictions, popcorn
and chocolate, and under aversion addictions, mice and success. His
view of addiction has the potential to subsume every mental illness,
pleasure, relationship, and activity there is. Once again, logically, if
addiction is everything, everywhere, all the time, then it is either some
form of pan-divinity or else it is just as well nothing, nowhere,
because we will never be able to distinguish it, if it is everything, from
anything else.
This does not do justice to the true nature of addiction, and
actually makes it easier to ignore or dismiss true addiction as a real
phenomenon. Perhaps most importantly, May does not appreciate
the Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil aspect of addiction as a
transpersonal, trans-ego factor in the dynamics of addiction. I do want
to acknowledge May’s contribution to further exploring and
understanding the psychological nature of addiction and recovery in
general. His appreciation for the transpersonal elements of addiction,
especially in recovery, is a valid and helpful description of the
phenomena, particularly the fact that there are archetypal
implications.
In Chapter Three I will go into more detail about why this
destructive, life-threatening aspect is crucial to the definition of
addiction and its understanding. My position on the definition of
addiction is not meant to be arbitrary or autocratic. I am not indulging
in semantic mind-play to be argumentative. I am not trying to usurp
the word and its meaning, but to describe a fundamentally important
phenomenon for which we most often use the term addiction. What is
really important is not the label, but the essential understanding of the
characteristics of the phenomenon. If there were a less confusing,
more user-friendly word to do it justice I happily would use it. In the
meantime I will use the term addiction and will point out when the
term is being used in ways other than to describe what I am trying to
understand.
The format of this book is as follows: Chapter One will examine
the profound implications of the Bill W./Carl Jung correspondence in
guiding the focus, direction, and conclusions for the rest of the book.
Chapter Two will trace the psychodynamic development of the
process of a typical addiction, using the Jungian view of the psyche to
shed light on numerous aspects of the process of what I call the
Addiction-Shadow-Complex, and constantly referring back to the A.A.
experience of alcoholism, the Twelve Steps, and recovery. Chapter
Three will delineate the crucial component in addiction—Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil—exploring what it is and how it operates;
examining its reflections in fairy tales, myth, and religion, as well as
its existence in other clinical theories and formulations. Whenever I
use the combined terms Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil in this
book, they are meant to be understood to be synonymous with each
other, to have the same meaning. I use both terms because some
people are more attuned to one usage or the other, and I believe the
two terms together better reflect the nuances of the phenomena I
intend to describe.
Chapter Four will explore the road to recovery through the healing
process outlined in the Twelve Steps of A.A., and how the steps
correspond to the different psychodynamic stages of recovery from a
Jungian perspective. Chapter Five looks at the significance of the
“using dreams” of alcoholic and addicted individuals during different
stages of their recovery, and how the “using dreams” can be helpful
to them in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.
The final section is the conclusion and my final thoughts.
 CHAPTER ONE

Setting the Stage: The Bill W. – Carl Jung

Letters

BILL W.’S LETTER

January 23, 1961

Professor Dr. C. G. Jung
Küsnacht-Zürich
Seestrasse 228
Switzerland

My dear Dr. Jung:

This letter of great appreciation has been very long overdue.
May I first introduce myself as Bill W., a co-founder of the
Society of Alcoholics Anonymous. Though you have surely
heard of us, I doubt if you are aware that a certain conversation
you once had with one of your patients, a Mr. Roland H., back in
the early 1930’s, did play a critical role in the founding of our
fellowship.
Though Roland H. has long since passed away, the
recollection of his remarkable experience while under treatment
by you has definitely become part of A.A. history. Our
remembrance of Roland H.’s statements about his experience
with you is as follows:
Having exhausted other means of recovery from his
alcoholism, it was about 1931 that he became your patient. I
believe he remained under your care for perhaps a year. His
admiration for you was boundless, and he left you with a feeling
of much confidence.
 To his great consternation, he soon relapsed into
intoxication. Certain that you were his “court of last resort,” he
again returned to your care. Then followed the conversation
between you that was to become the first link in the chain of
events that led to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.
My recollection of his account of that 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
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 other 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.
But you did caution, though, that while such experiences had
sometimes brought recovery to alcoholics, they were,
nevertheless, comparatively rare. You recommended that he
place himself in a religious atmosphere and hope for the best.
This I believe was the substance of your advice.
Shortly thereafter, Mr. H. joined the Oxford Group, an
evangelical movement then at the height of its success in
Europe, and one with which you are doubtless familiar. You will
remember their large emphasis upon the principles of self-
survey, confession, restitution, and the giving of oneself in
service to others. They strongly stressed meditation and prayer.
In these surroundings, Roland H. did find a conversion
experience that released him for the time being from his
compulsion to drink.
Returning to New York, he became very active with the
“O.G.” here, then led by an Episcopal clergyman, Dr. Samuel
Shoemaker. Dr. Shoemaker had been one of the founders of
that movement, and his was a powerful personality that carried
immense sincerity and conviction.
At this time (1932-34), the Oxford Group had already
sobered a number of alcoholics, and Roland, feeling that he
could especially identify with these sufferers, addressed himself
to the help of still others. One of these chanced to be an old
schoolmate of mine, named Edwin T. [“Ebby”]. He had been
threatened with commitment to an institution, but Mr. H. and
another ex-alcoholic “O.G.” member procured his parole, and
helped to bring about his sobriety.
Meanwhile, I had run the course of alcoholism and was
threatened with commitment myself. Fortunately, I had fallen
under the care of a physician—a Dr. William D. Silkworth—who
was wonderfully capable of understanding alcoholics. But just
as you had given up on Roland, so had he given me up. It was
his theory that alcoholism had two components—an obsession
that compelled the sufferer to drink against his will and interest,
and some sort of metabolism difficulty which he then called an
allergy. The alcoholic’s compulsion guaranteed that the
alcoholic’s drinking would go on, and the allergy made sure that
the sufferer would finally deteriorate, go insane, or die. Though I
had been one of the few he had thought it possible to help, he
was finally obliged to tell me of my hopelessness; I, too, would
have to be locked up. To me, this was a shattering blow. Just as
Roland had been made ready for his conversion experience by
you, so had my wonderful friend Dr. Silkworth prepared me.
Hearing of my plight, my friend Edwin T. came to see me at
my home, where I was drinking. By then, it was November 1934.
I had long marked my friend Edwin for a hopeless case. Yet
here he was in a very evident state of “release,” which could by
no means be accounted for by his mere association for a very
short time with the Oxford Group. Yet this obvious state of
release, as distinguished from the usual depression, was
tremendously convincing. Because he was a kindred sufferer,
he could unquestionably communicate with me at great depth. I
knew at once that I must find an experience like his, or die.
Again I returned to Dr. Silkworth’s care, where I could be
once more sobered and so gain a clearer view of my friend’s
experience of release, and of Roland H.’s approach to him.
Clear once more of alcohol, I found myself terribly
depressed. This seemed to be caused by my inability to gain
the slightest faith. Edwin T. again visited me and repeated the
simple Oxford Group formulas. Soon after he left me, I became
even more depressed. In utter despair, I cried out, “If there be a
God, will He show Himself.” There immediately came to me an
illumination of enormous impact and dimension, something
which I have since tried to describe in the book Alcoholics
Anonymous and also in AA Comes of Age, basic texts which I
am sending to you.
My release from the alcohol obsession was immediate. At
once, I knew I was a free man.
Shortly following my experience, my friend Edwin came to
the hospital, bringing me a copy of William James’s Varieties of
Religious Experience. This book gave me the realization that
most conversion experiences, whatever their variety, do have a
common denominator of ego collapse at depth. The individual
faces an impossible dilemma. In my case, the dilemma had
been created by my compulsive drinking, and the deep feeling
of hopelessness had been vastly deepened still more by my
alcoholic friend when he acquainted me with your verdict of
hopelessness respecting Roland H.
In the wake of my spiritual experience, there came a vision
of a society of alcoholics, each identifying with and transmitting
his experience to the next—chain style. If each sufferer were to
carry the news of the scientific hopelessness of alcoholism to
each new prospect, he might be able to lay every newcomer
wide open to a transforming spiritual experience. This concept
proved to be the foundation of such success as Alcoholics
Anonymous has since achieved. This has made conversion
experience—nearly every variety reported by James—available
on almost wholesale basis. Our sustained recoveries over the
last quarter-century number about 300,000. In America and
through the world, there are today 8,000 AA groups.
So to you, to Dr. Shoemaker of the Oxford Group, to William
James, and to my own physician, Dr. Silkworth, we of AA owe
this tremendous benefaction. As you will now clearly see, this
astonishing chain of events actually started long ago in your
consulting room, and it was directly founded upon your own
humility and deep perception.
Very many thoughtful AAs are students of your writings.
Because of your conviction that man is something more than
intellect, emotion, and two dollars’ worth of chemicals, you have
especially endeared yourself to us.
How our Society grew, developed its Traditions for unity,
and structured its functioning, will be seen in the texts and
 pamphlet material that I am sending you.
You will also be interested to learn that, in addition to the
“spiritual experience,” many AAs report a great variety of
psychic phenomena, the cumulative weight of which is very
considerable. Other members have—following their recovery in
AA—been much helped by your practitioners. A few have been
intrigued by the I Ching and your remarkable introduction to that
work.
Please be certain that your place in the affection, and in the
history, of our Fellowship is like no other.
Gratefully yours,
William G. W–––––1

B ill W., one of the cofounders of A.A., wrote this remarkable letter
of deepest appreciation to Carl Jung, dated January 23, 1961,
thanking Dr. Jung for his part “in the chain of events that led to the
founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.” Dr. Jung responded to Bill W.’s
letter on January 30, 1961—one week later. These two letters contain
a wealth of previously unknown information and insight about A.A., its
history, the dynamics of alcoholism, and Jung’s views on the subject
—and by extension his views on addiction dynamics in general.
Within these two letters are the seeds and outline of this entire book,
the template for expansion and extrapolation of Jung’s and A.A.’s
basic views of alcoholism, its psychodynamics and its effective
treatment.
Without these letters, we would have next to nothing of Jung’s
core ideas on alcoholism and addiction. The fact that the letters were
written in January 1961, only a short five months before Jung’s death
on June 6, 1961, gives them great historical significance in the sense
that Jung’s response, being at the very end of his life, reflects the
culmination and synthesis of his thoughts on the subject. It is a
concluding summary from his incredible life experience and work and
a direct, frank formulation of what he truly thought was going on in
alcoholism and addiction. It is one of the last communications before
his death. In a sense, it is his final will and testament on the subject.
 In Jung’s collected works there are twenty-eight references to
alcoholism. The majority are early references related to the
description of patient subjects who participated in his groundbreaking
word association experiments between 1904 and 1909, which
established scientifically and empirically the existence of the
unconscious and of the emotionally charged autonomous
phenomena of psychological complexes, previously only postulated
by Sigmund Freud. He makes one reference to a short-lived
conversion to sobriety of a man “cured by Jesus” through a group
religious experience.2 Most of his comments and references to
alcoholism present it as one of the worst, most debilitating and
degenerative mental illnesses possible. There is a sense of
hopelessness about the condition reflected in the prevailing medical,
scientific, and mental health communities’ views of alcoholism in the
early 1900s as an incurable and untreatable disease. The failure of
any and all treatment approaches, including psychoanalysis, resulted
in this attitude of resignation, and the despair of helping those
unfortunate enough to be stricken by “the curse of alcoholism.” It was
truly a death sentence—just a matter of time, sooner or later, until it
would take one’s life. Jung obviously had had the same frustrating
failures as everyone else in trying to help his alcoholic patients to
stop drinking and reclaim their lives.
Into this socio-medical matrix in 1931 came Roland H., “a young,
talented and wealthy financial wizard [who] found himself on the
verge of despair over his inability to control his drinking. Having
attempted virtually every other ‘cure,’ he turned to one of the greatest
medical and psychiatric talents of the time, traveling to Zurich,
Switzerland, to place himself under the care of Dr. Carl Gustav
Jung.”3 Roland worked with Dr. Jung for approximately a year and
was able initially to establish his sobriety. He left treatment with
confidence and high hopes of being cured of his addiction. A short
time later, like so many alcoholics before and after him, he relapsed
into uncontrollable drinking once again. It seemed that even with
perhaps the best psychoanalyst in the world helping him it wasn’t
enough. Ego-insight, awareness of his developmental history, and his
exploration of his personal complexes and shadow issues were still
not enough to sustain his sobriety. Making the unconscious
conscious was not sufficient in and of itself to cure him.
Psychoanalysis was not and is not a cure for alcoholism. Multiply
Roland’s experience by thousands or millions, and you have the
disappointing story, over and over again, of the inability of medical,
psychiatric, psychoanalytic, and psychotherapeutic efforts to help
those suffering from alcoholism to get and stay sober.
Professionals do not like being powerless and mystified, so they
begin to blame the patients for not getting better by labeling them
“uncooperative,” “resistant to treatment,” “unmotivated,” or
“constitutionally untreatable.” Suffering alcoholic individuals who were
dying from this affliction were now being stigmatized, judged and
condemned for not being cured. No wonder there has been a
longstanding uneasy, untrusting sense on the part of alcoholic and
addicted individuals that the professionals, medical and otherwise,
didn’t really understand them or know what to do. Professionals
would take their money, but they didn’t help, and often were just full of
ignorance and arrogance.
Roland H. returned to Dr. Jung hoping that something else might
be tried. He believed in Jung and had great confidence in his ability,
judgment, and recommendations. In a refreshing and surprising
admission by Jung, summarized in Bill W.’s letter to him, Jung told
Roland that his situation was essentially hopeless “so far as any
further medical or psychiatric treatment might be concerned.” This
must have been a devastating blow for Roland that even the great Dr.
Jung was powerless over alcohol and that there was no ego-centered
insight therapy that could help him. Bill W. credits Jung’s “candid and
humble statement” as the “first foundation stone upon which our
Society (A.A.) has since been built.” Bill W. is obviously referring to
the now famous Step One of A.A.: “We admitted we were powerless
over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” Jung
admitted both his and Roland’s powerlessness over alcohol,
unknowingly taking Step One of A.A. together. Roland inquired if
there might be any other hope, and Jung replied that “there might be,
provided he could become the subject of a spiritual or religious
experience—in short, a genuine conversion.” Jung, in this advice to
Roland, was encouraging him to submit himself to a spiritual principle
that would replace the ego as the center of his consciousness and to
seek a transcendent center—which many call God, some call the
Universe, Jungians call the Self, and A.A. refers to as the Higher
Power. Jung had, intuitively, in effect advised Roland to take Step
Two of A.A.: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.” The only hope was in giving up hope that
Roland could somehow cure himself.
Jung was not sure, and cautioned Roland that “while such
experiences had sometimes brought recovery to alcoholics, they
were, nevertheless, comparatively rare.” Perhaps Jung was thinking
of the man “cured by Jesus” mentioned previously, and how, even in
that instance, it didn’t last. In any case, Jung had probably observed
enough seeming miracles occur when the ego psychologically
surrendered to the Self (or Higher Power) that he believed that that
was Roland’s last best chance to avoid being destroyed by his
addiction. Jung, at that time, still did not have proof that this surrender
would work with alcoholics, but he intuited the truth, and had the
daring and courage to send Roland off on a pilgrimage in search of a
spiritual transformation.
Roland found and joined the Oxford Group, which was an
evangelical religious movement of that time, emphasizing “the
principles of self-survey, confession, restitution, and the giving of
oneself in service to others. They strongly stressed meditation and
prayer.” The essence of these principles was adopted by A.A. and
reflects many aspects of steps four through twelve—making a
searching and fearless inventory; admitting to God, to oneself, and to
another the exact nature of one’s wrongs; making amends to people
harmed; continuing to pray and meditate; and helping other
alcoholics in their journey to recovery. With these core principles of
the Oxford Group, later to become the steps of A.A., Roland did have
his “conversion experience” and was released for a time from his
compulsion to drink. A good number of alcoholics were successfully
sobering up through the principles of the Oxford Group at the time.
The problem was that the Oxford Group didn’t know what to do with
relapse into alcoholism, and wound up excluding those who couldn’t
maintain sobriety and their standards. The founders of A.A. learned
much from the Oxford Group, including the dangers of perfectionism
and the importance of tolerance, as well as group- and self-
forgiveness. A.A. never gives up on anyone, no matter what! The
addicted person may give up on himself, some do, but the program
never gives up hope.
I know of one alcoholic individual who picked up 106 Desire Chips
over a twenty-year period of trying to get and stay sober. A Desire
Chip is given when a person comes to an A.A. meeting with no
sobriety but only a desire to stop drinking (which is all A.A. requires
for participation). This individual’s lack of success for twenty years
probably seemed hopeless, and was certainly frustrating and
disappointing for him and those who cared about him, but the reality
is that, after so many failures over so many years, he did get sober
and stayed sober for twenty-one years, until his death. Some people
view every recovering alcoholic as an unbelievable miracle story.
Roland instinctively realized his need to share the miraculous
truths of his newfound sobriety with others—this later became known
as Step Twelve of A.A.: bringing the message of hope to other
alcoholics—and he helped Edwin T. (“Ebby”) to get sober. Ebby was
a friend of Bill W., and was instrumental through his Twelve Step work
in helping Bill W. to get sober.
Bill W., in his letter to Jung, describes his own profound
conversion experience, where he was released immediately from his
obsession with drinking: “At once, I knew I was a free man.” Bill W.
realized, after reading William James’s Varieties of Religious
Experience, “that most conversion experiences, whatever their
variety, do have a common denominator of ego collapse at depth.” In
Jungian terms, this phenomenon is referred to as the relativizing of
the ego in service to the Self. It is experienced as a tremendous
deflation of the ruling principle of the ego and its agendas in
deference to a wider, deeper, more comprehensive agenda, to be
discovered and discerned in relation to the Self. This phenomenon is
expressed in A.A. as ego surrender to the Higher Power (“Let go and
let God,” “Turn it over”). In religious terms, it is often referred to as
submitting to the will of God or the dictates of the Holy Spirit, or
becoming one with the Buddha within, or connecting with one’s
Christ-consciousness, or being open to what Fate or the Universe
has in store for us. What is important here is not the label, but the
reality of the phenomenon experienced.
Dr. William Silkworth, who specialized in working with alcoholics,
was also instrumental in helping to get Bill W. on the road to sobriety.
He wrote the first “Doctor’s Opinion” section of what is referred to as
the Big Book (or Bible) of Alcoholics Anonymous. His experience
echoes these same ideas and concepts, only in a more medical, less
psychological or spiritual, formulation. He says, “Unless this person
(the alcoholic) can experience an entire psychic change, there is very
little hope of his recovery.” He goes on to say, “One feels that
something more than human power is needed to produce the
essential psychic change.”4 Dr. Silkworth is clearly implying that there
is a power beyond human power that is essential in creating the
psychic change, but he declines to name it.
Bill W., in his letter, goes on to talk about the phenomenal success
A.A. was having—over 300,000 previously hopeless, incurable
alcoholics sober and recovering in 1961 (by now, millions). He
acknowledges Dr. Samuel Shoemaker (one of the founders of the
Oxford Group), William James, and Dr. Silkworth, along with Dr. Jung,
as major founding contributors to the development of the Fellowship
of Alcoholics Anonymous. He closes his letter to Dr. Jung indicating
his deep appreciation for Dr. Jung’s grasp of the reality of “spiritual
experience,” which Bill W. saw as the cornerstone of recovery in A.A.
He mentions many A.A. members’ experience of “psychic
phenomena,” which Jung wrote about as synchronicity—an acausal
connecting principle linking seemingly chance external events to an
individual at a specific time in a profoundly meaningful subjective
way. He also adds that, following their recovery in A.A., a number of
A.A. members have been helped on their journey by working on
themselves in Jungian analysis. Bill W. ends his letter with heartfelt
thanks to Dr. Jung when he says, “Please be certain that your place
in the affection, and in the history, of our Fellowship is like no other.”
These words must have warmed the heart of an aging seeker of truth
who would know, shortly before his death, of some of the unknowing
good he had done in his life, which was making a difference in the
healing and recovery of hundreds of thousands of people. I am sure
that Bill W.’s letter was “very welcome indeed” to Jung, a few months
before his death. It is unfortunate that Bill W. and Carl Jung did not
have the chance to meet and get to know each other. My sense is
that they would have very much liked each other and been fast
friends—two great minds, two great hearts, two seekers of truth, two
men committed to the healing of the human soul. I would love to have
been a fly on the wall listening when they talked!
As one can clearly see, the seeds of the first three steps of A.A.
were planted by Jung and Roland’s failed analysis. The spirit of all the
steps of A.A., to speak the unvarnished truth, was modeled by Jung’s
owning of his limitations and sending Roland off on a quest for a
spiritual experience, which was, at best, a long shot. Roland “got the
program,” as they say in A.A., but sadly, he couldn’t hold onto it.
Nevertheless, without Jung, and Roland as the messenger, the
synchronicities that resulted in the founding of A.A. might never have
occurred. And if Bill W. had never written his letter to Carl Jung before
Jung’s death, which resulted in Jung’s sharing his groundbreaking
and controversial views on alcoholism, we might never have known
about Jung’s understanding of crucial aspects of the psychodynamics
of addiction, and this present book would never have been conceived
or written. Never underestimate the web that holds and connects us
all in the most mysterious ways.

CARL JUNG’S LETTER

Küsnacht-Zürich
Seestrasse 228
 January 30, 1961
Mr. William G. W––––
Alcoholics Anonymous
Box 459 Grand Central Station
New York 17, New York

Dear Mr. W.:

Your letter has been very welcome indeed.
I had no news from Roland H. any more and often wondered
what has been his fate. Our conversation which he has
adequately reported to you had an aspect of which he did not
know. The reason that I could not tell him everything was that
those days I had to be exceedingly careful of what I said. I had
found out that I was misunderstood in every possible way. Thus
I was very careful when I talked to Roland H. But what I really
thought about was the result of many experiences with men of
his kind.
His craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of
the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in
medieval language: the union with God.*
How could one formulate such an insight in a language that
is not misunderstood in our days?
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 might be led to that goal by an act of grace
or through a personal and honest contact with friends, or
through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of
mere rationalism. I see from your letter that Roland H. has
chosen the second way, which was, under the circumstances,
obviously the best one.
I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in
this world leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition if
it is not counteracted either by real religious insight or by the
protective wall of human community. An ordinary man, not
protected by an action from above and isolated in society,
cannot resist the power of evil, which is called very aptly the
Devil. But the use of such words arouses so many mistakes that
one can only keep aloof from them as much as possible.
 These are the reasons why I could not give a full and
sufficient explanation to Roland H., but I am risking it with you
because I conclude from your very decent and honest letter that
you have acquired a point of view above the misleading
platitudes one usually hears about alcoholism.
You see, “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.
Thanking you again for your kind letter
I remain
yours sincerely
C. G. Jung5
*“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul
after thee, O God.” (Psalm 42, 1)

Bill W.’s letter must have been important to Jung, because he

answered it almost immediately. Jung’s letter is dated exactly seven
days after Bill W.’s (January 23, 1961, and January 30, 1961).
Considering the time it would take for a letter to go from New York to
Switzerland, Jung probably wrote his response and mailed it back to
Bill W. as soon as he received it. He wrote it in the middle of the
Christmas-New Year’s holiday season; without delay, with what could
be speculated as an urgency on his part to communicate something
very important in this letter before his death.
Jung’s letter is briefer than Bill W.’s, but just as significant, packed
with important information and groundbreaking ideas about his
fundamental views on alcoholism and addiction. Jung begins by
indicating that the letter from Bill W. was “very welcome indeed.” He
says that he had lost touch with Roland H. and had “often wondered”
what had become of him. He affirms that Bill W.’s version of what
happened between Jung and Roland was accurately reported. Jung
goes on to reveal how misunderstood he found himself at that earlier
time, and how “exceedingly careful” he felt he had to be in dealing
with Roland’s situation. He could not at that time reveal all of what he
thought and felt and wanted to say to Roland about his alcoholism.
He goes on to say that, based on his many experiences with
alcoholics, what he had found, which he was now willing to risk
revealing at the very end of his life, was that Roland’s craving for
alcohol was a low-level thirst for spiritual wholeness, a misplaced
worship on the altar of a false idol, but nonetheless an urge, a hunger
and thirst for the real thing, not coca cola, but a true “union with God.”
Jung refers to his hesitancy to say this for fear of his being
misunderstood and misrepresented by others. The people who would
potentially misunderstand him were his colleagues in the scientific
medical and psychiatric communities, as well as those who would
want to concretize and oversimplify what he was saying into some
kind of moral condemnation of alcoholism and addiction. His peers
might accuse him of abandoning sound scientific and psychological
principles for an unsubstantiated “religious” formulation that could be
a setback for the young science of psychology back into the murky,
magical dark ages of explaining phenomena on the basis of tradition,
unquestioned authority, faith, suspicion, and religious orthodoxy. This
could be threatening to those who identified themselves with science,
who had struggled to legitimize psychology, to separate it from the
quacks of pseudo-religion, and religion itself. And then there were
those who would take his words and do with them exactly what was
most feared—distort them beyond recognition, using them for their
own purposes and agendas.
Jung himself was very sensitive about being given a credible
hearing by his fellow professionals, as so many of his ideas and
concepts already challenged them to the limits of their capacities. For
him to begin to make overt psychological statements about God and
the Devil would have been just too much. The A.A. community can
well appreciate Jung’s position, as they have been repeatedly
misunderstood by outsiders as a new religion, a cult, a brainwashing
organization, an addiction substitute, or anything except the most
successful treatment approach for alcoholic and addicted individuals
in human history.
In contrast to these misunderstanding projections and distortions
of A.A. as cult and brainwashing, one of the key ingredients valued in
both A.A. and Jungian psychology is respect for individual personal
freedom—to choose to join and participate or not, voluntarily, without
being forced, penalized, or coerced. It’s always a person’s right to
stay or to leave A.A. or the Jungian community. No one is required to
even speak at an A.A. meeting if they don’t want to. A person is free
to walk out the door at any time for any reason. Jungian psychology
has always acknowledged that it was not for everyone, and A.A. has
always emphasized that its membership and participation are by
welcome attraction—not by recruitment, solicitation, marketing, or
coercion. If you want what you see embodied, lived out, and practiced
by recovering members of A.A. or by people on their individuation
path informed by Jungian psychology, then you may be interested in
finding out more about what they are doing, why, and how it works for
them. You always reserve the right to your reservations. Perhaps the
passion and enthusiasm you might see demonstrated by these folks
—that is mistaken sometimes for brainwashing, cult, religion, or
substitute addiction—is in actuality the overwhelmingly grateful
appreciation of people for something that has actually saved their
lives.
In contrast to dogmatic formulations or unquestioned cult
authority, A.A. and Jungian psychology rely upon the guidance of the
Higher Power and of the Self, as discerned by the individual from his
or her own experiences. A.A. has always advised: “Do what works for
you.” The principles of the Twelve Steps and the psychodynamics of
Jungian psychology, as well as structures and principles found in
other systems and programs,6 can be used as helpful aids in this
discernment. Personal human freedom is never questioned by A.A. or
Jungian psychology. In fact, A.A. never tells anyone they “cannot
have a drink” if they want one; it merely informs them, through A.A.’s
experience of the possible or probable consequences of having that
drink, and then says, “It’s your choice.” A.A. and Jungian psychology
are not interested in cultivating true-believer robotic clones in any
way whatsoever.
The tension and conflict Jung experienced, and which is shared
by A.A. to this day, is how to describe the phenomena of addiction
and the successful path to recovery accurately and authentically,
without referring to these psychologically and societally loaded and
controversial aspects of the phenomena, which have only been
described in what historically have been spiritual and religious terms
imbedded in sectarian religious teachings. A.A. and Jung both tried to
adopt more neutral, inclusive language to describe the phenomena,
so as to avoid accusations of psychological bias, sectarian
allegiance, or some form of church evangelization. A.A. adopted the
concept of the Higher Power to describe these realities. Jung went
with the Self and the archetypes as the central aspects of the psyche
to represent these universal spiritual and psychological principles.
My guess is that Jung was very gratified to get Bill W.’s letter,
which supported and verified his previously publicly unexpressed
views about alcoholism, addiction, and recovery. The success of A.A.
and the thousands of sober alcoholics were living proof, an irrefutable
testament of scientific fact, which gave credibility to Jung’s views, no
longer unproven or needing to be hidden. A.A.’s thousands of sober
members, previously untreatable unfortunates, were living proof to
Jung, to the world, and to his colleagues that he was right about this
phenomenon. However you describe it, the understanding of
addiction must incorporate spiritual, transcendent elements to
adequately explain the addiction and recovery process. Jung and
A.A. both knew and understood this truth.
Both Jungian psychology and A.A. emphasize the spiritual as
essential to sobriety, to recovery, and to individuation. They are both
very careful not to endorse any one religion or any specific sectarian
expression of the spiritual. They both refuse to align with any specific
church or religion, while at the same time valuing and honoring
principles derived from specific religions and church traditions from
all over the world.
I believe A.A. is no more meant to be a new religion than Jungian
psychology is, but there are those who have tried to make them both
into a kind of religion. The effectiveness of A.A. is not as a religion,
but as a recovering therapeutic community. The effectiveness of
Jungian psychology is not as a religion, but as a psychology that can
help us understand and appreciate our impulses toward the spiritual
and what religion has to offer us in this modern world of media,
technology, and materialism. Certainly, concepts from A.A. and
Jungian psychology can be borrowed by religiously minded
individuals to help them on their spiritual journeys. Truth is wherever
we find it, whether in the sacred or the secular world. In Chapter Two I
will go more in depth into why this spiritual aspect of addiction is truly
essential to understanding both the dynamics of addiction and the
recovery process.
Jung in his letter to Bill W. goes on to describe the ways in which
one might have a personal experience of “union with God” that would
bring release from the stranglehold of alcoholism and addiction. This
“union with God” would lead to a “higher understanding” of things.
Jung suggests this may occur in three ways, as “an act of grace or
through a personal and honest contact with friends, or through a
higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere
rationalism” (that is, beyond the confines of a consciousness stuck in
rational, provable, logical, ego-centered ways of looking at and
understanding everything). What is remarkable about Jung’s
statement here is that he has summarized once again essential
components of the A.A. program. For A.A. to work and for sobriety to
continue, a person must experience an “act of grace,” whether
dramatic or subtle—what Dr. Harry M. Tiebout calls a “psychological
conversion experience,”7 which he wrote about fairly extensively
beginning in the 1940s. In A.A. this is often talked about as “hitting
bottom,” when there is a fundamental shift of the conscious ego
position and a person is suddenly open, often unexpectedly, to a
whole new way of looking at him- or herself and the issue of drinking.
This “act of grace” is often the impetus for alcoholic individuals to take
Step One of A.A., to admit that they are powerless over alcohol and
that their lives have become unmanageable. In Jungian psychology,
this experience is what is meant by the relativizing of the ego in
relation to the Self.
Jung then goes on to describe the fellowship aspect of A.A. in
noting the “personal and honest contact with friends” that is the
antidote to alcoholism and addiction. What strikes most people about
an A.A. meeting is the level of direct, honest, and personal sharing
that goes on in the most loving and nonjudgmental way. The
loneliness, alienation, and self-loathing of most alcoholics finds in the
fellowship of A.A. a level of acceptance and caring and friendship
never experienced before.
Jung’s saying that recovery is “through a higher education of the
mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism” describes the
component of the A.A. program reflected in working the Twelve
Steps, having a sponsor, and reading the literature, especially the Big
Book of A.A. This is also one of the avenues he sees as available to
achieve the “union with God” that leads to the arresting of the
addiction.
Jung did not put these three components together—the “act of
grace,” “personal and honest contact,” and “the higher education of
the mind”—as the formula for the program of A.A. He was describing
from his understanding and experience the three major ways he
knew of that people could access the “union with God” necessary for
recovery from alcoholism and addiction. He came independently to
the same conclusions as A.A. One needs to turn it over to the Higher
Power (act of grace), be an active part of the Fellowship (personal
and honest contact with friends), and work the Twelve Steps (the
higher education of the mind). A.A.’s simplest version of this
prescription is “Don’t drink, go to meetings, and read the Big Book.”
Jung then expresses in his letter to Bill W. a seemingly shocking
idea, the implications of which reverberate to the archetypal essence
of addiction. Jung wrote: “I am strongly convinced that the evil
principle prevailing in this world leads the unrecognized spiritual need
into perdition if it is not counteracted either by real religious insight or
by the protective wall of human community. An ordinary man, not
protected by an action from above and isolated in society, cannot
resist the power of evil, which is called very aptly the Devil.”8
Jung is suggesting here an ultimate archetypal battle of the
powers of good and evil for the souls of human beings. He is positing,
I believe, in these final days of his life, powerful archetypal
transpersonal realms of spiritual darkness, evil, and destruction,
pitted against the spiritual powers of light and good and healing
transformation. His words warn that the naive and unsuspecting
“ordinary man” is in danger of being brought to “perdition” by an army
of evil vampire-like spirits roaming the world looking for confused, lost
souls who are caught in “unrecognized spiritual” desire, which makes
them easy prey for these demons of despair and addiction.
These are not the typically encouraging words of Jung’s
admonition to befriend, accept, and integrate our subjective
darkness, our personal shadow, and our imperfect humanness.
These words echo a darker, deeper, more ominous reality of an
abyss, a black hole that could swallow us up, regardless of whether
we are working on ourselves or not. I’m sure that in Roland H.’s
analysis with Jung they worked on understanding and integrating
personal shadow, but there was something even bigger going on: the
addiction, which was beyond personal unconsciousness and
personal shadow. Jung sensed the transpersonal quality in addiction
and knew ultimately that to treat it required a transpersonal,
transcendent, Higher Power/Self medicine. He advised Roland to
“become the subject of a spiritual or religious experience—in short, a
genuine conversion.” Again, I emphasize, this is not Jung
encouraging people to become more conscious; it is Jung sounding a
warning to wear garlic, carry a wooden stake and crucifix, and
encircle yourself in the consecrated bread of the Eucharist—not
literally of course, but metaphorically and psychologically. He says, in
effect, that we are lost without the counteraction of either “real
religious insight” or “by the protective wall of human community.”
Some people would describe “real religious insight” as the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit, or as the connection with the Christ or Buddha
within, or as doing the will of Allah or Yahweh or the Father, or as
living in the love and truth of the Great Spirit or of the Goddess, etc.
The important point is not which religious form we choose, but that
we choose. It is crucial that this “real religious insight” is alive in us
and full of power and energy to ward off the transpersonal evil
energies in the universe, which will otherwise destroy us.
 The other antidote Jung refers to is “the protective wall of human
community.” When we are in truly loving relationships with other
people, when we act collectively out of compassion and charity as a
community, when we nurture, protect, and pray for each other, it is
much harder for transpersonal evil energies to get to us. On the other
hand, if we are isolated, separated from the community, angry,
unhappy, and vulnerable, it is much easier for these transpersonal
evil energies to cull us from the herd, so to speak, and take us down.
Jung goes even further, saying that if we are not “protected by an
action from above” and are “isolated in society,” we “cannot resist the
power of evil.” He doesn’t say “it’s a problem,” or “it’s dangerous,” or
“be careful,” or “we might not be okay”—he says that without grace
and community we are lost; it’s hopeless; the game is over; the power
of evil will overcome, consume, and destroy us. These words sound
more like a railing prophet from the Old Testament or a
fundamentalist preacher than a psychologist describing alcoholism
and addiction dynamics. I believe Jung wasn’t using these words
unintentionally, carelessly, or too loosely. I don’t believe he was
overstating his case for emphasis’ sake. I believe he said what he
said, the way he said it, because that’s exactly what he meant to say.
To recovering alcoholics, Jung’s words don’t sound extreme or
strange or exaggerated; they sound like the truth of what they have
known and lived and experienced. Without the saving grace of God or
the Higher Power and the Fellowship of A.A., most of them will tell
you they have no doubt that they wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance
in hell. They would be in the clutches of the evil of the addiction, or
dead. The idea of transpersonal evil is not so foreign or strange when
you have been possessed by it in the form of an addiction, which
cares about nothing and no one except feeding its fix until everything
and everyone is used up, until it is all sacrificed on the altar of death
and destruction.
Jung then adds the nuclear zinger that this “power of evil” is very
aptly called “the Devil.” He now links the concept of transpersonal evil
with the well-known prince of darkness, the ruler (at least in myth) of
the organized legions of evil spirits, the personification of the source
and the kingdom of the lost damned souls of humanity. Jung knows
how shocking, jolting, and challenging what he is saying is. He knows
how easily people will misunderstand, take what he is saying in the
wrong way, use it in ways he does not intend, and project, distort, and
dismiss him, but he goes on record anyway. He is trying to describe
something so important, so crucial for humanity, that he is willing to
risk the confusion, ridicule, and misunderstanding it will surely
generate, as well as the diminishment of his reputation.
To ordinary, nonaddicted people, Jung’s words are extremely
challenging and perhaps incomprehensible. If the idea of the
existence of the Devil and transpersonal evil has been rationalized
away as unreal or as archaic theology; if all this sounds too much like
a return to philosophical dualism, which we thought we had moved
beyond; or if our psychological religious beliefs assert that everything
“is” ultimately integratable (or, on the other side, as in Buddhism, it
doesn’t truly exist), then Jung’s assessment is a stumbling block for
many.
I cannot reconcile all of these questions and concerns comfortably
for everyone. A number of Buddhist practitioners I know have great
difficulty with these ideas because of the orientation map they use,
which I have great respect for and value immensely. Most people
raised in Jewish, Muslim, or Christian traditions do not have as much
difficulty with Jung’s concepts theoretically because of the inherent
duality principle incorporated in the battle of good and evil between
God and the Devil in these traditions. Jung is not trying to assert any
theology or religious belief principle over any other; he is trying, I
believe, to describe the phenomenon in the best way he knows how.
He uses an archetypal duality paradigm because it more accurately
captures and reflects the important aspects of addiction and recovery
as he has experienced and observed them.
My guess is that there are ways in Buddhism and other traditions
to explain these phenomena, but I don’t know what they are. Perhaps
some phenomena are best imaged by dualistic maps and others by
unified oneness maps, such as in the Buddhist traditions, as some
aspects of phenomena are better formulated by either monotheistic
or polytheistic formulations or by a combination of both. Perhaps on
the human level and the transpersonal archetypal level fundamental
oppositions still exist, but there are levels somewhere beyond these,
in other realms, that reconcile them into oneness. I do not know the
answer to this question.
But, for now, to understand the nature of addiction we must
thoughtfully entertain Jung’s insights, including the existence of
substantive Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil, even if it is difficult
and disturbing, because it is the best map we presently have of the
dynamics of addiction.
If Einstein hypothesized something new in physics we would not
dismiss it out of hand, even if it was initially very difficult to
understand or accept. We would give it very careful consideration.
When Jung hypothesizes something new in psychology, because of
his stature and contributions to the field we are required in fairness to
give it the same careful consideration, even if what he proposes is
also difficult to comprehend or accept. The key question here is not
whether we automatically believe Einstein or Jung, but whether their
map formulations accurately reflect the phenomenon or not. Their
track records are both outstanding in their fields of study. This does
not mean they are always unquestioningly right, but that their maps
are more often accurate than not. When a better map comes along I
certainly will be happy to use it, but until then Jung’s map of addiction
is the best I know of.
Jung confides in Bill W. because he believes Bill is “decent and
honest,” and will understand because of his experience with
alcoholism and with A.A. He believes Bill W. is the right man to tell
what he believes about alcoholism, its nature, dynamics, and
treatment.
Jung concludes his letter with the famous and often quoted, “You
see, ‘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 [spirit against
spirit].” In this final paragraph of his letter, Jung links transpersonal
evil directly with alcoholism and addiction. The contrast between “the
highest religious experience,” informed by the transpersonal powers
of goodness and light, and “the most depraving poison,” informed by
the transpersonal powers of evil and darkness, is more than
suggested. The helpful formula, the antidote to the transpersonal evil
aspect of addiction, is the transpersonal goodness deriving from the
spiritual realm of healing and grace. It is the spirit of “the highest
religious experience” that neutralizes and holds in check the spirit of
the transpersonal evil of addiction. Jung is describing here the war of
the gods in addiction, both vying for the hearts and souls and lives of
human beings.
Aspects of this transpersonal evil, which I call Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil, will be explored further in Chapter Two on
the psychodynamic development of addiction and in Chapter Three,
which is completely devoted to understanding Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil in myth, fairy tales, and religion and in clinical
literature as the unintegratable aspects of the psyche. In Chapter
Four I will show how the “spiritus contra spiritum” is operationalized in
the recovery process of the Twelve Steps of A.A.
The correspondence between Bill W. and Carl Jung is loaded with
seminal ideas that have shaped and informed the A.A. program. It
also holds seeds of a future understanding of alcoholism and
addiction in a new way, opening the gates to mapping the true nature
of addiction psychologically, by incorporating new insights from
Jungian psychology and the phenomena of Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil, and revealing why A.A., the Twelve Steps,
and the Fellowship are the most effective approach in confronting
and successfully treating alcoholism and addiction. I believe that the
Bill W.-Carl Jung letters are a gold mine of previously untapped,
unexplored riches with far-reaching implications for understanding
the phenomena of addiction.
 CHAPTER TWO

The Psychodynamics of Addiction:

Development of a Typical Addiction
Process
There are essentially five major stages in the development of a typical
psychological addiction.

Stage 1 – The Ego/Persona identification alignment with

the false self
Stage 2 – The development of the Personal Shadow
Stage 3 – The introduction of the Potentially Addictive
Behavior
Stage 4 – The creation of the Addiction-Shadow-
Complex
Stage 5 – The Addiction-Shadow-Complex takes over
the psyche

(Please refer to the diagram “Development of the Addiction” on page

34).

STAGE 1 – THE EGO/PERSONA IDENTIFICATION ALIGNMENT WITH

THE FALSE SELF
 This psychodynamic model relies heavily on traditional concepts
from Jungian psychology, not just because I am a Jungian analyst, but
because I believe that the Jungian map has the theoretical concepts
to best describe and most accurately reflect what is actually going on
in the development of alcoholism and addiction. It has the capacity as
a psychological system to chart and delineate the complicated and
unique landscape of addiction, which is the phenomenon we are trying
to understand.
What I will describe is the typical development of an addiction. It
will not replicate everyone’s experience, but from the feedback I’ve
received from recovering individuals, it is reflective of the process in
general in the vast majority of cases. Where people’s experience
differs from this theoretical model, it is more like variations on a theme
than a completely different process. This is not intended in any way to
be the final word on this subject.
Psychologically, the ego is the central organ of our consciousness;
it is the air traffic controller of what we see and think and feel and
sense, intuit, and experience. It perceives, selects, focuses,
concentrates, emphasizes, organizes, and processes our relationship
to ourselves, to the world, and to other people. It makes our choices
and beliefs and decisions and judgments and values and gives us the
green light to act or not to act. It defends its existence and integrity
against threats to its power, control, and survival. We identify
ourselves with our egos. The sense of “I”ness derives from our ego-
complex system.
Weak egos are poorly adapted psychological organs, which find it
difficult to negotiate the inner and outer worlds of reality. Weak egos
may result from poor, neglected, abusive developmental foundations,
from trauma, from biological or genetic problems, or from the inability
to synthesize and integrate the complex circuitry necessary to create
and operate a well-functioning, adaptive ego mechanism. Weak egos
may also result from the effects of mental illness or physical
deterioration and disease.
A strong, healthy ego serves us well and allows us to grow and
develop and adapt and change in response to life’s demands. Without
a healthy, strong ego complex at the center of our consciousness, we
cannot explore or relate adequately to the contents of the
unconscious.
Most people initially identify their egos with their personas. The
persona is the mask we wear in relation to the world and others. It is
created through a combination of socialization, societal expectations,
one’s experience of the world, and the natural attributes and
tendencies of the individual. It combines elements of how we want to
see ourselves, ideally, and how we want the world to see us, as well
as how the world does see us and wants us to be. Our persona
defines our social identity; it is constructed in relation to the roles we
play in our lives and in our world, how we want to look and be seen. It
is the face we wear to be presentable and acceptable to our society. It
is not necessarily who we really are, but who we want and pretend to
be to others and, many times, to ourselves. The great danger of an
ego over-identification with the persona is that we begin to believe that
we are our well-constructed, overly idealized mask, and not who and
what we really are, warts and all.
Personas are not inherently bad; they are very important, and
necessary for us to function in the world, to work, to play, and to
interact with others. People without enough persona are deficient in
their ability to deal with the real world. They never seem to know what
to say or how to act, and are always getting in trouble and upsetting
other people because they have developed no sense of what is or is
not appropriate in different social and relational situations. They are
often experienced by others as tactless, rude, annoying, offensive,
and “not having a clue” about how to behave in public.
The problem in individuals who develop an addiction is usually not
one of little or no persona, but too much—too thick, too heavy a
persona. When the ego identifies with the persona and not with the
true Self, Jungians call this an alignment identification with a false self.
It would be like someone falling in love with a puppet he or she has
created, somehow believing it to be a real human being capable of
love and relationship. When the truth is realized, a rude, painful
awakening awaits. It is a self-deception where we believe in what is
ultimately not the reality of who in fact we truly are. Another analogy is
the difference between someone who, in the Judeo-Christian tradition,
relates to the living God, Yahweh, and someone who worships an
inanimate object of his or her own creation (for example, the golden
calf of the Old Testament). The true Self, like Yahweh, says, “I am the
lord of the psyche; thou shalt have no strange, false selves before
me.”
This Ego/Persona identification alignment with the false self leads
directly to the Personal Shadow and to stage 2 in the development of
the addiction.

STAGE 2 – THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PERSONAL SHADOW

The personal shadow resides in that part of the psyche described

in Jungian psychology as the personal unconscious, in contrast with
the collective unconscious from which the impersonal, objective,
universal contents of the archetypes derive. Our personal shadow is
the “hidden unconscious aspects of [ourselves], both good and bad,
which the ego has either repressed or never recognized.”1 It is all of
the incompatible thoughts, feelings, desires, fantasies, and actions
that we have suppressed and repressed into the personal
unconscious, along with our more primitive, undifferentiated impulses
and instincts. In the Freudian view of the psyche, it is what Freud
identifies as the whole of the “unconscious.” It is what I like to describe
as the personal psychological garbage can of our psyches.
 Jung says of the personal shadow, “The shadow is a moral
problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can
become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To
become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the
personality as present and real.”2
We all have a personal psychological garbage can and we all have
a personal shadow. The contents of our personal shadow are directly
related to our persona. All the unacceptable, rejected aspects of who
we are go into our personal shadow, where we try initially to bottle
them up and suppress them, to lock them up securely hidden in the
dark closets, attics, and basements of our psyches, where we hope no
one will venture and discover these disowned bastard children, our
personal shadows.
Of course, the more we identify with our persona, the more gets
crammed into our personal shadow. It can become filled to the brim.
Sometimes, to our embarrassment and shame, it begins to emit bad
odors, overflow, and leak out to bother us and be noticed by others; so
we try to tighten the lid, plug the leaks, or reinforce the bolted door
(suppress, repress, deny, and rationalize more); or we use a sanitizer
(put on the mantle of social respectability by joining the Rotary Club,
the Junior League, or becoming a deacon in the church); or we try to
bury it deeper in the psyche (even more denial, forgetting and
avoiding, or creating greater and more elaborate precautions to hide
the personal shadow from detection by others). None of these
strategies is ultimately effective. The shadow will have its say and its
day one way or the other.
These efforts and strategies require more and more ego defenses
and psychological energy to hold the shadow at bay from
consciousness. The personal shadow then begins draining prime and
necessary energy from the ego-complex system. The defenses
required to hold this mounting monster in check, to keep it from
becoming conscious, continue to grow and deplete the ego system of
the vital energy needed to adapt and function in the everyday world. In
addition, psychic energy is required to keep up and maintain our
personas. The greater the incongruity between our persona and who
we really are, the greater the energy required to defend and maintain
the system. You get the picture: more and more tension and stress are
being created psychologically, more and more vigilance and defense
are required on a daily basis, until it begins to become overwhelming
and unbearable—more and more impossible to maintain.
The reality of the personal shadow demands to be recognized and
dealt with. The screams and moans and rattling chains from our
psychic closets, attics, and basements get louder and louder, harder
and harder to ignore, avoid, or forget.
Of course, the demand of the personal shadow to be let out into
the light of day, to be free, is completely at odds with what the persona
is demanding. The conscious ego position is now caught between a
rock and a hard place; it has overidentified with the persona, does not
know what to do with this crude and crazy personal shadow stuff, has
no acceptable place to put it, and seemingly has no alternatives in
face of these completely opposite competing demands. It truly
appears to be an irreconcilable no-win situation, with no way out.
This part of the process leads us to Stage 3 in the development of
the addiction; this is where the potentially addictive behavior enters
the scene to—seemingly—save the day, alleviate the tension and
stress on the ego system, and solve the problem—or at least that’s
what it promises.

STAGE 3 – THE INTRODUCTION OF THE POTENTIALLY ADDICTIVE

BEHAVIOR

The seemingly unresolvable tension of the persona and the

personal shadow increases until the person gets physically or
psychically sick. Physically, there are often the symptoms of high
blood pressure, ulcers, intestinal and heart problems, etc. Psychically,
symptoms often constellate around anxiety, depression, PTSD, and
obsessive compulsive disorders. Neurosis and even psychosis are not
unusual. To other persons it looks like exhaustion, burnout, or a
nervous breakdown—not being able to take it anymore.
As so often in life, necessity becomes the mother of invention. If
the ego wants to avoid the pending breakdown, it has basically two
choices: One, it can choose to get help medically, psychologically, or
spiritually; that is, it can be aided by new grace or insight or a
willingness to change through some form of counseling or analysis
that is capable of effectively addressing the persona/personal shadow
problem. Two, it can seek relief through a strategy of escape and
avoidance, through a coping mechanism that becomes concentrated
around the repetitive discharging of tension provided by various
potentially addictive behaviors such as use of alcohol or drugs,
gambling, sex, food, work, relationships, or whatever.
There are many specific individual ways and reasons why a
person develops his or her addiction, but the final outcome is the
same. Everyone, of course, has his or her particular story. The basic
pattern, though, is the same—the dynamics are very typical and
predictable and follow a common course. What is fascinating about
this is that almost every alcoholic or addicted person I’ve ever known
initially believed that they were “the exception to the rule.” They
allowed that it might all be true for everyone else, but not for them.
This is the classic denial at the core of all psychological addictions, but
more importantly, it also points out an aspect of the addicted individual
that operates narcissistically to separate him or her from the very
people—peer alcoholics and addicts—who could truly see,
understand, and appreciate what the suffering addicted individual is
going through. Remember what Jung said in his letter to Bill W. about
a person not protected from heaven, and isolated in society, how that
person “cannot resist the power of evil.” This very aspect of the
psychological makeup of alcoholic and addicted individuals sets them
up to become possessed by the addiction. It certainly does have a
diabolical feel to it in an archetypal sense, in that there is a more
powerful impersonal dynamic influencing, dictating, and controlling the
individual’s behavior. The very thing that could help save the individual
is rejected out of hand and in advance, so that one unconsciously,
unknowingly condemns oneself to the path that leads to death and
destruction. Obviously, a power greater than oneself is necessary for
salvation.
Now that the potentially addictive behavior has entered the scene,
the stakes are getting higher, and so is the danger that the behavior
will become a full-fledged, completely uncontrollable addiction. At this
point in the process, for many people, there is still a chance that
through willpower, self-discipline, insight, therapy, or ego-control they
can avoid the pitfalls of becoming addicted. Many people at this stage,
in a minimizing way, describe their potentially addictive behavior as
recreational, social, experimental, or normal (it may not be an
addiction yet, but it certainly qualifies as a level of abuse of alcohol or
drugs or whatever that is getting dangerous). It is destructive and
unhealthy, but it is still under conscious ego control to possibly
moderate or change. I want to reiterate that pharmacological,
behavioral, and ego-insight therapies can be effective at this stage in
the process, before it has developed into a full-blown addiction. This is
true because it is still prior to the entrance of the aspects of Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil into the dynamic of the addiction process. In
general, persona, personal shadow, and repetitive bad habit issues on
their own can be treated effectively with traditional therapies, including
psychoanalysis.
 Some people have no window of opportunity to avoid
psychological addiction. For them, the very first time they engage in
the potentially addictive behavior, they are hooked—they are addicted
from the beginning, from the very first moment of use and onward. I
know of individuals raised in alcohol-free situations who never
touched alcohol until much later in life, but after the first drink, they
were as hopelessly consumed by it as those who had abused alcohol
for decades before they crossed over the line to addiction. Some
people are biologically or hereditarily predisposed to being addicted,
but even those who seem, physiologically, to be loaded time bombs
for addiction still cross over and participate in the same psychological
addiction dynamics that take over, kill, and destroy others who may
have taken a longer road to that door. This often seems to be the case
with alcohol and many Native Americans.
The activation of the potentially addictive behavior then leads us to
Stage 4 in the development of the addiction. It is what I describe as the
creation of the “Addiction-Shadow-Complex,” where the coming
together of all the necessary elements, including Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil, coalesce into the insane, self-destructive,
murderous phenomenon we know as a true addiction.

STAGE 4 – THE CREATION OF THE ADDICTION-SHADOW-

COMPLEX

From a Jungian perspective, the potentially addictive behavior

allows for a needed type of release and expression of the personal
shadow in a way that the conscious ego, with its overidentification with
the persona, will not allow. The Jungian analyst Linda Leonard, in her
wonderful book Witness to the Fire: Creativity and the Veil of
Addiction,3 argues strongly that the personal shadow is looking for any
way it can find to express itself, and often the addictive behavior is the
first chance in many years the shadow has had to get out of the closet,
the attic, or the basement, and it takes full advantage of its opportunity
to take all it can get, oftentimes with a vengeance. This often
manifests as the wild, dangerous, risk-taking, embarrassing, out-of-
control behavior of people when they are drinking or using, which is
usually so different from their normal way of acting.
Leonard sees alcoholism and other addictions as attempted
shortcuts to creativity—a quick ticket, a free ride to paradise for the
artist—but, of course, it never really works out; it is only a very
tempting illusion. Perhaps this is why so many artists seem to be
seduced by the allure of addiction—as with Satan and his false
promises. Leonard says that ultimately addiction swallows up and
destroys creativity. She says all addictions are killers and, as I stated
earlier, that the addiction ultimately wants everything burned and
sacrificed on its altar alone.
At this point in the addiction process, others often observe what is
known as the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde phenomenon—the fundamental
personality change of the individual when they are participating in the
addictive behavior, contrasting with when they are not. When they are
sober and straight they can be the nicest, kindest, most loving and
gentle people on earth (Dr. Jekyll). When they are drinking or using,
they can become the meanest, cruelest, most brutal and abusive
monsters alive (Mr. Hyde). Notice the contrast between the Dr. Jekyll
behavior (nice, kind, loving, gentle), which fits right in with an ego
overidentification with a positively idealized persona, and the Mr. Hyde
behavior (mean, cruel, brutal, abusive), which fits right into the
expression of the most raw, unintegrated, repressed personal shadow.
Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde in the late 1800s, reported that he got the idea for his novel from
his own dreams, which of course would have been giving him
abundant nightly feedback on his personal shadow.
The story is a perfect literary illustration of the potential outcome of
an unintegratable split between the persona and the personal shadow.
It even incorporates the use of drugs in the process of the story line.
“The story tells of a doctor who takes a drug that changes him into a
new person, physically ugly and spiritually evil. As a psychological
inquiry into the nature of evil that exists in all people [personal
shadow], the novel brilliantly anticipates much modern psychological
fiction [and much psychological nonfiction as well].”4
 Under the influence of the addictive behavior, the other side, the
shadow, comes out in ways that are often completely the opposite of
the typical normal attitudes, behavior, and personality of the individual.
Shy introverts dance on tables, timid gentle souls pick fights with
motorcycle gangs, morally righteous preachers consort with ladies of
the evening, and conservative cautious folks become high-stakes,
high-risk gamblers. In these ways, the personal shadow reinforces,
encourages, and becomes dependent upon the addictive behavior to
express itself, to have any existence in the light outside of the closet,
the attic, and the basement where it has been locked up and hidden
for so long. Often the addictive behavior allows the personal shadow
the only opportunities to live and to be. The more cut off and
unconscious we are of our personal shadows, the more vulnerable we
are to having those shadows break out and be set free for a time by
addictive behaviors.
This bond between the addictive behavior and the personal
shadow results in a very powerful alignment complex in the psyche. It
is more powerful than almost all other structures and complexes in the
personality. This bond between the addictive behavior and the
personal shadow is at least half of the ingredients necessary to create
the Addiction-Shadow-Complex. It’s a lot like a man up to his chin in
deep water, who doesn’t know how to swim—and land is very far
away. He hasn’t drowned yet, but it’s getting pretty inevitable unless
something dramatic and unexpected happens to change the scenario.
This leads to the last part of the process in creating the Addiction-
Shadow-Complex, where the final crucial ingredient of Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil is added, enters the dynamic, and solidifies
the addiction forever.

STAGE 5 – THE ADDICTION-SHADOW-COMPLEX TAKES OVER THE

PSYCHE

The combination of the addictive behavior, the personal shadow,

and Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil now becomes the most
dominating, formidable power in the psyche, literally taking over and
displacing the normal ruling ego complex and substituting for it a
creation of its own. The Addiction-Shadow-Complex soon puts the
ruling ego completely out of control—deposes, displaces, and freezes
it out into powerlessness. The Addiction-Shadow-Complex replaces
the ruling ego complex with its own ruler, a puppet pseudo-king who
serves ultimately only the desires, interests, and agendas of the
addiction, which cares nothing for any other values or needs of the
person, the psyche, or the true Self, or for anyone or anything else.
This is the all-consuming nature of addiction.
The dynamic of this coup in the psyche is qualitatively and
quantitatively different from being temporarily caught in an emotionally
charged complex or in an ego overidentification with a false self. It is
different from most other psychiatric disorders. In neurosis the ego
continues to function, though relatively ineffectively, and in psychosis
there is little or no operating ego because it has been swamped and
washed out, overwhelmed by the contents of the floodwaters of the
unconscious. In personality disorders, the ego continues to function
and collude with unhealthy lifelong patterns and complexes
established early in childhood. I suppose I am proposing a new and
different category of ego functioning in relation to addiction.
In addiction, there is a permanent hijacking of the entire psychic
system; the normal ego complex and all its functions are as if put
under a powerful diabolical spell that suspends and paralyzes them—
the whole kingdom and everything in it. The addiction then replaces
the old system with an entire ruling ego system equipped to perceive,
judge, and act in as skilled, adaptive, and self-serving a way as the
originally functioning, normal ego complex system. Of course it is an
imposter, a liar, a deceiver and charlatan, but now the addicted
person, his true Self and healthy ego, are helpless and powerless to
fight or even object to the new dictatorship established by the
Addiction-Shadow-Complex. It’s as though we fell into our deepest,
darkest, most destructive and debilitating complex, which we can,
normally, eventually come out of, but in this case we are stuck and
trapped in it, seemingly forever—truly a nightmare scenario.
 I know that this description of what happens to the normal ego
system when the Addiction-Shadow-Complex takes over is highly
metaphorical, mythological, and narrative in nature. It is not clinical
and sequential in the way we usually expect, but here I am trying to
describe a phenomenon on the edges of our ability to understand,
much less to adequately describe. There are elements of mystery and
power and archetypal unknowns in this process that I only have
glimpses of, so I offer the best description I can for now.
What is most important to understand, in the development process
of the addiction, is that in this Stage 5, the entire psyche, ego, and
personality are taken over and ruled by the Addiction-Shadow-
Complex. The addiction at this point completely possesses the
individual person, and has taken away the normal ability of ego,
willpower, self-discipline, choice, insight, and good intentions to truly
have an effect or impact to any significant degree. The prime directive
is now the addiction and its agendas; everything else revolves around
it and is secondary to and subsumed by it. In A.A., it is described in
Step One as the powerlessness and unmanageability of our lives
because of alcoholism.
Let me clarify here: The Addiction-Shadow-Complex will allow a
person to continue to function in seemingly normal ways, in many or
even most areas, as long as those decisions and behaviors in no way
challenge, threaten, or attempt to thwart the primary agenda of the
addiction, which is to continue the person’s participation in the
addictive behavior. As in a occupied country, one can operate
relatively normally in daily life and activities as long as one does
nothing in any way to challenge or threaten the ruling regime—
anything of that nature will result in paying a very high price and being
severely punished. Resistance is a very dangerous thing. The
Addiction-Shadow-Complex knows how to press all the pain and
shame and obsession buttons.
Many spouses and friends of practicing alcoholics know what this
feels like from the other side. They can do anything they want, except
get between a practicing alcoholic and his or her bottle of booze. If
they do they will be sorry, and can get seriously hurt. This is the
menacing pressure family and friends get to not confront the reality of
the addiction, but to collude in rationalization, justification, and denial,
and to become enablers. In many ways it seems safer for everybody
not to provoke the Addiction-Shadow-Complex (the Tyrannosaurus
Rex in the living room).
I’ve been asked about how the Addiction-Shadow-Complex
applies to what are called “functional alcoholics” and “binge drinkers.”
By “functional alcoholic,” I mean a person who drinks regularly,
heavily, and sometimes gets falling-down drunk, but always functions
in his or her roles as parent, spouse, and worker. They don’t miss
work, forget to pick up the kids from practice, or ignore their mom’s
birthday because of their drinking. There are many varieties of
alcoholic individuals in many different stages of the debilitating
process. What are called “functional alcoholics” may or may not be
addicted. Some like to party too much, drink too often, abuse alcohol
and get drunk too frequently, but could slow down or stop if they chose
to do so. According to my definition, they are not addicted. Others,
whose patterns of drinking may look very similar, are actually very
different. These folks do not have the ego ability and willpower to stop
or control their drinking even if they want to; they are truly addicted.
Some so-called “functional alcoholics” are addicted, others are not.
This cannot be decided based on drinking patterns alone. You can’t
judge a book by its cover; you need to know the story that’s going on
inside. The same applies to diagnosing alcoholism and other
addictions: you need to know the story of what’s going on inside to
figure it out.
Nonaddicted “functional alcoholics” probably have an easier road
to becoming addicted “nonfunctional alcoholics” than most others. If
you are playing with fire on the edge all the time, it’s a lot easier to get
burned and slip into the black hole. The term “functional alcoholic”
tends to focus away from what is central to addiction and to confuse
people into minimizing, denying, and rationalizing what addiction is;
the term leads to more misunderstanding, less clarity, and just isn’t
very helpful.
“Binge drinkers” also may or may not be addicted. If they are
addicted, then once they begin drinking they cannot stop. Some
people just enjoy getting drunk periodically and could modify their
drinking if they wanted to, but they don’t. Of course, true alcoholics
always claim they are able to control their drinking.
This whole question of the “functional alcoholic” and the “binge
drinker” illustrates how central the psychological component is to
understanding addiction. Too often people want to focus on behavior
or biology alone, and do not want to consider psyche in the equation. I
know of instances where Catholic priests and churchgoers who are
recovering alcoholics have been able to receive the eucharistic wine
without it triggering the Addiction-Shadow-Complex. I am not
recommending that individuals put themselves at risk by trying this,
but it certainly raises the question of what is going on
phenomenologically. Why does this wine in communion not trigger the
addiction when any other alcohol use does? The answer, I believe, is
in the psychological/spiritual part of the equation. Perhaps the sacred
wine is being taken and received in a completely nonaddictive way
psychologically. This may not be as strange as it seems. People with
food addictions tell me that they are very clear about the difference
between when they are eating food for normal, healthy, nutritional
reasons and when they are eating out of their Addiction-Shadow-
Complex. When they are eating food for normal reasons it does not
trigger the overwhelming compulsion/craving desires and activate the
addiction. Most often, eating addictively is triggered by emotions, not
the existence of food. This is clearly a psychological distinction not
dictated by mere biological exposure to the addictive substance.
I have also worked with recovering alcoholic and drug-addicted
individuals who suffer from medically legitimate chronic pain problems
that require regular pain medication. This is, of course, dangerous
territory for an alcoholic or drug-addicted individual, and the pain
medication could easily trigger the Addiction-Shadow-Complex and
out-of-control use. What I have observed and what has been reported
to me a number of times is that if the person takes only exactly the
amount and frequency of medication prescribed by the doctor for the
legitimate medical reasons there is not a problem. If, on the other
hand, the individual gives himself or herself permission to experiment,
or take more of the pain medication, or take it more frequently than
prescribed, it triggers the Addiction-Shadow-Complex, and out-of-
control use ensues. Again, I am not encouraging alcoholic or addicted
individuals to put themselves in jeopardy with pain medication. There
are obviously many addicted individuals who cannot expose
themselves to any pain medication without it triggering a relapse, but
in the cases cited above, it is clear that the psychological factor is at
least as important as the biological and behavioral exposure. The
psyche plays a much bigger part in addiction than most people believe
or understand.
In addiction, the potentially addictive behavior has moved from
influencing and tempting and seducing the ego, its thoughts,
judgments, perceptions, feelings, decisions, and actions (what would
be classified in the DSM IV diagnostic manual as alcohol abuse or
drug abuse) to taking over the whole person physically, mentally,
emotionally, and spiritually (what would be classified in the DSM IV
diagnostic manual as alcohol dependence or drug dependence),
which would be a true psychological addiction, according to my
criteria. It becomes more powerful than the original ego-persona
identification alignment, and actually replaces it. Continuing the
addictive behavior under the Addiction-Shadow-Complex is the
number one priority in the psyche—more important than friends,
family, marriage, career, health, and even life itself.
Marion Woodman, the well-known Jungian analyst who has written
a great deal on addiction, especially regarding eating disorders in
women, says that “at the core (the heart) of every addiction is an
energy which ultimately wants the person’s very life.”5 Her experience
with addiction leads her to the conclusion that the addiction wants
everything for itself, and if that means that the individual must be
destroyed in the process, that is just the way it is. She believes that an
addiction truly has a spirit of evil, or put another way, there is an evil
spirit in every addiction.
I cannot state strongly enough that to describe this core of
addiction as a killer is not a dramatic overstatement to get your
attention or an alarmist exaggeration; it is the stone-cold truth and
reality of addiction. Jung’s comments in his letter to Bill W. certainly
support this idea, and so does the experience of millions of alcoholic
and addicted individuals, their families and friends, and all the
therapists and addictions counselors who have gotten into hand-to-
hand mortal combat with this awesome, psychological, spiritual
monster.
The final and key component—Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil
—necessary to create the Addiction-Shadow-Complex requires more
explanation and clarification. The next chapter is completely devoted
to trying to comprehend this mysterious, difficult, borderline concept of
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil as an essential ingredient in the
psychodynamics of addiction.
 CHAPTER THREE

An Exploration of Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil as an Essential
Ingredient in Addiction

T his idea of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil is such a

mysterious concept that it easily slips away like a handful of fine
sand through one’s fingers or gets hopelessly confused with other
concepts of evil—personal, social, moral, collective, and religious—
that are not helpful for our purposes. It stirs up prejudice, projection,
misunderstanding, and fanaticism. It gives unintended ammunition to
self-righteous religious zealots and misguided fundamentalists, and
can fuel destructive sectarian ideologies. It can also be condemned
and dismissed as regression to unsubstantiated, unscientific religious
formulations that could undermine advancements in medicine,
psychology, and sociology, turning back the clock to the murky
religio-magico dark ages of explaining phenomena on the basis of
faith, mythology, folk belief, and church doctrine—sounds familiar,
doesn’t it?
An article in the science section of the New York Times (February
8, 2005) stirs this very pot with the headline “For the Worst of Us, the
Diagnosis may be ‘Evil.’” The article raises the question of whether
present mental illness diagnostic categories are adequate to address
the reality of people who are serial killers, torturers, or commit
repeated acts of incredible cruelty and barbarism. The article
suggests that perhaps a new diagnostic category should be added—
evil. Dr. Michael H. Stone argues for a hierarchy of evil, indicating the
worst to the least evil range of behavior (perhaps a resurrecting of the
Catholic Church’s mortal sin/venial sin categories, with more
gradations in between). Dr. Robert Hare, a professor at the University
of British Columbia, has already developed an instrument called the
psychopathy checklist, where a point system is used to delineate the
degree of evil in all of us (sounds like original sin to me!); of course,
the highest scores of 30 to 40 points go to predatory killers, and most
of us are a safe 5 points or below (thank God!). This is all based on
supposedly sound scientific foundations.
No wonder Jung waited so long—until the end of his life—to throw
out the gauntlet implicating Archetypal Evil. Some will argue that
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil will only lead to even more
evasion of personal psychological responsibility, as people will have
one more excuse to say, “The Devil made me do it!” or that it will
trigger a new wave of modern societal witch hunting (as if we don’t
have enough already) based on people being diagnosed as having
too much Archetypal Evil in their personalities.
Trying to describe and define Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil
feels a lot like trying to come up with a description of God—everyone
will object for one reason or another. Despite all this, I am compelled
to try to make a legitimate case for the existence of Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil because it is the key to understanding the
phenomenon of addiction, its unique nature, and why A.A. and the
Twelve Steps are the right antidote for treating alcoholism and
addiction, and why A.A. and the Twelve Steps have had success like
no other treatment approach in human history.

AN OVERVIEW OF CONCEPTS OF EVIL

There are libraries’ worth of books written on the subject of evil,

but the kind of evil I am trying to pin down and define is universal,
archetypal, unintegratable evil, evil that cannot be transformed and
metabolized and synthesized in a normal way in the psyche.
John Sanford, a Jungian analyst, has written a book titled Evil:
The Shadow Side of Reality, where he surveys many of our major
notions of evil. He begins by questioning the very existence of evil
beyond the subjectivity of the individual. He says, “What is seen as
good and what is seen as evil varies with the point of view of the
observer, which brings up the question of whether there is an
absolute viewpoint about good and evil.”1
Sanford goes on to describe what we view as “natural” evil:
disease, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc., caused by the
impersonal aspects of nature. He contrasts this “natural” evil with
“moral” evil, involving human motives of aggression, power,
destruction, greed, ambition, war, etc. These evils, he allows, are only
a matter of human perspective, a point of view from a relatively
egocentric position. They don’t take into consideration evil from the
archetypal or Self-perspective—from a transpersonal, divine
perspective. He argues that “the healing of the soul is, fundamentally,
a re-evaluation of good and evil, and therefore a shift from ego to
Self.”2 Here there is a higher or broader or more comprehensive
perspective on evil, which includes the ego and the human
perspective but transcends it. In Jungian psychology, this broader
perspective in the psyche of humans is described as the archetypal
realm. It is directed by and organized around the archetype of the
Self.
The archetype of the Self has been alluded to previously in
describing the true or authentic Self in contrast to the false self or the
ego-persona identification alignment. The true Self in Jungian
psychology shares much, is even identical in many ways, with our
concepts of the image and likeness of God within each person—of
the Christ or kingdom within, of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, of
being one with the Buddha, of following the will of the Father, Allah,
Yahweh, the Great Spirit, the Universe and, perhaps most importantly
for the purposes of this book, the concept of the Higher Power in A.A.
and in the Twelve Steps of its tradition.
A more formal definition of the archetype of the Self is that it is the
archetype of wholeness. It is both the center and whole
circumference of the psyche, embracing both the conscious and the
unconscious; “it is the centre of the totality, just as the ego is the
centre of consciousness.”3 It fuels, runs, organizes, and ultimately
directs all of the psyche. It contains all of the knowledge, wisdom,
healing, energy, and creativity necessary for each individual
(regardless of their personal history) to grow, develop, and transform
into the unique individual they are meant to be. Ultimately, it holds the
key to our meaning and destiny in this world if we can discern it on
our journey through life. In Jungian psychology, this is what is meant
by the term individuation. It requires the cooperation of the ego in an
alignment with the Self, which is the humbling and relativizing of the
ego in relation to the Self mentioned earlier. The A.A. surrender of
one’s will and life to God or the Higher Power is precisely the same
phenomenon.
In Sanford’s survey, he does a nice job of summarizing the
concepts of evil in different myths and religious traditions. In Egyptian
myth, Set, the brother of Osiris, is the “personification of the evil
desert, the bringer of darkness and drought. From him comes
everything destructive and inimical to human life.”4
In Norse myth, the god Loki personified evil, in contrast to the
much beloved Baldur. “Loki embodies the principle of ‘evil for itself’ as
a cosmic principle. Kerenyi says that Loki is ‘the dark power which
through the strength of its weakness and the boldness of its
cowardice shapes the destiny of the world. ... His inventive brain, his
ready wit and sardonic mockery weave them into a net that draws the
whole world down into the abyss of death. ... Gradually through his
double dealing (jokes and trickery), he prepares for the day when the
enemies of life will be unleashed and when he will take the field at
their head.’ Kerenyi cites Gronbeck, the outstanding Danish authority
on the Norse pantheon. Gronbeck says, ‘Loki became almost a
companion piece to the Christian Devil, but his origin made him far
superior to the Father of Evil in subtlety of character ‘because he was
human and so extraordinarily demonic.’”5 For Loki, evil is not a
vehicle or a means to an end; it is an end in itself.
In Iranian Persian myth, Ahriman signifies “death, darkness, lies
and the ills of mankind.”6 Ahriman, like the Judeo-Christian Devil, is
“the prince of demons and commands a host of Doevas, evil beings
devoted to trickery and falsehood, who strive along with their master
to destroy the power of [the good Ahura-Mazda] and to draw
mankind into evil ways.”7 In the cosmic duel, the good Ahura-Mazda
will eventually win out. Ahura-Mazda is viewed as the supreme god
and as the originating father of the holy and the evil spirit. This is
similar in some ways to Judeo-Christian myth, where everything,
including the Devil as angel, was originally created by Yahweh.
Iranian Persian myth influenced Judeo-Christian myth in many ways,
including the name “Beelzebub” for Satan in the New Testament,
which “means ‘lord of the flies’ and comes from the lore about evil
Ahriman who was said to have entered the world of humans in the
form of a fly.”8
Notice how in all these myths, including the Judeo-Christian
tradition, there is a level of divine spiritual warfare, the war of the
gods, a transcendent battle always going on that is completely out of
the realm of human control or influence, but that is constantly and
profoundly affecting us.
St. Augustine, in the fourth century, in a noble theological attempt
to try and reconcile an all-knowing and good and omnipotent God
with the existence of evil in the world, came up with his rather
convoluted idea of evil as the “privatio boni,” that is, evil as the
deprivation or absence of good. St. Augustine tries to argue away the
substantial existence of evil by saying that it simply exists because
goodness does not occupy that same space in time and
circumstance. This applies well to what Sanford categorizes as moral
human evil, but St. Augustine’s theory ignores aspects of Scripture—
the Devil, Lucifer, the fallen angels, and hell—that argue for a
different, less humanly subjective conclusion. St. Augustine reduces
evil to the purely subjective human realm, which has influenced and
encouraged many believers and nonbelievers to dismiss the
existence of Satan and the Devil ever since, or at least to minimize
and deny the reality of the phenomena that these mythic images
represent.
St. Augustine doesn’t seem to believe in Archetypal Evil, or at
least doesn’t appear to know what to do with it. The problem, of
course, is that his map of evil does not describe well enough the
whole phenomenon of evil as we know it. Many people’s experience
with evil posits powers and forces beyond the subjective moral
shortcomings and weaknesses of human beings. Jung and others
have vehemently objected to what they believe is St. Augustine’s
shortsighted oversimplification of evil.
In partial defense of St. Augustine’s theory, I must note that it is
true, as Jung described in his letter to Bill W., that when we are not
surrounded by grace and the love of human community (the absence
of good) we are much more likely to fall into the pitfalls of evil, human
or otherwise.
In Buddhism, as I understand it, everything except love and
compassion is ultimately illusion and doesn’t really exist. This
includes the nonexistence of evil. The focus of the constant practice
of meditation is to become fully conscious of our ignorance of the
illusory nature of all things (this focus also includes the alleviation of
pain and suffering for all beings) and to cultivate the constant
awareness and mindfulness of what is truly real, that is, love and
compassion, which is the essence of the Buddha. In the West and in
St. Augustine’s view, I’m sure this would be what he considered
“good.”
The Buddhist model is very close to St. Augustine’s formulation
emphasizing the cultivation of goodness as the antidote to evil, in that
if there is no room in us for evil, no vacuum, because we have filled
ourselves, from the Christian point of view, with the love and
goodness of God, then evil has no place to take root or reside in us,
and in a sense does not exist for us as a personal, subjective,
psychological/spiritual reality (so it is Buddhist illusion). Perhaps St.
Augustine was unknowingly a closet Buddhist of the fourth century,
and did accurately reflect a very important aspect of part of the
phenomenon of evil.
In Greek mythology, there is no absolute evil; all the gods and
goddesses are capable themselves of both good and evil in relation
to human beings. This is an interesting idea—that the transpersonal
forces may be quite a mixture of helpful and destructive energies for
human beings. This would lead us logically to a position of respectful
caution anytime we as humans encounter these forces. This is very
much the sense of what Jung meant about the dangers of
overidentifying with any archetype, good or bad, or any “ism” in the
collective, because we don’t know whether it will kill us, imprison us,
compromise our psychological freedom, reduce our consciousness,
or be a helpful aid on our journey to transformation. James Hillman’s
archetypal school of psychology emphasizes and elaborates on this
view of the archetypes, primarily using the mythological maps given
to us by Greek and Roman myth, where there is a pantheon of
complicated and nuanced gods and goddesses representing a
diversity, multiplicity, and richness of psychological factors (good,
bad, and indifferent) to be dealt with, if possible, in a nondualistic,
polytheistic way.
Good and evil in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, as mentioned
previously, are both considered illusions, non-realities. We must deal
with them, but in the final analysis, in the ultimate scheme of things,
they don’t really exist as substantive realities.
In Judeo-Christian myth, evil in the universe derives from two
basic sources, one divine (archetypal), and one human (moral).
Divine or archetypal evil enters the universe when Lucifer and his
band of angels decide to abandon God’s will and plan on the cosmic
(archetypal) level and establish their resistance movement and
separate kingdom of evil apart from and in opposition to God. Human
(moral) evil enters the world through Adam and Eve’s freewill
decision not to follow God’s will and plan in this world. It is interesting
to note that both forms of evil, human and divine, enter the universe
through acts of free will by Adam and Eve and by the angels in
exercising their right to freely choose to serve God or themselves.
A.A. often refers to alcoholism as “free will run riot” (out of control).
Satan, Lucifer, and the Devil have a long, colorful, and varied
mythological history, from cartoon characters and cute little children
dressed with horns and red plastic pitchforks on Halloween to the
most powerful, conscious evil spirit who rules over the ultimate center
and core domain of the kingdom of evil.
 For the purposes of understanding psychological addiction, I’m
not interested in the meaning of the Devil in fairytales, myths, and
stories as the trickster, or the lightning rod to consciousness, or the
repressed shadow of Pan or Dionysus, or the straw man to help us
learn what is morally right and wrong, or as the adversary, obstacle,
or accuser who facilitates the processes of growth and development
for human beings to find the good. These all describe legitimate
psychological phenomena that must often be dealt with on our
journeys, but they are not what I am looking for to describe
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil. I’m looking for images and
representations of the Prince of Darkness, the supernatural source of
evil, the one who seeks to destroy and wreak havoc in the souls of
human beings. In the Judeo-Christian Bible, it is referred to by many
names: Belial, Satan, the Devil, Beelzebub, Legion, possession by
evil spirits, the “enemy,” and the Prince of this World. I’m seeking
images and representations that can carry, describe, and reflect
transpersonal aspects of this phenomenon I’m calling Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil. I will go more deeply into the Devil and the
archetypal expression of absolute evil in section three of this chapter,
along with noting other myths and tales that reflect the transpersonal,
unintegratable aspect of this psychological reality.
Jungian analyst Lionel Corbett, in his book Psyche and the
Sacred: Spirituality beyond Religion, devotes almost fifty pages of his
work to exploring the psychological question of evil. He looks at evil
mostly from the human, moral, behavioral perspective, using the
Holocaust and Hitler as his extreme examples to help people
understand his paradigm of evil. He explores and discusses aspects
of human evil psychologically, philosophically, and to some extent
theologically. He mentions that Hitler was beaten daily as a child by
an alcoholic father and that this may have greatly contributed to his
out-of-proportion participation in such horrific evil inflicted on
humanity. Corbett also cites the belief of psychoanalyst Ronald
Fairbairn that “the psychotherapist is the successor to the exorcist,
because in our times the casting out of inner demons is really about
trying to heal the damage caused by early experiences with abusive
caregivers.”9 This position does not lend support to the idea of the
existence of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil as a transpersonal
phenomenon. It seems to relegate all evil to a personalistic equation.
Corbett explores the many complexities of the relationship
between mental illness and evil behavior. He posits an archetypal
morality that exists universally in the unconscious of human beings
as an innate psychological function, but discerning it and determining
what is and is not authentic conscience is a very thorny proposition.
For example, how do we explain the psychopathic individual who
seems to have no conscience? These people appear to have “free
choice but nevertheless choose evil and enjoy inflicting it on others.
Professor Berel Lang, in Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide, believes
that evil consists not simply in knowing that what we are doing is evil,
but in doing it because we know that it is evil.”10 Corbett suggests that
the psychopathic individual is as close as we can get to “pure evil.”
He also asserts that, usually, one of the parents of a psychopathic
individual is alcoholic. I wonder if, in the case of the psychopath,
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil, perhaps through the influence of
the alcoholic parent in some way, has not infected, poisoned, and
taken control of the individual? The “malignant narcissism” that
Corbett describes in the psychopathic individual shares some of the
same territory psychologically with the untreated using alcoholic or
addicted person at his or her worst (the lying, cheating, stealing, etc.).
He also points to biological evidence indicating that psychopathic
individuals have neurological deficits in areas of the brain dealing
with emotions.
Corbett doesn’t say much directly about evil in relation to
alcoholism and addiction in general. He does indicate that chronic
hate—especially on a collective societal level, because it fuels and
energizes people away from feeling hopeless—can “become
addictive” and “take on a life of its own,” greatly affecting groups and
masses of people. This certainly seems to be what happens in
racism, genocide, and “holy wars.”
Corbett does acknowledge the positive ability of support groups,
including Alcoholics Anonymous, to help people “to contain their
distress” so that it doesn’t have to be harmfully acted out.
On the central question of transpersonal archetypal evil, he
seems to be unsure of its existence: “Although we cannot say
whether or not there is objective or metaphysical evil outside of
individual behavior, it is clear that there are psychological processes
that make people do evil things, and such behavior can be influenced
by psychotherapeutic intervention.”11 This statement appears to say
that evil can only be discerned on the personal subjective level of
human behavior, but then he posits possible external “psychological
processes that make people do evil things.” He does not clarify
exactly what these “psychological processes” are, but the statement
suggests transpersonal forces controlling human behavior toward
evil. Is he alluding to some form of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal
Evil here? It is not clear.
In Corbett’s section on the dark side of the self, he indicates that
“Jung believed that the power of evil is more than simply human ...
that occurrences such as the Holocaust or the bombing of Hiroshima
... [were] of such magnitude ... [that they] are far too terrible to be of
purely human origin. We cannot afford to have a concept of evil that
is too small.”12 Now he seems to argue, along with Jung, for an
archetypal nature of evil that is beyond the subjective individual. He
makes no assertions one way or the other about the transpersonal or
metaphysical realities of God or Satan outside of the human psyche.
He takes the traditional party line that metaphysical assertions are
appropriate for faith and theology and not for psychology, but that the
archetypal image manifestations of those potentially metaphysical
assertions in the psyche are appropriate for psychology to address
and to try to understand.
According to my reading of Corbett, after some hedging and
ambivalence he comes down on the side of seeing Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil as substantively existing and affecting
humans, and he places it psychodynamically under the Self as its
archetypal shadow dark side. He see its manifestation as radical evil
imaged in the Christian myth as the Antichrist. Even with such a
powerful assertion, he sees this dark side, this archetypal shadow
material in the psyche, as somehow much more integratable and
transformable than I do. I believe the best we can do is to neutralize
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil to keep it from destroying us.
On the last page of his section on evil, Corbett complicates his
position even more by stating: “Sometimes, however, we come
across evil that can neither be redeemed nor be contained, a force
represented in folklore and mythology as a vampire or the Medusa;
the only way to deal with such evil is to destroy it.”13
He doesn’t tell us exactly what this irredeemable archetypal evil
is, psychologically, and doesn’t distinguish it from the archetypal evil
that he indicated previously can be redeemed and integrated. I do not
agree that we, as humans, can “destroy” Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil. I do not know how it can be done, and
Corbett doesn’t tell us. I also cannot agree with him that this evil
cannot be “contained”; in fact it is my very argument that Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil is contained by its being neutralized by the
Higher Power in the first three steps of A.A.
Perhaps Corbett might argue that it is the positive light side of the
Self archetype that ultimately destroys, neutralizes, or redeems the
negative dark side of the Self, in Jungian terms. These ideas are very
difficult for many people to comprehend. I don’t disagree with this
idea theoretically, but the value of such a statement to me must be
when it is operationalized in psychological phenomena we can
observe and verify. If the positive light side of the Self is what we see
operating in the miraculous manifestation of the Higher Power in A.A.
in getting and keeping people sober, and the negative dark side of
the Self is the Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil aspect found in the
Addiction-Shadow-Complex that is neutralized and contained by the
Higher Power principle in A.A., then I’m on board. If theoretical
concepts cannot be brought back to the maps of actual,
operationalized psychological phenomena that help us understand
what is going on, then they are of very little value.
I believe that Corbett, in general, supports the idea of the
existence of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil, though we may
disagree on some aspects of its nature, dynamics, and
manifestations. I applaud his heroic efforts to even attempt to wrestle
with the question of evil in all its forms. It is a complicated, difficult,
and probably impossible task, yet it needs to be tackled, studied, and
discussed in the best way we can. The phenomenon of evil,
especially of Archetypal Evil, is too important and too powerful for us
not to try to explore and understand it. Too much depends on what we
find.
Scott Peck, the well-known author and psychiatrist, wrote a book
titled People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil, where he
explores the idea of evil.14 He focuses on human evil, bad people,
and moral questions in general. He talks about how human beings
use their free will to choose and align and immerse themselves with,
and then ultimately become, evil. He goes on to acknowledge a form
of transpersonal evil that he sees as Satanic possession, as
contrasted with misdiagnosed psychiatric disorders. Peck originally
did not believe in the reality of the Devil or evil spirits, but after
witnessing two spirit possessions and participating in two exorcisms,
he now does believe they are actual and real phenomena.
He posits a range of spiritual possessions, moving from less
powerful evil spirits all the way up the line to the big number one,
Satan. Peck believes possession involves fixations at certain ages
and stages of development when people stopped growing and
developing in a normal, healthy way. Peck does not do a good job
here of distinguishing this from the more common mental/emotional
disorders traced back to early development in childhood or to other
stages of life transition. Peck’s theory, however, does echo the belief
and experience of many alcoholic and drug-addicted individuals that
normal growth and development was arrested at the age and stage of
development at which they began their involvement with their
addictive behaviors. Peck relates that he and the exorcism teams in
both of the exorcisms he witnessed “were convinced they were ... in
the presence of something absolutely alien and inhuman.”15 As
others who have dealt with Satanic possession have found, the evil
spirit in Satanic possession, as in a true addiction, ultimately wants
only death, destruction, suicide, murder, and chaos. I cite Peck’s
observations because I think he is picking up on Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil in ways that parallel the dynamics in
alcoholism and addiction.
My own experience with alcoholic and addicted individuals is that I
could in many cases sense intuitively, from the moment they walked
into my office, whether they were still clean and sober or whether
they had begun, or were just about to begin, using again, slipping
back into their addictive behavior and its insanity. Their very physical
presence was palpably different from when they were committed to
sobriety and not using. Psychologically they were more self-
absorbed, aggressive, cocksure, grandiose, and defensive, and
overall much less humble, open, and receptive. My question here is
whether or not we can sometimes sense Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil within an addiction when someone has
succumbed once again to the influence of its psychological
possession.
Peck also believes that the exorcism team operated to bring the
possessed person out of their lonely isolation with the evil spirit into a
supportive, loving community of goodness. Peck says, “The team
gave the patients their very first experience of a true community.”16
For many alcoholics, often their first experience of a true community
comes when they walk through the doors into an A.A meeting, when
suddenly, unexpectedly, they are truly seen, accepted, and
understood as they are.
Is the “evil spirit” underlying Satanic possession the same
phenomenon as the Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil underlying
addiction? Are they a different manifestation of the same
phenomenon? I’m not sure, but I do know that from everything I know
of Satanic possession, it too, like addiction, wants everything and all
of life sacrificed on its altar alone. It cares nothing if it results in death,
suicide, murder, chaos, or the loss of one’s soul. It appears to
participate in the same killer energy found in addiction.
Harry Wilmer, Jungian analyst, mentor, friend, and founder of the
Institute for the Humanities at Salado in Texas, held a symposium on
“Facing Evil” in 1987. He invited speakers from around the world, from
the widest range of perspectives and backgrounds, to address the
subject of evil. The contents of the symposium were compiled into a
book, Facing Evil: Confronting the Dreadful Power behind Genocide,
Terrorism, and Cruelty; it is well worth reading. Several sections of
the book addressed the subject of transpersonal, unintegratable evil.
In Wilmer’s introduction, he says, “There is a deeper evil, which is
neither personal nor organizational. It is absolute Evil. This is
conceptualized as the archetype of Evil. There is nothing that we as
individuals can do to eradicate absolute Evil.”17 This is a profound
and far-reaching assertion. It is disturbing and incredibly
discouraging, as well as almost incomprehensible, to believe such
powers and forces of evil exist and cannot be eliminated by human
beings.
It is this aspect of addiction I am discussing and trying to
understand. The poet laureate Maya Angelou poses a question that
goes to the heart of the issue of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil.
She asks, “Do Good and Evil exist as powers in some dimension
which we cannot imagine? Are those two forces engaged in a
struggle older than the stars?”18 She alludes to an eternal,
transpersonal conflict of good and evil not caused by humans,
another allusion to a type of war of the gods. Is this part of what is
going on in addiction? I believe so.
Scott Peck says that “Evil is in opposition to life. It is that which
opposes the life force. It has ... to do with killing.”19 He views evil as
the opposite of good, which, he believes, promotes life and liveliness.
He says, “Evil has nothing to do with natural death; it is concerned
only with unnatural death, with murder of the body or the spirit.”20
Peck emphasizes the inherent unnatural, murdering aspect of evil
that many others have also noted as one of the core characteristics in
alcoholism and addiction, which seems to almost gleefully destroy
and murder everything it can about the natural life and goodness and
health of the addicted individual.
Jesus reiterates this idea in John 8:44, that Satan was a murderer
from the beginning. I believe Jung understood this about alcoholism
and addiction when in his letter to Bill W. he refers to “the evil
principle prevailing in this world,” which is transpersonal and enters
through the vulnerability caused by alcohol or other potentially
addictive substances and behaviors to take complete control over the
individual “who cannot resist the power of evil,” which Jung boldly and
directly calls “the Devil.” Here Jung, by implication, clearly links
addiction, the irresistibility of transpersonal evil, and the Devil in the
dynamics of alcoholism.
Carl Kerenyi, the great mythologist, makes reference in James
Hillman’s book Evil, in the Studies in Jungian Thought Series, to an
“archetype of evil” that he believes operates everywhere at all times.
He says, like Peck, that “Evil is the act which arbitrarily disturbs the
natural relationship between the two realms (of god and men) and
prematurely conjures up the realm of death for a mortal being.”21 This
definition of evil certainly well describes the premature, unnatural
destruction and death of many alcoholics and addicted individuals.
Kerenyi goes on to say that “Evil consists in the conjuring up of
death.”22
Jeffrey Burton Russell, who wrote a four-volume study on the
history of the concept of the Devil, says, “Evil is meaningless,
senseless destruction. Evil destroys and does not build; it rips and it
does not mend; it cuts and it does not bind. It strives always and
everywhere to annihilate, to turn to nothing. To take all being and
render it nothing is the heart of evil. Or, as Erich Fromm puts it, evil is
‘life turning against itself.’”23
I had a client once, a very shy, introverted young man in college,
who had become overidentified with spiritual issues; he had thoughts
about becoming a priest, but felt unworthy because of the
temptations of the world and of the flesh, by which he was of course
both attracted and repelled. He started thinking that the Devil was
literally taking over his body and mind, and he imagined he was
starting to grow horns out of his head. I worked with him for several
months on self-acceptance of his humanness, of his sexuality, and of
his imperfectness. He made progress and then had a dream where
the Devil and God are going to have the final archetypal showdown,
to settle once and for all this question of good and evil. The shoot-out
is to take place in the golden-domed cathedral in St. Louis. My client
and others are in the cathedral as the battle begins. He and some
others quickly realize that they will be killed if they stay and try to
watch the titanic struggle. He and some of the others leave the
church guided by a kind but imperfect good woman, who is divorced.
As he is being led away, he looks back and can see massive lightning
and nuclear-like explosions going off and flashing from inside the
dome of the cathedral, and he knows that any human who refused to
leave and stubbornly stayed where they shouldn’t be would be
vaporized and destroyed in the great battle between God and the
Devil. It was not their place for humans to witness these things.
We talked about his dream; it was perhaps the biggest, most
important dream of his life. What he realized from the dream was that
there were archetypal spiritual forces and energies that could not be
mediated or witnessed or integrated or even contained by human
beings; they needed to be left alone to be decided by the gods, they
were not the realm into which humans should inject themselves, and
if they did and they tried to stay and didn’t get out of the way, they
would be obliterated. His willingness to follow the good, yet imperfect
woman in the dream was the right path to take to be saved, to not be
destroyed by the archetypal energy of this spiritual warfare, which
was way out of his or any other mortal’s league. The dream was
telling him to follow the imperfect feminine principle of Eros and
relatedness, and to get out of the way and let the immortals, not
humans, decide this ultimate question of good and evil.
Though my client was not addicted to anything I know of, his
dream strongly asserts that there are transpersonal energies much
bigger than human beings, whose conflicts cannot be arbitrated,
mediated, integrated, or even witnessed by humans. This is part of
what I believe occurs in the psychodynamics of addiction where
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil winds up struggling and at war
with Archetypal Good. Jung pointed to the archetypal healing formula
in alcoholism in his letter to Bill W.: “spiritus contra spiritum,” the great
Spirit of Life against the great Spirit of Death, and none of it can be
influenced or controlled by the conscious human ego. Humans
basically get caught in the crossfire between these absolute
archetypal forces and powers.
Maya Angelou sums up this idea better, as most poets do: “If Evil,
as I suspect, is a torrential force separate from mankind and Good is
a torrential force separate from mankind, then with or without our
presence that terrible turmoil will continue on the cosmic level.”24

CLINICAL AND THEORETICAL FORMULATIONS OF

UNINTEGRATABLE ASPECTS OF THE PSYCHE

Let us now turn our searchlight regarding this phenomenon of

Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil onto the realm of existing clinical
and theoretical psychodynamic formulations positing the idea of
unintegratable aspects of the psyche in general.
Sigmund Freud, in his mostly ignored formulation of Eros and
Thanatos, posits a core life instinct, Eros, pitted against a core death
instinct, Thanatos. Freud viewed Thanatos as a death wish in each of
us—a universal, impersonal, inherently self-destructive desire in all
human beings; an alien part of our nature that wants to destroy us.
This certainly describes many of the same attributes found in the
concept of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil operating in
alcoholism and other addictions.
This Eros and Thanatos theory of Freud’s that we humans are
constantly harboring both a life instinct and a death wish, which are
transpersonal and universal, has many implications. Recent
research, for example, has found that over 90% of people have had
suicidal thoughts of some kind, at some time in their lives. This
means that the thought of or desire to end one’s life by suicide is not
really a deviant or abnormal phenomenon, but is somehow a regular
part of human nature. Most people struggle at one time or another in
their lives with the question of whether or not life, for them, is still
worth living. The great existential question of life and death—to be or
not to be—seems to be a hardwired part of being human. The idea of
a universal death wish seems strange at first glance, until we reflect
on it as a phenomenon that challenges an overly idealized,
positivistic attitude that everything is instinctively directed toward life,
health, and happiness. People with addictions struggle every day
against the irrational, illogical actuality that they continue to destroy
themselves in spite of all the information, education, and reasonable,
logical, rational arguments otherwise.
On a lower level of Thanatos, we can see how addicted and
nonaddicted individuals often participate in self-sabotaging and self-
destructive behaviors as they unconsciously “shoot themselves in the
foot”; “leave the back door open”; keep stepping into the same hole,
the same “blind spot”; or keep forgetting what should never be
forgotten. The “Achilles heel” is a constant reminder of the human
vulnerability in all of us, which can lead to our demise. It is fascinating
to consider that there is a built-in part of all of us that wants to destroy
us. Freud was definitely onto something very dark, dangerous, and
frightening in his concept of Thanatos. No wonder most people would
prefer it to remain in the forgotten back files of his work.
Donald Kalsched, a Jungian analyst from New York, presented a
paper in Pittsburgh in October 1993 at the fall meeting of the Inter-
Regional Society of Jungian Analysts entitled, “Addiction to the
Lesser Coniunctio.” In alchemical language, the “Lesser Coniunctio”
was the term used to describe elements, substances, and chemicals
that were not integratable, that could not be transformed, transmuted,
changed, or united in the alchemical laboratory process. These
elements must be kept from contaminating and destroying the
process and thrown out or else they will ruin the rest of the work.
What Kalsched is hypothesizing is that there are forces in the psyche
that are inherently evil—not necessarily in a moral sense, but in a
psychological sense. They are psychologically incompatible with
human beings; forces inherently evil and poisonous to humans that
are unintegratable and untransformable in the alchemical laboratory
of the psyche. These elements and forces are diabolical in the
psyches of human beings. The term diabolical, which we associate
with the Devil and evil, literally means, “to tear apart,” in contrast to
the word symbolic, which literally means, “to put together.”
 Kalsched believes these forces of what he calls the “Lesser
Coniunctio” can tear apart and destroy the human being. He also
believes, as I do, that there is an aspect in a true addiction that is one
of these diabolically destructive forces, which cannot be metabolized
and integrated psychologically.
Kalsched went in another direction with his work. He zeroed in on
this unintegratable aspect of the psyche in trauma victims in his
groundbreaking book, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal
Defenses of the Personal Spirit.25 He theorizes a
Protector/Persecutor aspect of the psyche, which is the psyche’s self-
portrait of its own archaic defense operations. He describes this
Protector/Persecutor as not being educable, which is another way of
saying it cannot be modified, integrated, or transformed by the
psyche. He describes the dynamics of the Protector/Persecutor in
this way: “As much as he or she [the trauma victim] wants to change,
as hard as he or she tries to improve life or relationships, something
more powerful than the ego continually undermines progress and
destroys hope. It is as though the persecutory inner world somehow
finds the outer mirror in repeated self-defeating reenactments—
almost as if the individual were possessed by some diabolical power
or pursued by a malignant fate.”26
What Kalsched describes here could equally apply to the
experience in most addictions—just substitute alcoholic or addicted
individual for the trauma victim and the quote reads equally true for
both groups of suffering souls. Though the repetitive, self-destructive,
self-defeating reenactment behavior occurs in both the trauma
victims and in addicted individuals, I don’t believe the dynamics are
completely the same. Of course, there are many people who are both
trauma victims as well as addicted individuals. No single diagnosis
precludes other diagnoses for many other possible
psychosocial/emotional disorders. These other variables complicate
and create more difficulties in the healing or recovery process, but
they don’t change the fundamental psychodynamics of the addiction.
For example, at almost any A.A. meeting you can find alcoholics and
addicted individuals who also suffer from clinical depression, OCD,
anxiety, PTSD, schizophrenia, manic-depression, attention deficit
disorder, etc. These disorders do not explain addiction, nor does
treating them result in the effective treatment of the alcoholism or of
the addiction.
In trauma victims, my observation is that the Protector/Persecutor
defense complex comes and goes as needed, depending on the
circumstances and the potential degree of threat to the self. In a true
addiction, once the Addiction-Shadow-Complex has been activated, it
takes over the psyche of the alcoholic or addicted individual. He or
she cannot return to his or her more normal, functioning ego complex
because it has been paralyzed and completely—not partially—
overthrown by the addiction, which is then in total control physically,
emotionally, psychologically, socially, and spiritually. The addiction
may allow what looks like a pseudo-ego-normalcy for a time, but this
is only allowed to the extent that it does not threaten or challenge the
addiction agenda. It is ultimately only a pacifying, manipulative ploy
designed to maintain control and domination. Inconsequential
behaviors are allowed as long as they don’t create a problem for the
addiction. One of the biggest problems in recovery is the illusion of
control the alcoholic or addicted individual has, while the Addiction-
Shadow-Complex actually continues to call the shots.
Another perspective on unintegratable aspects of the psyche
comes from Jungian analyst Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig, in his book The
Emptied Soul: On the Nature of the Psychopath.27 Guggenbühl-Craig
argues that there are holes or lacunae in our psyches, which result in
our becoming, in a sense, psychological invalids with no possibility or
ultimate capacity for healing, growing, integrating, or getting better. In
some psychological areas we are like physically handicapped,
crippled individuals with perpetually limited capacities and options—
what could be considered a permanent disability of the psyche. Our
potentials will never achieve or return to what would be considered
normal or healthy. Cure or achievement of optimal health and
functioning are not possible. We all must learn to live with our
limitations both physically and psychologically as aging, disease, and
diminishment take their toll. If we insist on having expectations
psychologically, as well as physically, that are exaggerated,
unrealistic, or impossible, we just set up constant frustration, failure,
disappointment, and despair.
Guggenbühl-Craig continues his line of reasoning, arguing that
the psychopath is an invalid whose chronic, un-healable deficiency is
a perpetual lack of Eros—that is, an innate inability to truly relate to
others, to empathize or feel compassion for them—and there is
nothing we or they can do about it. This is a pretty grim and hopeless
scenario he proposes.
For our purposes, Guggenbühl-Craig points out and delineates
another theoretical perspective supporting the existence of
unintegratable aspects of the psyche. They are aspects absent or
missing from the beginning, or which were somehow lost forever
along the way. His theory is both interesting and fascinating to
consider. It certainly presents a different perspective regarding the
self-actualizing models swamping the psychological landscape of
today.
There are also physiological conditions predisposing individuals
towards addiction or accompanying the addiction, such as heredity,
body type, physical disease, trauma, and the organic deterioration
stages of alcoholism and many other addictions. These have to do
with biologically unintegratable or un-healable structures and
processes that cripple brain chemistry, organ functions, and the
whole nervous system, as well as an individual’s entire metabolic and
nutritional functioning. These physiological phenomena may be
mirroring and registering biologically what is going on psychologically
with unintegratable aspects of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil in
an addiction.
Marie-Louise von Franz, a brilliant Jungian analyst and perhaps
the world’s foremost authority on fairy tales, who knew Carl Jung
personally, comments on this type of physical/psychological
phenomenon. She says there are indications that physical and
psychic energy may be but two aspects of one and the same
underlying reality. “If this turns out to be the case then the world of
matter will appear as, so to speak, a mirror-image of the world of spirit
or of the psyche, and vice versa.”28 Jung’s position on this is very
clear when he says “there is no difference in principal between
organic and psychic formations.”29
Von Franz makes her own case for unintegratable aspects of the
psyche when she talks about images in myth, fairy tales, and
alchemy that point to bits “of inassimilable evil in the psyche which
resist sublimation and which must be thrown out.”30 She also is
positing the existence of psychic material that is transpersonal evil,
which cannot be integrated, digested, or incorporated by the psyche
and must be consciously rejected.
Von Franz continues her argument, “One alchemist observed that
in the ‘prima materia’ (original matter) there is a certain intractable
amount of ‘terra damnata’ (accursed earth) that defies all efforts at
transformation and must be rejected. [This is very similar to
Kalsched’s previous reference to the “Lesser Coniunctio.”] Not all
dark impulses lend themselves to redemption; certain ones, soaked
in evil, cannot be allowed to break loose and must be severely
repressed. What is against nature, against the instincts, has to be
stopped by main force and eradicated. The expression ‘assimilation
of the shadow’ (personal shadow) is meant to apply to childish,
primitive, undeveloped sides of one’s nature, depicted in the image of
the child or the dog or the stranger. But there are deadly germs that
can destroy the human being and must be resisted, and their
presence means that one must be hard from time to time and not
accept everything that comes up from the unconscious.”31
Jung himself addresses this question of integrating personal
shadow versus integrating Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil when
he says that “it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to
recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering
experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.”32
The implications of what Jung and von Franz are saying are
profound and disturbing. They point to this phenomenon, but give us
no examples of these “dark impulses” which “must be resisted.” What
is this absolute evil? What are these “deadly germs” that can shatter
and destroy the human being? Where do we see them clinically,
psychologically, and in society? How do we discriminate between
what is and is not assimilable in the psyche? What images and
experiences are frightening and terrifying, yet integratable and
necessary for our transformation, and what images and experiences
“soaked in evil” will kill us if we dare to touch them? How are we to
know? Do torturers, pedophiles, and psychopathic serial killers have
this Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil dominating and controlling
their psyches? I don’t know for sure.
Carl Jung, in his letter to Bill W., goes on record with his view that
alcoholism—and other addictions, by extrapolation—carry this
element of transpersonal evil “which is called very aptly the Devil.”
Von Franz is also alluding to the same Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil I am talking about in addiction.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the Jungian analyst who wrote the very
popular Women Who Run with the Wolves, also acknowledges that
there is a type of manifest evil that does exist and is truly
irredeemable.33
These examples from Freud, Kalsched, Guggenbühl-Craig, von
Franz, and Jung are existing clinical and theoretical formulations
supporting the idea that there are unintegratable aspects of the
psyche already being talked about psychodynamically. I am not
inventing this idea. I am hoping to add to the discussion that there are
unintegratable aspects of the psyche in alcoholism and addiction,
which I am calling Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil, and which
Jung was alluding to in his letter to Bill W.

IMAGES OF ADDICTION AND ARCHETYPAL SHADOW/ARCHETYPAL

EVIL IN FAIRY TALES, MYTH, AND RELIGION

When we look to find the images of addiction and Archetypal

Shadow/Archetypal Evil mirrored in fairy tales, myth, and religion, we
can get a glimpse of how they operate in the psyche through the
stories and characters who embody them and the ways one should
respond to them.
 Von Franz, for example, believed that the figure of Bluebeard
represented one form of this untransformable evil. She says:
“Bluebeard is a murderer and nothing more, he cannot transform his
wives or be transformed himself. He embodies the death-like
ferocious aspects of the animus [the psychological masculine
principle, positive and negative, in a woman] in his most diabolical
form; from him only flight is possible.”34
The vampire in many legends is another example of an
untransformable figure like Bluebeard, as well as an example of both
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil and addiction. The vampire is the
murderer who preys on the innocent, lures and seduces them with his
charms until he can sink his teeth into their necks and suck the very
life blood from their veins, drop by drop, until they are too weak and
drained to resist, and then they too join the ranks of the living dead.
Sometimes alcoholics and drug addicts, at their worst, do look and
walk around like zombies of the living dead—drained of all their blood
by the vampire addiction.
You don’t negotiate with a vampire. Linda Leonard says that for an
alcoholic “to take the first drink is like offering his neck to Dracula—it
is insanity.”35 You don’t make deals with the vampire; you don’t
accommodate a compromise. You run for your life. You hold up
crucifixes and surround yourself with the consecrated hosts of the
Eucharist. You wear garlic and pray like hell every prayer you know.
Metaphorically, the response to any addiction should be the same.
A.A.’s way of saying this is “Whatever it takes” (to get and stay sober)
is what you do.
The vampire, like addiction, wants your very life sacrificed to its
agenda. The vampire and addiction live off the lifeblood of human
beings. They will both kill you if they can.
Leonard, in her exceptional book, Witness to the Fire: Creativity
and the Veil of Addiction, describes this same aspect of addiction as
“The Killer”—which is above all laws, beyond all boundaries, exempt
from the human condition. She says, as does Marion Woodman, both
experts in working with addicted individuals, that all addictions are
killers.
 Kerenyi, the great mythologist mentioned previously, sees Iago
from Shakespeare’s Othello as the personification of Archetypal Evil,
as the eternal human mythological figure of evil. Kerenyi quotes from
Carl J. Burckhardt: “Iago is sustained and determined by the cosmic
power of envy, wherever he appears, he creates doubt and despair is
his harvest. He is the genius of malevolence.”36 Kerenyi says, “Iago is
at work everywhere at all times.”37 Certainly in addiction there seem
to be universal elements, on a recurring basis, of envy, doubt, and
despair on the part of addicted individuals as well as their spouses,
families, and friends.
In their book Witches, Ogres, and the Devil’s Daughter:
Encounters with Evil in Fairy Tales, Mario Jacoby, Verena Kast, and
Ingrid Riedel argue that “Real Evil” in a fairy tale, as opposed to evil
that is more personal and capable of modification and development,
“would mean that a destructive power was at work that could not be
dealt with, only avoided. Flight is the only possibility here [for
alcoholics, that means don’t drink!] even at the price of the hero or
heroine returning ostensibly untransformed.”38
Their advice continues, “If evil is too strong, one can only flee.
Here it seems essential to keep to oneself and avoid any major
rapprochement with evil [for alcoholics, this means don’t sit in
barrooms hoping you won’t drink or don’t test yourself with one drink
to see if you are strong enough to handle it]. To try to integrate [this
kind] of [archetypal] evil in such a situation, as in [personal] shadow
integration, would lead to catastrophe.”39 Jacoby, Kast, and Riedel
very much echo von Franz’s position stated earlier, but once again
they don’t tell us just what this “Real Evil” is and what it looks like.
They don’t tell us where we can find it.
Von Franz, in her article “The Problem with Evil in Fairy Tales,”
even champions avoiding and staying away from Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil as heroic. She says, “It can be an heroic
achievement to run from the power of evil, to avoid being ‘possessed’
by it in the literal sense.”40
Von Franz continues, “Evil has its divine depths, into which it is
irreverent to look. The mentally ill often show an unseemly lack of this
respect for the divine powers, especially those of the dark side, and
this lack of ‘religio’ may be, in part, responsible for their mental
derangement. ... It would seem more normal and appropriate for men
to fear the principle of evil. ... Fear of ... archetypal destructive
contents in the psyche is not cowardice, but a sign of maturity.”41
Perhaps we should expand the saying from Scripture that “the
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” to include “the beginning
of wisdom is also the fear of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil in
any form.” To avoid a black hole is not foolish or naive. To venture
knowingly into its force field would be suicide. The black hole
swallows up, sucks up everything—matter, gravity, even light.
Nothing, it seems, can escape its powerful tractor-like beam into the
dark vortex. Is the black hole another image of alcoholism and
addiction, of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil that will destroy us if
we get too close, suck us in and then swallow us whole? If so, we
should try and stay away from the edges—the temptations, the
habits, and the attitudes that put us in danger and at risk of becoming
its victims. What am I talking about? If you are abusing alcohol or
drugs or gambling or sex or food, stop. Stop right now, this minute,
today. If you can’t, you are already in the black hole of addiction.
Don’t use alcohol or drugs or any potentially addictive behavior “to
cope with living,” to mediate emotional pain, to deal with stress or
escape from responsibility. Find healthier ways “to cope with living”—
to deal with emotions, manage stress, and handle responsibility. Get
help—join a support group, see a therapist, exercise, keep a journal,
garden, talk to someone, hit a punching bag, take a vacation, let
yourself cry, write a letter, create something, delegate, change jobs,
pray, meditate, do Tai Chi, go on a retreat, volunteer, play, etc.
Don’t get into habit patterns that can too easily become
dependency. Don’t drink alcohol every day; it takes the last drop of
alcohol 48 hours to completely metabolize out of your body. If you
drink every day, your body, your psyche, your whole system, is never
alcohol-free. My personal policy is to never have a drink when I
“need” one. On the days I come home so stressed out and exhausted
that I say to myself, like so many other people, “Boy, I sure could use
a drink today!”—that’s the one day I make sure I don’t have a drink.
I’m trying to avoid using alcohol to self-medicate, to escape, “to cope
with living” my life. I’m trying not to put myself foolishly on the edge of
the black hole.
There is a Grimm’s fairy tale, “Clever Gretel,” which images many
of the core elements and attitudes of a person in an alcoholism
addiction process. Gretel is a cook, a servant; she wears shoes with
red heels and with them on she feels very pretty. She comes home
and celebrates her good feeling with a drink of wine. The wine makes
her hungry, so she tastes the best of whatever she is cooking for the
master and justifies herself that the cook must know what the food is
like (rationalization and self-permission thinly disguised behind her
professed motives).
One day, the master of the house asks her to cook a special meal
because guests are coming. She roasts two birds for the occasion.
When they are ready, the guests have not yet arrived (temptation
enters). The master goes off to fetch the guests, and while he is gone,
she starts drinking again, essentially gets drunk, and eats up all the
dinner by herself, rationalizing, excusing, and justifying her
presumptuous, self-indulgent behavior the entire time. When the
master returns with the guests, Clever Gretel has to think fast to get
out of this one, so she tells the guests that the master plans to cut off
their ears. With this news, the guests run away terrified. Gretel then
screams, goes to the master, and tells him the guests have run off
and stolen his roasted chickens. The master gets so angry and upset
with this news, he grabs the carving knife and runs after the guests,
who think he is going to cut their ears off, and so the guests run away
even faster than before. And so, the slapstick tale worthy of the Three
Stooges ends.
The tale is amusing on one level, as a trickster story—seeing how
Clever Gretel will escape from a seemingly impossible situation—but
what is more fascinating to me is how in this tale many of the typical
psychological elements are at play, mirroring the process
development of the alcoholism/addiction dynamic.
 Gretel is a servant, a cook, but she operates on a psychologically
inflated, grandiose basis, as if she were the master of the house. So
often in alcoholism and addiction the grandiosity and inflation is a
compensation for low self-esteem and feelings of inferiority. Gretel’s
rationalizations, excuses, and self-justifications are all revolving
around a basic core of narcissistic entitlement, defended by the
classic denial dynamic of alcoholism and addiction. Her red heels are
hot and haughty and provide an external source of value and self-
esteem; she feels pretty when she wears them. The shoes also
reflect a stilted, elevated, inflated self-image/persona, which is not
well grounded. Her vanity is her initial excuse to steal the master’s
wine and best food.
In this story, you can see the direct connection between Gretel’s
identification alignment with the persona false self, and the potentially
addictive behavior in the alcohol and food, which leads to an ever-
expanding, voracious hunger and self-deception that quickly
becomes all-consuming and out of control. Her self-permission
knows no bounds, as she goes from tasting the master’s best food to
eating it all up. She goes from a celebratory glass of wine to downing
the whole bottle. To cover her indiscretions, she must concoct an
elaborate story, as so many alcoholics and addicted folks do when
they have blown it. She lies and cheats and steals and tries to make
others responsible for her behavior. She operates out of constant and
complete denial. She seems to have no conscience about the
consequences of her behavior, as all dishonesty and deception is
justified to hide her dangerous, destructive, and addictive behaviors.
Gretel doesn’t have enough willpower, self-discipline, self-control,
or ego ability to curb or control her insatiable impulses to eat and
drink. If she is not yet addicted, she is on the edge of the cliff with the
ground giving way. Where will it end? Gretel doesn’t get caught this
time, that we know of, but if the pattern persists and she doesn’t
learn, or modify her behavior, it will be just a matter of time before she
hits bottom, it all catches up with her, and the game will be up.
Alcoholic and addicted individuals often tell themselves and
others so many lies to cover their addiction that they begin not to be
able to distinguish truth from falsehood. The line blurs between fact
and fiction, and they begin to believe their own lies.
Another aspect of Gretel’s tale that seems accurate for so many
with alcohol and addiction problems is how truly quick and clever they
are. Many are very intelligent, smart, and well educated. Addiction is
not because people are stupid.
I remember the first open A.A. meeting I attended. I thought for a
moment I had just stepped into a depository of all the wisest men and
women philosophers in the universe. I had to keep reminding myself
that this was a room full of recovering alcoholics. Some of the most
convincing “bs” was from folks who knew nothing yet about recovery
because they had stopped drinking the day before. That didn’t seem
to slow them down from going on and on as if they were experts on
the subject of sobriety and had it all figured out; as if they had all the
answers. (A.A. distinguishes between those who talk a good talk and
those who really walk the walk.) Of course these neophytes to
sobriety didn’t have the answers yet, they were still babes in the
woods, but they were as clever and quick thinking as anyone I’d ever
met. They had just been using their intelligence, or it was being used
by the addiction, to manipulate themselves and others to continue
their addictive behavior patterns.
Another fairy tale, one written by Hans Christian Anderson, “The
Red Shoes,” is viewed by many—including Clarissa Pinkola Estés in
Women Who Run with the Wolves and by Kent and Maria Carr in
their book Unraveling Collective Confusion: Archetypes and Issues42
—as a tale about addiction.
The story is about a poor, motherless child who has no shoes.
The child pieces together a pair of crude red shoes from scraps of
cloth; she loves these shoes dearly. Subsequently, she gets adopted
by a wealthy old woman, who throws her old crude red shoes out into
the fire. The little girl gets very sad and upset about this. She learns
the strict rules and manners of the society of the wealthy old woman,
but in her heart she burns with desire for the lost red shoes she loved
so much. For her religious confirmation in church, she selects a pair
of the finest, most glowing red leather shoes you can imagine, even
though they weren’t really appropriate for the solemn religious
ceremony. In fact, they were an outright scandal to all who saw them;
even the icons on the walls of the church frowned (I can just picture
this in a Disney movie), but the little girl did not care. All she could
think about was her beautiful red shoes and how much she loved
them.
The wealthy old woman is mortified and tells the little girl to never
wear the red shoes to church again, but the little girl defies her and
wears them to church the very next Sunday. At the entrance to the
church an old, wounded soldier taps the soles of her shoes and tells
her to “Remember to stay for the dance.” Immediately an itch in her
feet begins, and after church she starts to dance and cannot stop.
She dances everywhere; she can’t control her feet or stop the
dancing. The old woman and her coachman finally pry the shoes off
by force and the little girl’s feet calm down. The old woman then takes
the shoes and hides them away, while warning the little girl to never
touch them again. And of course, the little girl cannot resist; she finds
the hidden shoes, puts them on again, and the dancing begins again,
and again it is out of her control. The shoes are dancing her and take
her wherever they—not she—want to go. The little girl finally
becomes terrified and tries to take the red shoes off, but she cannot
even budge them.
She continues dancing on and on until she is completely
exhausted and worn-out, but she still cannot stop the dancing. She
becomes skin and bones; the red shoes are killing her. In
desperation, she goes to the town executioner and asks him to chop
off her feet—there is no other choice, no other way. He agrees and
cuts off the feet of the little girl, with the red shoes on them. The
shoes continue dancing and dance away with the little girl’s
amputated feet inside. She is now crippled for the rest of her life,
serves others, and never again wishes for the red shoes! What a
story!
The original red shoes the little girl loved so dearly, that she had
pieced together from scraps of cloth, represent her authentic,
instinctive creative attempt to nurture herself, to have some
specialness in the absence of a real mother who loved her, who
would have been able to mirror and mediate what she needed. The
wealthy old woman did not appreciate the little girl’s instinctive desire
for specialness, and was a poor persona substitute for a real mother.
She was much more concerned about what society would think than
about what the little girl really needed.
We could say that the little girl’s narcissistic desire for specialness
grabbed onto something from the collective, the glowing red leather
shoes, as a poor substitute for what she really needed and wanted.
This is like so many alcoholics and addicted people who turn to the
potentially addictive behavior, a poor substitute, to try to get what is
missing in their lives (self-esteem, love, happiness, contentment,
accomplishments, success, value, appreciation, etc.). Often the
developmental background for addiction is full of missing pieces that
a person is desperately trying to find or replace. When these pieces
cannot be found in the real world, with real people and in real
relationships with self and others, many look to fantasy replacements
informed by society and the persona of the collective offered by
celebrities, movies, magazines, and the media. Excessive
consumption, materialism, and potentially addictive behaviors—using
alcohol, drugs, food, sex, gambling, etc. to supply the missing pieces,
to fill the void, even if only temporarily—are the route that many
people take.
The second pair of red shoes are the addiction, which at first
comforts and allows for diversion and escape, but then it becomes an
all-consuming desire and obsession, so that nothing else matters.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés says, “The girl begins to whirl and twirl her life
away in a manner that, as with addiction, does not bring bounty, hope
or happiness, but trauma, fear and exhaustion. There is no rest for
her.”43
As in an addiction, there is a point where she has lost control of
the situation, is powerless, and her life has become unmanageable.
The addiction, represented by the red shoes, is then completely in
control, calling all the shots, and she is merely a puppet, doing what it
dictates. This is where the ego-complex system is hijacked and
completely taken over by the Addiction-Shadow-Complex. If this
continues, only death and destruction and the loss of everything will
follow. Unless something extraordinary occurs to neutralize the
addiction, then all is lost. In the story, this is represented as the
drastic, mutilating, almost unthinkable act of cutting off the little girl’s
feet, her conscious standpoint, so that another standpoint, more
humble and of service to others, can replace it. When this happens,
the little girl becomes fully conscious of the diabolical nature of her
addiction to the red shoes and, at least in the story, never wishes for
them again.
The little girl saves her life by accepting what seems to the ego to
be the worst possible fate, the sacrifice of the addicted ego point of
view in its entirety. In A.A. this is all about Steps One, Two, and
Three.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives

had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could
restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care
of God as we understood Him.

Sometimes the Power greater than ourselves is the executioner

that cuts things off in a seemingly quick and brutal way (Stop drinking
now!). Sometimes we have to turn over control and trust to the
executioner (God, the A.A. community, the Twelve Steps, one’s
sponsor) without knowing for sure whether they will help save our
lives or kill us. This is the kind of severe, extreme psychological
surgery that we would all shy away from unless we had hit bottom,
unless our lives had become so miserable and meaningless and
intolerable and desperate that we could not go on any longer in this
awful suffering and pain. The choices at this point are either suicide,
where the addiction has its final victory over our existence, or else
drastic, radical psychic surgery that might save our lives from the
monster addiction. Tough choices!
 Clarissa Pinkola Estés sees the second pair of red shoes as the
potentially addictive behavior that indicates a loss of connection to
authentic instinct. The little girl begins the fairy tale without a mother
to protect and nurture, inspire and guide her. This void is ultimately
filled by the excesses of the death-dealing vehicles of the addictive
behavior, which eventually breaks all the psychic bones and ends in
the total destruction and annihilation of the individual. The red shoes
in the story also image the Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil aspect
of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex, which we cannot assimilate but
can only distance ourselves from. Remember that the red shoes live
on even without the little girl. Perhaps they will dance on until they
find someone else to foolishly step in and wear them to his or her
peril.
You may be wondering why I haven’t referred to Dionysus from
Greek mythology (Bacchus in Roman myth) in my discussion of
alcoholism and addiction reflected in myth and fairy tales. I am not
convinced that the story of Dionysus is relevant or even about
alcoholism and addiction. It may be about excess and ecstasy and
even about abuse, but not addiction. It is a very complicated myth
with far-ranging implications and meanings. Some might argue that
the Maenads (Bacchae), the wild women followers of Dionysus,
represent the destructive dismemberment aspects of alcoholism and
addiction, but these women were not, according to the myth,
perpetually drunk and out of control. In fact, their behavior appeared
to be contained and prescribed within the bounds of the collective
religious ritual in which they were taking part.
Many people become aggressive and even violent when abusing
alcohol. The primitive sexual and aggressive areas of the
physiological old brain in humans, when stimulated with enough
alcohol, activate, and are scientifically well documented, as well as
the impairment to perception, concentration, and judgment when
alcohol affects our brains. Perhaps the Maenads, in some of their
aspects, are mythical representations of the human biological and
psychological phenomena that occur when the peaceful, fun-loving,
celebratory effects transform, with too much consumption, into the
uninhibited, violent, murderous, and brutally aggressive sexual
behavior that at times happens with drunkenness. When peaceful,
the Maenads could touch rocks and earth and magically call forth
springs of water, milk, and wine; suckle wild animals and babies; and
bring forth streams of sweet honey from their thyrsi (pinecone-tipped
staffs of Dionysus followers), but when they got into their intoxicated
rage and madness, they could with tremendous physical strength turn
in bloodthirsty abandon to tearing apart animals, trees, the earth,
humans, and that same innocent life they had previously nurtured.
Most violent crimes—assaults, murders, spouse and child abuse, and
rape—are alcohol- and/or drug-related events. Most barrooms and
apartments get torn up only when people have had too much to drink.
Most fights at wedding receptions occur when people have gone well
over their limit with alcohol. This is not coincidence. But as sad,
destructive, and regrettable as these events are, they are about
behaviors connected to excess and abuse, not necessarily to
addiction.
The fact that people get looser—less inhibited socially, sexually,
and aggressively—with alcohol consumption doesn’t make them
alcoholic or addicted, according to my definition. It may make them
drunk and stupid and very embarrassed the next morning, but that
doesn’t mean they are incapable of ego control, moderation, or
restraint in their use of alcohol, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil is part of the picture. Perhaps the
Maenads and other followers of Dionysus are there to make us
conscious of how thin that line can be between ecstasy and drunken
insanity when using alcohol.
There are also an abundance of creative and life-giving qualities
attributed to Dionysus, not just his love of partying, but his
involvement in teaching people farming techniques, as well as how to
cultivate and make wine; he is also the god who inspired the birth of
drama and theater in the Western world. He and Bacchus, his
counterpart in Roman myth, may be the gods of drunkenness and
merrymaking fools, but that still puts them a long way from
Bluebeard, Iago, Satan, and the vampire in imaging Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil. In any case, I have not found what I
consider to be significant reflections of Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil being played out in the myth of Dionysus.
Perhaps the most widely known myth image of Archetypal Evil
today is from the hugely popular Star Wars movie, with the story of
Anakin Skywalker, a jedi knight, wanting to do good, but being
tempted by the seductions, deceptions, and inflations of the Dark
Side of the Force until he succumbs and is rebirthed and renamed
Darth Vader in his religious conversion and realignment with the
transpersonal, archetypal powers of evil on the Dark Side.
Anakin, like many addicted people, tells himself and others that he
can handle the energies and powers of the Dark Side, that he is in
control and, for a while, he plays on the edge of the black hole, but he
is in over his head from the beginning, and in the end he is no match
for the Dark Side. He pays the price by having everything of value
that he loves, including his wife, destroyed. The Dark Side uses his
personal weaknesses—power, ambition, anger, and idealization—to
entice him over, until it is too late and he is caught in the inescapable
web of the Dark Side, which he now serves, under its complete
control. This is wonderfully portrayed in the movie by the fact that
Darth Vader is so mutilated as a human that he is literally
reconstructed and resurrected by the Dark Side, with the majority of
his body operated by machines. He is literally kept alive by the Dark
Side; this includes the very air he breathes. Of course this is not done
for his personal well-being, but so that his considerable powers and
abilities can continue to be in service to the Dark Side.
Like those under the Addiction-Shadow-Complex, Darth Vader
believes he has personal autonomy, willpower, and the ability to
make individual choices and decisions, all of which were in reality lost
long ago, but which the Dark Side, like the addiction, is capable of
persuading and deluding the person into believing that he or she is
still in control.
The Dark Side in Star Wars has all the qualities of a central, core
kingdom of evil pitted against the Force, a core kingdom of good and
light and hope, and once again human beings—and, in Star Wars,
many other species—are caught between the transpersonal warring
energies of the Force and the Dark Side.
Star Wars is very much a modern myth, reconfiguring the same
archetypal elements of Lucifer and the fallen angels pitted against
God, the Archangel Michael, and his army of angels (jedi knights),
with all the humans in the middle, who can be recruited on either side.
In the Star Wars myth the role of the Messiah, or Christ, is played by
Luke Skywalker, with some very different Hollywood twists and turns,
including the fact that Luke Skywalker’s father turns out to be Darth
Vader. As interesting as all this is, what is most important for our
purposes is that Star Wars is another myth, modern though it be, that
reflects and portrays images of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil in
its dynamics.
The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien, is the incredible epic
fantasy adventure of the struggle of hobbits, dwarves, fairies, elves,
trees, ents, trolls, humans and others to find their place in the
universe, wrestling with the forces of prejudice, caste systems, war,
species competition, survival, what is ultimately good or bad and,
perhaps most importantly, what is the nature of evil on both the
personal and the transpersonal level. In this story Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil is imaged in its absolute form as Sauron, the
most powerful evil being, a spirit who brings total death, total
darkness, total destruction wherever he rules. His dominating power
is so awesome it obliterates the very existence of all light and life.
When Sauron rules, all is darkness and death (another image of the
black hole).
Against such an all-powerful spirit-being, the hobbits—Bilbo
Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, and a host of others—battle,
many times reluctantly, against overwhelming odds to save the earth,
humanity, nature, and life itself. Often the task seems hopeless,
especially with relatively small, peace-loving hobbits being assigned
much of the redeeming and saving of it all. Very much as in a true
addiction, the odds often seem hopeless against the overwhelming
darkness, death, and destruction manifest in the Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil aspect of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex.
 Frodo, the primary hero in the story, is wounded by evil and
suffers continually with the wound and the burden of the accursed
Ring of Power that he must return to its source to be destroyed in the
fires of Mount Doom. He is tempted, tortured, close to despair, and is
almost killed many times along the way. His protection and salvation
is through gifts and powers bestowed on him by friends and higher
sources of goodness and grace (his Higher Power).
Most alcoholics and addicted individuals did not consciously
choose to be in the arena with Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil,
and like the hobbits find themselves reluctantly in an overwhelming,
seemingly hopeless battle to save themselves, their marriages, their
families, their businesses, and their communities. Similarly, as in the
Lord of the Rings story, the way through involves humility (the humble
hobbits) as the correct psychological attitude to take, and being
guided one step at a time (as the hobbits were) by the transpersonal
higher forces and powers of light and goodness and healing against
the higher forces and powers of darkness, evil, and death. The battle
against Sauron and his legions is, for the alcoholic or addicted
individual, the same as the battle against Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil in the addiction.
One of the beliefs in A.A., based on practical, firsthand experience
about alcoholism, is that once you are alcoholic (addicted) then you
will always be so. They say alcoholics are always just one drink away
from reactivating the addiction, no matter how long they have been
sober. A person’s choice is between being an active, using alcoholic
or being a sober, recovering alcoholic. There is no third option of
being a former alcoholic. I believe that what this is all about is that,
once a person has been touched by the ultimate Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil in alcoholism, there is left a permanent
indelible mark and vulnerability that is carried from then on for the
rest of one’s life. Once you have crossed that line, there is no going
back. There is always the latent potential for reactivation of the
addiction.
It is something like the reverse of the belief that a positive indelible
character or mark is conferred at Christian baptism, which claims,
initiates, and activates a person as a Christian from that point on for
the rest of one’s life, regardless of whether the person practices the
Christian faith or not. Christian confirmation, as a sacrament, is also
believed to activate the Holy Spirit in a special way that is a
permanent potential for spiritual growth, regardless of whether the
person uses it or not. So is the awakening of the Kundalini in the
Hindu tradition, which is believed to permanently awaken and
activate the spiritual, psychological, and physical energies of potential
transformation in the individual. If the highest spiritual forces of
goodness and grace can leave these kinds of permanent effects, it
seems logical to suppose that the most powerful forces of destruction
and evil can in some way do likewise in the opposite direction.
I don’t believe this idea of once an alcoholic always an alcoholic,
once addicted always addicted, is about some kind of deep-rooted
paranoia, defeatism, battered self-esteem, or a perpetual
victimization mentality. I believe it reflects the fact that once a person
has been touched by the Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil aspect
of addiction, this exposure and proximity to such powerful, lethal, and
unitegratable dark destructive energy leaves a perpetual marker,
scar, and vulnerability, like being exposed to super-powerful, deadly
psychological nuclear radiation, which leaves an eternal residue in
the cells of the body and of the psyche. Any further exposure to the
radiation could reactivate the lethal toxicities and result again in
sickness and even death. Once exposed, there is always the
potential danger of reactivation with any further exposure.
The Harry Potter series, written by J. K. Rowling and translated
wonderfully in film, is another popular modern myth reflecting aspects
of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil in the story line about the
young English boy magician or wizard, Harry Potter, and his lengthy
and perilous educational adventures in using and discerning the
magic powers of good and evil, healing and destruction, in diverse
worldly and otherworldly realms. In the story, Harry’s parents, good
wizards, are killed by Lord Voldemort, the most powerful, evil
archwizard who rules over a host of evil minions who carry out his
ambitious plans to destroy all good and become the all-powerful
dictator over everything. One group of these subordinates is known
as the Dementors, creatures who search out, suck dry, extract and
destroy the very soul essences of other beings, under the direction of
Lord Voldemort.
It is only the love of Harry’s mother that protects him and allows
Harry to survive Lord Voldemort’s attacks, which were intended to kill
him. He escapes death, but is left with a perpetual scar/wound from
this experience, his indelible mark, which continues to resonate with
pain and suffering anytime he comes near or in contact with any evil
associated with Lord Voldemort (the stories’ version of Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil). As with the Fisher King in the Grail legend,
the scar is an eternal wound that seems never to heal. Or the
affliction of St. Paul, whatever it is, that the Lord refuses to take away
and so Paul must learn to live with the affliction and its continuous
torment.
Harry, like the recovering alcoholic, has been touched by
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil and it has left a permanent scar
and vulnerability, which must be suffered, but also allows Harry and
recovering alcoholics and addicted individuals to know this kind of
evil on a personal, intimate, first-name basis. This wisdom and
knowledge may be what saves humanity, in the final analysis, from
Lord Voldemort and the Dementors of this world.
This knowledge is like the price many exorcists in the Catholic
Church report that they must pay for wrestling with the transpersonal
evil energies of the Devil, which remain somehow always with them,
physically and psychologically. Perhaps this is why the best sponsors
in A.A. are those who have been to hell and back. They are the
epitome of the effectiveness and the necessity of the wounded
healer. The power of addiction to destroy lives should never be
minimized or underestimated.
Probably the best image of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil in
myth, fairy tales, and religion is that of the Devil. Even Jung, in his
letter to Bill W., chooses to describe this almost irresistible “power of
evil” in addiction as the Devil. I don’t believe Jung used this image
casually or without great awareness of what he was pointing towards.
I believe he was very conscious and intentional in using the Devil to
describe an essential, crucial aspect of the phenomenon of
alcoholism and addiction.
In many fairy tales, the Devil can be redeemed. In one Grimm’s
tale to which von Franz refers, “The Prince and the Princess,” it is the
Devil’s daughter who has a human heart and saves the helpless man
from the irresistible evil of her father, the Devil. These kinds of tales
image where Eros and consciousness and connection with the Self
can help the individual to integrate, overcome, and transform
destructive personal shadow aspects of the psyche. Perhaps these
tales refer to mental/emotional disorders that can be overcome and
healed. Perhaps they signal the hope that we are still able to stop and
change alcohol and drug behavior at the abuse stage, potentially
preventing addiction where we have not yet crossed that line.
There are other tales of the Devil where there is no possibility of
overcoming the darkness, the core evil, the Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil represented by this form of the Devil. In one
myth, a version of the story of the origin of the Devil, all the devils
were initially angels of the Lord in heaven, worshipping, praising, and
adoring him, and doing God’s will above and below. God had created
the angels with free will, so they were able to choose freely whom
they would serve and what allegiance they would have.
One day, as the story goes, God decided to create human beings
out of the mud of creation and also to give humans free will to listen
to God or not. Humans were being offered a potential place next to
God in heaven, almost on a par with the angels. This so infuriated
and insulted some of the angels, especially Lucifer, their leader,
whose name means “bringer of light,” that they decided to revolt and
rebel against God’s plan. They couldn’t believe that God would give
free will and the chance to be one with him in eternity to such lowly,
crude, ugly, and muddy creatures. Because the angels were pure
spirits, who would live forever, their choices and decisions, unlike
those of humans, were also eternal. They could see the whole picture
at once, so there was no changing of their minds. It’s not as though at
some point, like humans, they would realize something new or see
that they had made a mistake. It also upset them—in their pride
which cometh before a fall—that these finite, lowly humans would
potentially be redeemed and elevated by God to an exalted eternal
status, which previously only the angels were privileged to occupy.
God had just gone too far this time, and they resented the hell out of
it.
So they made their eternal choice to separate themselves from
God and his divine plan. They have no regrets. Because of this
eternal decision, these angels were kicked out of heaven; Michael,
the good archangel, made sure it was so. Not being allowed to
continue to reside in heaven, Lucifer created his separate domain in
hell with other fallen angels, now called devils. There they perpetually
plot, sabotage, and try to thwart God’s plans by roaming the earth
and tempting, manipulating, influencing, deceiving, and ultimately
taking the souls of human beings away from God to damnation in
their kingdom.
Whether or not you buy this story as some kind of an imaging of
what really has happened, what is most significant about the image,
energy, and spirit of Lucifer and the devils in this story is that they are,
by their own choice, not transformable, redeemable, integratable, or
savable anymore by God, goodness, or human intentions. The
inherent hostility and malevolence at their core is now committed to
the destruction and downfall of human beings by any means
possible. They play by no rules but their own. Humans, without the
aid of spiritual powers from God and the good angels, don’t stand a
chance against eternal spirits of such evil intention and power.
What is it that happens to decent, ethical, morally good human
beings that transforms them, under the power of addiction, to
abandon all the values and principles they have lived by and believed
in? What force is so strong, so pervasive, so complete in possessing
these formerly good human beings that it mutates them regardless of
their personal backgrounds, beliefs, and histories into liars, cheaters,
and thieves; into deceptive, dishonest, untrustworthy, despicable
human beings? What kind of a malignant spirit then continues and
perpetuates this destructive course of action until the human being,
his health, his marriage, his family, his career, his friendships, and his
very life are destroyed? Call this phenomenon what you will, but I
agree with Jung that the Devil fits the bill quite well—as a murderer
from the beginning, as the great deceiver, as the father of all lies.
Linda Leonard describes addiction as the bondage of one’s soul
to the Devil. She envisions the devil in addiction as “The
Moneylender,” who we keep borrowing from, going deeper and
deeper into hopeless debt, until he owns us completely and then he
demands that we pay up. Here’s how she describes the devil in
addiction: “First of all he is in our psyche—that figure in us who
convinces us we can have something for nothing, a free ride to
paradise, a shortcut to creativity. For an addict, he is behind every
glass of wine, every line of cocaine, every cigarette, every mounting
debt, every romance that keeps us spellbound and remains
untransformed into love, every power play. In the beginning the
Moneylender [Devil] may seem friendly, even kindly. But once we are
in debt his cruelty and demonic power often astound us. In the end
we pay far more than we receive. And sometimes we pay with our
lives.”44
Jeffrey Burton Russell, a professor of history and religion
presenting at Harry Wilmer’s symposium on “Facing Evil,” says of the
Devil: “If the Devil does exist, what is he? If the concept has any
meaning at all, he is the traditional Evil One—a mighty person with
intelligence and will whose energies are bent on the destruction of
the cosmos and the miseries of its creatures.”45
Von Franz, echoing these thoughts, says that the Devil in some
tales “is an intrinsically evil nature spirit who derives pleasure from
destruction and murder for their own sake. It is dreadful to think that
there is something of the sort in the unconscious human psyche, but
the testimony of myths and fairy tales shows this to be the simple
fact.”46
Sometimes when I have made presentations on this dark,
depressing, terrifying, and seemingly hopeless material about
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil, people ask me, almost in
despair, “What then can we do?” I will go further into answering this
question in the next chapter on “The Healing Process of Recovery
through the Twelve Steps of A.A.,” but for now, while we are still in the
fairy tale, mythical realm, let me share with you what von Franz offers
us from her storehouse of knowledge and experience on the subject.
She says, “Anyone who can enter into the innermost center of his
own psyche, his Self, is safe against the assaults of the dark
powers.”47 I am not so sure about this, unless by this “innermost
center” she means entering into the Holy of Holies, into sacred space
so to speak, where transpersonal spiritual powers are accessed and
activated to neutralize the “assaults of the dark powers.” Von Franz
goes on to say that “Divine wholeness is the strategic ‘weak point’ of
the evil one. That is where he has his heart or his ‘death,’ that is
where he can be destroyed.”48 She relates how in many fairy tales the
Devil or Evil One keeps his heart hidden on an island, in a church or
well, or in a duck or an egg: all of these are symbols of wholeness
and of the true Self.
Two important ideas are suggested by von Franz’s comments
here. One, that the effects of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil can
only be canceled out or neutralized by spiritual wholeness or
archetypal good and light—which would mean the archetype of the
Self in Jungian terms or the Higher Power in A.A. Two, that in the final
analysis Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil, though intentionally
hidden in the wholeness of the Self to deceive and disguise, is
somehow still contained in and superseded by the Self. This idea has
been echoed in many myths where both good and evil emanate from
a unified supreme god figure, who allows the cosmic clash to unfold
with the knowledge that in the end good will prevail, but often after
much struggle and turmoil and hardship is visited upon human beings
caught in the middle.
So there is encouragement that we are not completely at the
mercy of the forces of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil, but we
must not try to fight or deal with it as individuals through the puny
power of our inflated egos, but through an alignment with the greatest
spiritual powers of love and goodness and light we can find.
 It is interesting to note how often the Eros principal of love and
deep human relationships as protective, healing, and neutralizing of
evil has come up so far in this book. In Jung’s letter to Bill W., Eros is
“the protective wall of human community” that Jung says “can
counteract the evil principle [Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil]
prevailing in this world.” The young man mentioned earlier, who had
the great final showdown dream with God and the Devil battling it out
in the domed cathedral in St. Louis, was saved and led out of danger
by the kind, good, yet imperfect divorced woman (Eros). Guggenbühl-
Craig argues that what is missing in the psychic makeup of the
psychopath is a chronic, unhealable deficiency and lack of Eros. In
the Red Shoes fairy tale imaging addiction, what is missing from the
very beginning for the little girl is the special nurturing Eros love of her
mother. In the Harry Potter story it is only Harry’s mother’s love (Eros)
which saves him from being killed by Lord Voldemort as a young
child. Von Franz points to the need in fairy tales to find the hidden
heart of the Devil, or evil, to destroy it (if that is possible). The heart
has always represented the Eros principal. Finally, the Eros principle
is manifested in A.A. through the fellowship of other recovering
alcoholics in their loving, caring support and assistance for each
other. Part of the antidote to Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil
certainly seems to be an activated Eros principle within the human
community.

The assertion of the existence of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal

Evil raises many theoretical philosophical, theological, and
psychological questions. Saying that Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal
Evil is ultimately an aspect of the wholeness of the Self, for example,
explains and clarifies no more than saying God created all things and
therefore created evil, and evil is then, somehow, an aspect or part of
God. Some would describe evil as the shadow or dark side of God.
This may all be true in the final analysis and in the heavenly realms,
but it does not help humans to understand or deal any better with the
Devil (if there is one) or Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil in this
world. These kinds of theoretical macrocosmic explanations appear
to me to be beyond our finite human intellectual comprehension.
Even if it is ultimately part of the divine plan, it is still so deadly and
toxic to humans we cannot touch it, integrate, metabolize, or process
it as humans. Even worse, if it can kill and completely destroy us,
divine plan or not changes nothing. So whether we place Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil within or without the psyche, or partially
within and partially without, it is truly experienced as transpersonal to
us and needs to be guarded against, avoided at all costs and, when
encountered, neutralized.
I don’t want to get into the presently unresolvable theoretical
debate among Jungians and others about whether everything,
including the archetypes, is completely contained within the
Self/psychic system of humans, or whether there are things, including
the archetypes, that derive from another external source—an
objective “other” somehow outside of or beyond us but which is
somehow imaged in us, and part of us, manifesting in one way as the
archetypes.
This theoretical psychological debate very much mirrors the same
presently unresolvable theological debate about the nature and
existence of God. People come down arguing on all sides—theists
who affirm God’s existence and atheists who deny God’s existence
and agnostics who don’t know one way or the other. Among the
theists there are those who believe God and humans are a
completely unified oneness; there are those who believe God to be
completely separate, independent, superior and external to humans,
but that we may be able to relate to, communicate with, and petition
him/her/it; and then there are those who believe that God is much
bigger, greater, and more comprehensive than humans, but that
humans are imbued with some of the divine aspects of God. In
Judeo-Christian tradition, this would be the idea that we humans are
all created somehow in the image and likeness of God referred to in
Genesis. There are others who believe a combination of these
theories. Still others believe there is a God, but it is a great,
unknowable mystery full of paradox and Zen-like koans.
 Once again, as fascinating as this speculative theology and the
question about the origins and creation of the archetypes is, it
digresses from our primary phenomenological concern with the
nature of true addiction, specifically the existence of Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil as a key ingredient necessary for an
addiction to exist. I cannot answer the origin of the archetypes
question, in fact I have nothing new to contribute regarding it, but I
can assert from observation and experience with addictions that
there is a transpersonal (beyond the individual), deadly archetypal
phenomenon that is not educable, healable, or integratable by
humans, which I have chosen to label Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal
Evil. I make no further assertions or speculations about where it came
from, whether it exists in other realms and dimensions, and where it is
ultimately heading. These are just not germane to the central
question of addiction as a psychic phenomenon. In fact, such
fascinating questions and speculations can easily distract and take
the focus away from trying to understand the psychodynamics of
addiction.
Again, I can truly appreciate Jung’s hesitancy to wade into the
discussion about the diabolical archetypal dynamics of addiction until
the very end of his life. It is almost as though what he did in his letter
to Bill W. was that he stopped, just when he was about to leave this
world, turned back at the last moment, and hesitatingly threw us this
bomb and said, “Now you guys deal with it! I’ve done enough. I am
outta here.”
Phenomenologically acknowledging the existence of Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil as an inintegratable, transpersonal
phenomenon in the psychodynamics of addiction is all I’m asking you
to consider, and it is plenty by itself.

WHY PEOPLE ARE DRAWN TO ARCHETYPAL

SHADOW/ARCHETYPAL EVIL
 If Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil is so frighteningly
dangerous and destructive, it raises the question of why people
would be drawn to it in the first place. From my experience and
knowledge of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil in alcoholism and
other addictions, I believe that people are drawn to it because of its
allure of incredible power and energy, of unimaginable freedom, of
the ultimate fulfillment of a desire for status, mastery, and prestige,
and of the promise of superhuman potency.
The archetypes in general have always tempted humans with the
fantasy and possibility that we might become gods. The vampire’s
allure is erotic and promises eternal life, though it be of the living
dead. The Devil tempts Jesus in the Scriptures with power,
possessions, and desires fulfilled, which the Devil seems able to
provide. All Jesus needs to do is bow down before Satan. Many
addicted people tell of histories and experiences of complete
inadequacy and impotency without their fix. Some men and women
have no social courage or confidence without alcohol or drugs, but
with them they feel invincible and powerful and self-assured.
Bill W. told the story of his first drink to Robert Thomsen, his
biographer. Thomsen relays the incredibly numinous, powerful,
ecstatic, and panacean nature of Bill’s experience:

Perhaps it took a little time, but it seemed to happen instantly.

He could feel his body relaxing, a stiffness going out of his
shoulders as he sensed the warm glow seeping through him
into all the distant, forgotten corners of his being. ... Soon he
had the feeling that he wasn’t the one being introduced but that
people were being introduced to him; he wasn’t joining groups,
groups were forming around him. It was unbelievable. And at
the sudden realization of how quickly the world could change,
he had to laugh and he couldn’t stop laughing. ...
It was a miracle. There was no other word. A miracle that was
affecting him mentally, physically, and, as he would soon learn,
spiritually too.
Still smiling, he looked at people around him. They were not
superior beings. They were friends. They liked him and he liked
them. ...
 [When he left,] at his back he could hear the whine of a
saxophone, little waves of voices rising, falling, but now they in
no way ran against the overwhelming joy he was feeling. His
world was all around him, young and fresh and loving, and as
he made his way down the drive he moved easily, gracefully, as
though—he knew exactly how he felt—all his life he had been
living in chains. Now he was free.49

Bill W. had, I believe, an archetypal experience with his first drink of

alcohol. It activated a thirst in him to forever recapture that freedom,
that perfect moment and feeling. The alcohol connected him with the
false self and opened the door ultimately to the Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil in his alcoholism. Bill was on a Grail quest,
he was thirsting for the true spirit, “the highest religious experience,”
as Jung put it, but he got hopelessly caught up in the lies and false
promises of the depraving poison of the spirits of alcohol until he
discovered A.A., the Higher Power, and the true Self.
Some men and women literally cannot perform sexually without
their addiction to empower their penises, vaginas, and sexual allure.
One recovering alcoholic man I’ve worked with for a number of years
tells how tortuously shy, introverted, and completely inadequate and
worthless he had felt throughout his childhood into his adult life. He
says that alcohol saved his life for a time, in the sense that without it
he never would have been able to function in the outer world. He
never would have been able to relate to others socially, in school or at
work. He never would have been able to find a mate and have a
family. Alcohol for him was the best, most powerful and influential
friend he had for many years, until it demanded he sacrifice
everything, including his soul, on its altar. He had been thankful to
alcohol for supplying him with energy and drive and spirit when it was
so sorely lacking in him. It was fine until the “cure” began killing him.
The problem with selling your soul to the Devil, or addiction, is not the
benefits you get in the short run, it is the ultimate price you must pay.
The short-term payoff is often worth it; it’s the long-term
consequences that relativize the equation, because it is ultimately a
deal with death.
 Jung knew and continually cautioned against ego
overidentification with the archetypes in general. He described the
inflation, the seductiveness, the irresistibility of the archetype, and
how we must try to stay grounded and humble and human against
the overwhelming temptation to potentially become one of the gods
or goddesses. If not, we could be mortally wounded, crippled,
dismembered, struck with madness or ultimately destroyed.
Fairly recent, well-known societal examples of this dangerous
overidentification with the archetypes can be found in Marilyn
Monroe, the famous film star and pin-up girl who overidentified with
and tried to carry the impossible projection of being Aphrodite, the
Greek goddess of sex and love, for everyone male and female on the
planet. No wonder it resulted in broken relationships, in
disappointment and unbearable stress, as well as outrageous
expectations of herself and from others. She abused alcohol and
drugs to escape from the pressure, and in trying to cope with so much
she was finally destroyed in 1962 at the age of thirty-six by a drug
overdose of sleeping pills, probably in an attempt to get away from it
all. She has since been elevated into the pantheon of cultural icons
and resides now as the forever unchangeable sex goddess of our
time. It only cost her her life as a human being.
Elvis Presley, another cultural icon in our modern pantheon, is
also an example of the dangers of archetypal overidentification with
the Gods. As a talented singer, performer, musician, and rock-and-
roll-sex-symbol star, he was the “King,” the Adonis of his time. And
like Adonis from Greek mythology, who was young, handsome, and
sexy, the masculine counterpart to the feminine sex goddess,
Aphrodite, who loved him and found him irresistible, Elvis had the
same irresistibility for most women. Everyone adored him and
wanted, literally and figuratively, a piece of him. It ultimately killed
him. He died in 1977 from a drug overdose. He massively abused
legally prescribed stimulants and sedatives so that he could perform
and function, and carry the burden of being “the king of rock and roll”
with all the crazy, unrealistic projections and expectations of his fans
and admirers weighing down on him. Elvis is another sad, tragic story
of being destroyed by overidentification with the archetypes.
The English Princess Diana, called “Princess Di” in a fondly
familiar way by her fans, admirers, and the media, crumbled under
the archetypal projection to be the perfect, beautiful, happy-ever-after
fairy tale princess for the whole world, which, of course, was
impossible.
There is actually not a very good track record of survival for
humans who overidentify with the archetypes. It is a very dangerous
business. No wonder Jung was so adamant about the prohibition of
this, to protect us. When we identify with an archetype, with the gods,
our inflation, infatuation, and possession doesn’t allow us to be
normal, finite, and human, to function like other mere mortals. This is
why all the great saints and mystics have so emphasized being
grounded in humility—they were being constantly tempted to an
inflated overidentification with the divine and to forgetting their
humanness. True humility is the antidote to archetypal inflation for
humans. This inflation certainly is a potential danger for alcoholics
and addicted individuals, this narcissistic specialness that tells them
that they are different, that they are the exception, that the rules do
not apply to them. It is easy to begin to delusionally believe that we
are a special category of human being, entitled to more, and different
than others—to begin to think we are a god. If this happens, it is only
a matter of time before the hubris calls forth the archetypal
compensation from the gods to take us down and to put us in our
proper place.
In myth and fairy tales humans are always punished severely or
killed for stealing from, infringing upon, or trying to be a god or
goddess. Some, like Prometheus, who brought fire to humans, and
Aesculapius, who healed the sick and raised the dead, made
contributions to humanity, but they personally paid for it very dearly.
Prometheus was sentenced to being chained to a mountain while an
eagle continually ate away his regenerating liver (what a metaphor)
until Hercules finally freed him. Aesculapius was killed for his
transgressions, and was eventually welcomed into the pantheon of
Greek gods because of humanity’s massive outcry to Zeus over his
death. Most human overidentification with the archetypes is selfish,
egocentric, and pedestrian; it does not contribute to the betterment of
humanity in any way, but the price that must be paid is the same.
These are the potential consequences of ego overidentification
with “any” archetype—just imagine the consequences of upping the
ante to the ultimate archetype of Evil, of Archetypal Shadow, where
nothing is integratable, nothing can be assimilated, nothing can be
transformed on the human level—we have about as much chance as
a snowball in hell.

CLARIFICATION OF DEFINITIONS OF ARCHETYPAL

SHADOW/ARCHETYPAL EVIL

The terms Archetypal Shadow or Archetypal Evil have been used

by different people in different ways, sometimes meaning very
different things. For example, Liliane Frey-Rohn uses the term
Archetypal Evil to represent collective shadow in society and as a
synonym for the shadow aspect or dark side of all the archetypes,
including personal shadow, persona, anima, animus, hero, mother,
etc. She views Archetypal Evil as coming out of the imbalance or
one-sidedness of the social, collective, cultural situation, not as
individual, but as impersonal and plural in nature.50 Her use of the
term Archetypal Evil has a different meaning from the way I use it.
She does not address the unintegratable aspects of the phenomena
as I see it.
I believe it is this psychologically unintegratable aspect of
addiction, which I call Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil, which
distinguishes and makes alcoholism and addiction in some ways
fundamentally different from most other forms of mental/emotional
disorders. It is this unintegratable aspect that is essential and
inherent to my use of the term, because it explains that aspect of
addiction that is immune to any forms of ego insight, ego control, or
ego adaptation.
 Once again, as a phenomenologist, I am just trying to find the
appropriate words and images to adequately describe the
phenomenon. I’m trying to create a map that accurately reflects and
names, as best I can, the true nature of addiction. I am not
necessarily wed to the labeling. If better words can be found to
describe this profoundly important aspect of addiction, I am open to
using them.
There are terms in philosophy, theology, and literature such as
“radical evil,” “real evil,” “absolute evil,” “core evil,” “objective evil,”
“transcendent evil,” and “transpersonal evil” that all point to an aspect
of evil, or a type of evil, that goes beyond personal sin and weakness
and wrongdoing. They all allude to a source or realm of evil bigger,
deeper, more powerful and profound than that generated by the
individual human being. They all point in some way to the
phenomenon I am talking about as Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal
Evil, which is an essential component in the construction of the
psychodynamics of psychological addiction.
There is something in the nature of the phenomenon of addiction
that is clearly and substantially different from what is going on in
many other kinds of mental/emotional psychiatric disorders,
something that is not explained by existing theories and
psychodynamic models of traditional egocentric psychologies—even
definitions of neurosis and psychosis don’t capture adequately what
is going on in addiction. There is something darker and more sinister
than our traditional views of mental illness.
As sad, tragic, and debilitating as schizophrenia and bipolar
disorders can be, there is still a sense of hopeful humanness that
underlies them, and they can be and are impacted in a positive way,
sometimes significantly, by different forms of psychotherapy and
psychopharmacology. In depression, obsessive compulsive
disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenic disorders, personality
disorders, and adjustment disorders there is no absolute initial
treatment requirement, for its effectiveness, that there be an ego-
collapse conversion experience—that a person admits complete
powerlessness and that they turn to a higher-power authority in the
psyche to heal them. In fact, in all these other mental/emotional
disorders it is often necessary, helpful, and even required that the
existing ego-complex system be strengthened, deepened, expanded,
and more greatly empowered to do its job effectively. Traditional
psychotherapy can be very effective in helping the patient to do this.
In many of these mental/emotional disorders (clinical depression,
obsessive compulsion, bipolar, and schizophrenia)
psychopharmacological medication is primary, necessary, and
required for the effective treatment of the conditions, which is not true
in treating addictions. Detox medication, Antabuse, and newer
medications such as Naltrexone (ReVia) and Campral (which may
turn out to be very helpful in suppressing or blocking the
neurochemical effects of alcohol and others drugs in the brain by
reducing or inhibiting their biological craving effects), all can be
helpful aids in treating alcoholism and addiction, but none of them is
primary, necessary, and required, and none of them can arrest or
cure an addiction on their own.
Some psychopharmacological medications can, on their own,
cure if not arrest for long periods of time many of the worst, most
debilitating and prevalent forms of mental illness. Many
mental/emotional disorders (reactive depression, obsessive
compulsion, anxiety and adjustment disorders) can be improved,
arrested, or cured completely by traditional psychotherapies alone.
Alcoholism and other addictions cannot initially be improved,
arrested, or ever cured by traditional psychotherapy alone.
There is a manageability to most mental/emotional disorders
other than addiction. Presently, almost all of them can be treated
effectively with a combination of medications and psychotherapy.
Medication and psychotherapy have not proven effective primary
treatments in arresting alcoholism and addiction. They can be helpful
aids at times in the recovery process, especially if there are other
mental/emotional disorders involved (dual diagnosis) or in
conjunction with the addiction that needs to be treated. Traditional
psychotherapy and psychoanalysis can be helpful, especially once
the addictive behavior has stopped and a recovering individual wants
to work on developmental, personality, and personal dynamics
involved in contributing to and creating the addiction.
These differences in treatment approaches and effectiveness
point phenomenologically to basic core differences in the nature of
addictions (both psychologically and physiologically) and other
mental/emotional disorders. In general, in neurosis the ego-complex
system, though it is distorted and diminished in its functioning ability
because of chronic doubts, fears, and anxieties, continues to be able
to function and do its job in the psyche. The ego is still capable of
processing, adapting, integrating, and healing. In psychosis, the ego-
complex system literally drowns in unconscious material, shuts down,
sometimes completely, and is incapable of functioning effectively and
doing its job. Of course, in both neurosis and psychosis there are
varying degrees of relative ego dysfunction involved for different
individuals at different times. But in contrast to neurosis and
psychosis, the ego-complex system in addiction continues to
function, often on a very high level, but it is not the same ego-
complex system of the person that was operating prior to the
addiction taking over. It is something else, something different, that is
operating, that ultimately has a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, self-destructive,
addiction-perpetuating dynamic and directive.
With addictions, especially alcohol and drug addiction, we know
that there is something that is immune to, and defies, human
interventions of every kind—something so deep and dark and “evil
feeling” that it resonates with a coldness, a distance, a despair, a
hopelessness beyond human scientific understanding, something
that we fear and something that we cannot comprehend.
This unreachability and untouchability in addiction is clearest in
the sad and disappointed eyes of husbands and wives, daughters
and sons, families and friends, as they watch in desperate, absolute
futility their loved ones drifting hopelessly, sometimes slowly, but
inevitably, into a walking death until the addiction finally takes them
out of their misery and everyone else’s too.
You can see it too in the eyes of men and women who are
drowning in addiction, as their focus fades further and further away
into some distant unseen place that they distractedly always seem so
antsy to get to, but never do. Each step away, their connection with
you, the world, and reality diminishes, until they are but mere shells of
their former selves, walking zombies or emerging vampires who
eventually can see no one and nothing except their next fix.
Compassion fatigue comes quickly with addiction—much more
quickly than with other forms of mental illness. It is hard to have
sympathy for “the devil,” and when you don’t believe in “the devil,”
then you blame the person who is possessed for not getting it under
control, changing, doing better, fixing it. Of course this is just the
powerlessness of which A.A. speaks, which is central to both Satanic
possession and to true addiction.
In support of this position that Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil
does exist and resides as a key component in addiction, I offer the
following summary of ideas and terms, some mentioned previously,
which I believe are describing the same or very similar phenomena.
Von Franz points to the Devil in fairy tales and myth as being at
times “intrinsically evil,” representing “dark powers” that are
unassimilable. Carl Jung agrees with this view of the Devil-energy,
especially in alcoholism and addiction dynamics. Jacoby, Kast, and
Riedel name this phenomenon “Real Evil.” Clarissa Pinkola Estés
acknowledges a “type of manifest evil” that is irredeemable. Harry
Wilmer refers to “absolute Evil, archetypal Evil,” which is neither
personal nor organizational. Jeffrey Burton Russell calls it “the Devil,
the Evil One,” and believes it most certainly exists as a real
phenomenon. Carl Kerenyi refers to it as “an archetype of evil”
imaged in both myth and religion. Maya Angelou describes it as “a
torrential force,” as “powers in some dimension which we cannot
imagine” in eternal conflict.
I believe the phenomenon of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil
is real, as do many others, regardless of what name it is given. This
kind of evil by any other name (begging the rose’s pardon) would still
be the same.
 CHAPTER FOUR

The Healing Process of Recovery through

the Twelve Steps of A.A.

T he healing process of recovery through the Twelve Steps of A.A.

is essentially an addressing, and undoing, of the process of the
psychodynamic development of the addiction described in Chapter
Two, but in reverse order—addressing first what occurred last in
forming the addiction, which would be the neutralizing of the
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil aspect, and then moving on to
the undoing of the rest of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex, including
addressing the specific causes and payoffs of the addictive behavior,
taking responsibility for the personal shadow and its actions,
reconfiguring a more realistic and congruous persona, and undoing
the ego’s mistaken identification with the false self.
There are essentially six stages involved in the healing and
recovery from a psychological addiction. They all revolve around the
establishment of a conscious ego connection with the true Self (or
Higher Power) and the neutralizing of the Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil aspects of addiction. The six stages
correlate with different groupings of the Twelve Steps of A.A. (Please
refer to the chart on page 98 throughout this chapter.)

Stage 1 – The Ego Disidentifies with the Persona/False

Self
Stage 2 – The Recognition of the Ego under Addiction-
Shadow-Complex Control
Stage 3 – Relativizing of the Ego as the Center of the
Psyche
Stage 4 – Confronting and Integrating the Personal
Shadow
 Stage 5 – Ongoing Maintenance of the Ego-Self Axis
Stage 6 – Living in Service with the Self

A. TURNING IT OVER: THE FIRST THREE STEPS OF A.A. AND

THE FIRST THREE STAGES OF THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF
RECOVERY

As bleak a picture as I’ve painted of addiction, which seems

almost beyond hope and redemption, there is a way out, which A.A.
found in the 1930s and which Carl Jung referred to in his letter to Bill
W.: “spiritus contra spiritum.” The healing process, from a Jungian
perspective, involves the development of a conscious ego connection
with the authentic or true Self. Jungian psychology refers to it as the
ego-Self axis. In A.A., it is the Higher Power to which alcoholics must
surrender, and turn over their will and their lives to the care of God as
they understand him. But first things first.
Step One of A.A. says: “We admitted we were powerless over
alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” This first step is
the key to all the other steps. Without this surrender or collapse or
relativizing of the ego, the addicted individual is still stuck in the
Addiction-Shadow-Complex where the addiction remains in control,
calling the shots and dictating to the hijacked ego what it will think
and feel and do. Remember that the prime directive of the addiction is
to perpetuate itself at all costs, over every other agenda of life. As
long as the addiction is still in control of the ego complex, the whole
healing process remains depotentiated and in paralysis. Since the
ego is infected, it is too weak, confused, and ineffective to truly fight
or defeat the awesome power of the addiction.
The paradoxical solution is to surrender—to admit complete and
utter defeat. At first, this seems like complete insanity. How could this
possibly help—giving up, abandoning the field, and surrendering?
The answer is in the psychodynamics of the situation. The addiction
cannot function or continue to exert its power without the human ego
to control as its host. It is much like the theology that asserts that
without the freewill cooperation of human beings, God’s power and
effectiveness in the world is weakened, limited, or neutralized. In this
sense, God is dependent and needs human beings to continue the
work of his or her divine plan. Now, whether you agree with this
theology or not, it is the model represented here that is of importance
to us in understanding the addiction dynamic and its undoing.
The addicted individual, when he or she takes Step One of A.A.,
commits a version of ego-cide (a term created by David Rosen
Jungian Analyst in his book and work on depression and suicide)—
the person literally puts to death any attempt anymore to use this
addicted ego to try to make judgments or choices or decisions or to
take action related to addiction and recovery. The addiction is thus
deprived of its “host organism,” so to speak, in a parasitic sense.
Step One psychologically cuts off the food supply or the fuel for
the addiction, and tries to save the person by starving the addiction
and keeping the ego energy from being available to be used anymore
by the addiction. The addiction grows, gets bigger and stronger, by
getting the person to continue participating in the addictive behavior;
if that stops, it creates a crisis for the addiction and its survival.
In this state of complete helplessness and collapse, which
temporarily puts the addiction out of business, the person still needs
to live and breathe. Judgments, choices, decisions, and actions still
need to be made and taken. Here is where the person must not only
surren-der, but grab onto something else—or perhaps more aptly,
completely accept and trust putting oneself in the hands and in the
power and control of someone or something else. This leads us then
to Step Two of A.A.
 Step Two of A.A. reads: “Came to believe that a Power greater
than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
This act of faith or belief completely undermines the manipulative
deception of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex, which has worked long
and hard to convince the addicted individual that it, the addiction, is
God. Step Two challenges this false-idol assumption at its core; it is
like driving the wooden stake into the heart of the vampire.
It is understandable that the addicted person would have come to
view the addiction as divine. It is so numinous and powerful and
overwhelming, and seemingly has all the answers. Psychologically, at
the point in time where the person has crossed over from abuse to
addiction, the ego has unknowingly surrendered everything to the
addiction. The addiction becomes the ultimate authority and god in
that person’s psyche. It usurps the authority of the true Self and
proclaims itself to be divine and to be worshiped alone. It is of course
a false god, built on an ego system that has already taken the wrong
road by identifying with its persona, its false self. It is not that hard to
go from a false self to a false god.
In Jungian terms, the Addiction-Shadow-Complex claims to be the
true Self and the individual cannot tell the difference. The false god
and the false self can only be unmasked and things put in their
rightful place by the true Self, by the true Spirit of God (the true spirit
of transpersonal goodness). The Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil
aspect of the addiction can only be neutralized by Archetypal Good
and Archetypal Light from the highest spiritual sources of love and
healing. There is no other way.
At this point in the recovery process, alcoholic or addicted
individuals must blindly follow the principles and precepts of A.A.: go
to meetings, listen to sponsors, stay away from temptation, and follow
the guidance and advice of sober strangers who have trod this path
before. They need to keep turning everything over to God, to keep
reaffirming their powerlessness over the addiction, and not try to take
it back and put it again under the control of their old addicted ego
system—because if they do, the addiction will find an opening, a
crack, a foothold by which to reenter and retake complete control of
the person once again, the all-too-familiar relapse into the addictive
behavior and reactivation of the Addition-Shadow-Complex.
Step Three in A.A., “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives
over to the care of God as we understood Him,” is crucial to
neutralizing the Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil aspect of the
addiction, because only the most powerful, transpersonal, archetypal
spiritual forces can counter and hold the massive diabolical forces of
the addiction in check.
Step One is a negating, emptying-out step where we wholly give
up, usually under duress, the illusion of our own power and control
over the addiction and our lives. Step Two posits a theory of hope that
there is something greater than us that can save us. It is a needed
transitional step from the emptying, vacuumed position of Step One,
but it is still on a speculative, belief-level basis. A decision of what to
do has still not yet been made. Step Three is where the rubber meets
the road. Step Three is where the recovering individual takes a
positive-action step, a freewill decision not just to surrender and hope
for hope, but to take personal responsibility for a positive plan of
action. Many alcoholics and addicted individuals are full of un-acted-
upon wishes, hopes, dreams, promises, and good intentions. Step
Three challenges that “good intentions road to hell” very directly.
As one recovering alcoholic told me, Step One says “I can’t,” Step
Two says “He Can,” and Step Three says “I will let Him.” Another
analogy for Steps One, Two, and Three is that it is like watching a
man on a tightrope pushing a wheelbarrow. At first we say, “He can’t
do it, he’s gonna fall off” (Step One). Then we all see that he is doing
it and can do it (Step Two)—observing the success other alcoholics
are having following the program. But then the tightrope walker says,
“OK, if you really believe I can do it, then climb into the wheelbarrow”
(Step Three). There is no hedging your bet in Step Three, no holding
on to remnants of ego and self-will. When we turn our will over to God
or the Higher Power, we are freely giving up our right to call our own
shots, to make our choices and decisions and actions based on what
we think is right or the way we think it should be. Instead, we choose
to continually defer our will and our lives, not to what we want, but to
what God or the Higher Power or the Self wants from us. Step Three
requires commitment, vigilance, and sustaining action of dependence
upon God to call the shots in our lives.
Steps One and Two, unless reinforced by Step Three, the
substantive action to fill the void they have created with something
positive, will relatively quickly and easily lead back to frustration,
hopelessness, and despair, which is fuel for the fire for the addiction,
which will reassert its will as soon as the person is vulnerable and
weak enough once again. In a sense, putting on the armor of God
within and without (Step Three) is what protects us from being
overtaken again by the addiction. It also prevents us from potentially
being manipulated by the addiction, working through the still
weakened and infected ego system to get to us. Step Three
essentially says, “Put your money (your energies and efforts) where
your mouth is. Don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk.”
One of the recommended actions in A.A., for what they call
“working the steps,” is that for Step Three the recovering alcoholic
literally finds a friend to join with him or her in prayer, asking for God’s
help in taking this step. Using the Higher Power to get to the Higher
Power—pretty clever and, I understand, pretty effective too.
Step Three raises the question of the distinction between “free
will” and “willpower” in the recovery process. Step Three clearly
implies and assumes that “free will” exists for the alcoholic individual
to be able to make a decision to turn his or her will and life over to the
care of God as he or she understands him, even at this early stage in
the process when the influence of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil
is still overwhelmingly dominating and potentially all-powerful and
controlling.
Free will is our ability to choose between alternatives so that the
choice and action are to an extent creatively determined by us
consciously. Willpower, on the other hand, is the strength of our will,
mind, or determination, our self-control. Will itself is what we use to
express determination, insistence, persistence—our willfulness. A.A.
holds that free will is always present for the individual, it is never
extinguished, but that willpower, the power of the will, which
energizes and empowers free will, is not always present or sufficient
to do what we say we want to do. Most alcoholics or addicted
individuals struggle with this, and tell themselves they will not drink or
take a drug or gamble right up until the time that they do. Free will
remains, but there is not enough energy or power to overcome the
overdetermining, compulsive power of the addiction.
The Addiction-Shadow-Complex is much like the myth of
Pandora’s Box: once it is unfortunately opened, everything gets
released, or in the case of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex,
everything falls under the spell and power of the addiction. In
Pandora’s story the one thing remaining in the box, the one thing
saved, the one thing left, is hope. In addiction the one thing left, the
one thing remaining, the one thing saved for the individual, is free will.
Even Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil cannot—as hard as it tries
—extinguish free will. Free will is the hope, the key that opens the
door to the future, both of sobriety and recovery.
The first three steps of A.A. correlate with the first three stages of
the psychodynamics of the healing process and recovery. (On the
chart on page 98 it is designated by the grouping of steps and stages
categories under the letter “A”.) This is where the ego system must
undo its mistakes from the past. It must begin to dis-identify with the
persona/false self (Stage 1). It must recognize and become
conscious of the fact that it has been under the control of the
Addiction-Shadow-Complex (Stage 2) and that it cannot trust its own
judgment and perception of reality. The ego must in self-reflection
realize that it is not the highest authority in the psyche—that the Self
is the Highest Power in the psyche and that the ego should always
subordinate its position and power and will to be in service to the true
Self (Stage 3). This is what is meant by relativizing of the ego in the
psychic hierarchy. This is always experienced by the ego as a defeat,
a collapse, a blow, a deflation, a depressing realization, but it leads to
the humility that can help save one’s life. In A.A. it is about hitting
bottom—the recognition of the hopelessness, futility, and misery of
continuing on the arrogant, delusional path that one has been on. Bill
W., referring to this part of the process, says, “You must always
remember that ‘hitting bottom’ is the essence of getting hold of A.A.—
really.”1
I want to emphasize again that without Step One, putting the
addicted ego out of commission, Steps Two and Three, as well as all
the other steps of A.A., are not possible, because as long as the ego
is contaminated and controlled by the Addiction-Shadow-Complex,
and especially the influences of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil, it
will twist and distort and manipulate any thoughts, feelings, insights,
decisions, judgments, or actions toward continuation of the addictive
behavior.
This idea of “hitting bottom,” and giving up completely on getting
sober through the abilities of the ego is not an archaic, outmoded
notion of A.A. Psychodynamically, it is the most crucial and
necessary step in initiating and setting into motion the only chance of
healing and recovery possible for the alcoholic or addicted individual
—without it, everything else becomes futile and ineffective.
Dr. Bob, one of the cofounders of A.A., who led the development
of the Akron Group (one of the first two A.A. groups, the other being
in New York City with Bill W.), actually required of prospective A.A.
members an initial act of surrender of their egos, in which they had to
get down literally on their knees in a dramatic symbolic gesture and
say a prayer acknowledging their powerlessness over alcohol and
their reliance upon God (the Higher Power) before they could attend
an A.A. meeting—talk about a ritual to humble the ego!
This practice did not continue, as A.A. did not want to put any
obstacles in the way of people joining the program who had a desire
to stop drinking, no matter if they were believers, nonbelievers,
atheists, or agnostics. The ritual is no longer required, but the
essential surrender of the ego still is.
Another illustration of this phenomenon is the fundamental
psychological “conversion experience” that Dr. Tiebout wrote about
extensively and that Carl Jung had recommended to Roland H. It is
the same essential neutralizing of the ego that is under the power of
the Addiction-Shadow-Complex.
 Some people have wondered why, for the most part, normal
church activities and “taking the pledge” didn’t and doesn’t work in
getting and keeping sobriety among alcoholics and addicted
individuals, for these approaches also employ God and the spiritual in
their efforts. The answer, from a psychodynamic perspective, is that
the well-intentioned church activities and the “taking of the pledge” to
not drink or use presumes a normal, healthy-enough ego capable of
effecting change through willpower, insight, self-discipline, and ego
control. In the rare cases where church or “the pledge” have been
successful, my guess is that one of two things has happened: one,
that the behavior was abuse and not addiction to begin with, where
the ego still does have some power and control to effect change, or,
two, the addicted person in the process of the church activities or
“taking the pledge” unknowingly collapses and surrenders the
addicted ego so that he or she can be affected and influenced by the
spiritual forces that can help and make a difference. But without the
consciousness of what this is about, there is the danger and
overwhelming probability of a short-lived sobriety, as the addiction
wheels and deals and finds a way to reactivate the addicted ego to do
its bidding. This is probably what happened in the case Jung referred
to in the Collected Works as “the man cured by Jesus,” who initially
got sober, but soon relapsed.
A clinical social worker colleague of mine teaches a smoking
cessation class to the public through a local hospital. The approach of
the class is a combination of education and behavior modification to
help people stop smoking and remain abstinent. He has found that
while the class is in progress it does help some people initially to stop
smoking, but only for a brief time. It is not effective in most cases for
helping people to maintain their abstinence in the long run, as they
can’t seem to stick with it over time. He has been very discouraged
and disappointed with the results. Very few people have remained
smoke-free using this education, this insight or behavioral approach.
We discussed the situation, and I told him that his results didn’t
surprise me if the people he was working with were truly
psychologically addicted, because his approach, being so ego-based,
wouldn’t work with that population based on my understanding of the
nature of true addiction. The ego-based approach would only be
effective with those who were abusing tobacco, not with those who
were addicted to it. The ego-based educational approach to stopping
smoking does not take into consideration the necessity of neutralizing
the Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil aspect of addiction, which
must be accomplished through ego surrender, acknowledgment of
powerlessness, and turning to a higher spiritual power. This is the
Twelve Steps approach that Smokers Anonymous is taking with
people who are psychologically addicted to tobacco.
Interestingly, in the same vein, some recent studies of the
effectiveness of different treatment approaches to alcoholism and
addiction that have supposedly found that A.A. is statistically no more
effective than other approaches (such as rational/emotive, cognitive,
behavior modification, etc.) don’t make the crucial diagnostic
distinction between “abuse” (which can be effectively impacted
through other ego-insight-oriented psychotherapy approaches) and
“addiction” (which must first put the contaminated, hijacked,
compromised ego out of commission before ego-insight approaches
can be effective). They unknowingly regard apples and oranges as
the same thing. These studies lump “abuse” and “addiction” together
in the same category, and miss the all-important significance of their
differences, as well as the differences in what is effective treatment
for each of the different phenomena. In recent years, our society’s
get-tough, “zero tolerance” mentality toward everything has not
helped. It has resulted in a lumping together of many very important
differences and distinctions in many areas, including the differences
between experimentation, recreational use, abuse, and addiction
itself. Studies that focus on broad definitions of “problem drinkers”
and do not make those important diagnostic distinctions are not valid
or helpful in understanding alcoholism.
A.A. does also utilize an ego-insight approach in its Steps Four
through Ten (in helping addicted individuals to discern and become
more conscious of their motivations and behaviors, past and present
—the inventory; taking psychological, moral, and ethical responsibility
for their actions; and confessing their wrongs and making amends to
others), but this is possible only after Steps One, Two, and Three
have effectively neutralized the Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil
aspect of the addiction.
Also, many current alternative therapeutic approaches to
alcoholism and addiction have borrowed heavily from A.A.’s
experience and Twelve Step methodology in forming their programs.
This raises the question of how much these alternative programs are
really substantively different from A.A. at heart. Another potentially
distorting variable in these studies is the ubiquity of court-mandated
attendances at A.A. and N.A. meetings by people who are forced to
be there because of D.W.I. or D.U.I. arrests. A.A. was never meant to
be mandated to anyone; it was designed to be voluntary, to draw by
attraction and through the natural process of people “hitting bottom”
and surrendering. Many, or at least some, of those attending A.A. and
N.A. meetings through court mandate have no “desire to quit
drinking” or using, which is the one and only requirement A.A./N.A.
asks of those participating in their programs.
Let me clarify: I am not saying that the Twelve Steps of A.A. are
the only effective way, the only possible treatment program, to deal
with alcoholism and addiction. What I am saying is that any approach
that does not use the same fundamental psychodynamic principles
embodied in the Twelve Steps of A.A. (ego collapse, neutralizing of
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil, conversion experience, ego-Self
axis alignment, community, persona/personal shadow work, personal
inventory, amends, and helping others, etc.) is doomed to be
ineffective and fail. If you remove all of the key ingredients from a
medication that has proven to be effective in arresting a life-
threatening, incurable disease, it is not reasonable to expect it to do
the job.
The alcoholism addiction treatment landscape is scattered with
the abandoned wreckage of these grand treatment alternative
approaches that have not worked, for many years before and after
A.A. This of course does not prevent the newest kid on the block from
coming up with the next panacea, claiming superior effectiveness in
treating alcoholism and addiction. Many claims have been made that
have not held up. The problem is not that naïve, well-meaning folks,
as well as charlatans, take people’s money and waste their time and
energy on things that don’t work. It is the fact that alcoholic and
addicted individuals die every time a bogus treatment approach
knowingly or unknowingly colludes with the Addiction-Shadow-
Complex in enabling the alcoholic or addicted individual to continue
participating in his or her addictive behavior. Telling alcoholic
addicted people you can teach them to drink or use socially and
moderately is not only a lie, it hastens their death. A.A. always
cautions its members about looking for a softer, easier way—it knows
this territory of false promises very well.
I do believe that, if new treatment approaches emerge that
employ these core psychodynamic principles embodied in the Twelve
Steps of A.A., they will be effective. Remember—it’s the phenomenon
of addiction and effective treatment I’m concerned about, not the
labeling, the club, or the packaging. That being said, it doesn’t make a
lot of sense to me to reinvent the wheel when we already have a
good one in A.A. that is available, accessible, user-friendly, works
well, and is free. I am one of those people who believe: “If it ain’t
broke, don’t fix it.”
Ernest Kurtz, in his excellent book on the history of A.A., refers to
the essence of the first three steps of A.A. being the profound
realization by the alcoholic that he or she is not God—which is
actually the title of his book: Not God. I realize sometimes I am
arguing that the addiction claims to be “God” in the psyche, and at
other times that the alcoholic or addicted individual is making the
same inflated claim for him or herself. Early in the process, the
normal, healthy ego is tempted by inflation to identify with and to
believe it is the overly idealized persona or false self. Later in the
process, once the powerful archetypal energies of the addiction are
activated, the person operates with the addiction as its god—but also,
the addiction can now dupe and delude the person through its
possession to a grandiose ego position that falsely believes it, the
ego, is god and can control everything, when in fact it controls nothing
and the addiction is really calling all the shots. I’m trying to describe
the phenomenon as I understand it and have had experience with it. I
apologize if in my attempt to describe these things I might confuse or
seem to contradict, but it is a very complicated phenomenon and
often doesn’t fit into any neat and tidy or clear categories.
I believe that initially what happens is that the ego overidentifies
with the persona, the false self or fabricated image of oneself. As the
addiction process progresses, the personal shadow gets involved,
and then the potentially addictive behavior comes into play to
alleviate the stress, tension, and conflict in the psychic system. At
some point, usually after all the previous dynamics have played out,
the potentially addictive behavior is incorporated and subsumed into
the Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil component, which is now fully
activated, and the person has crossed over from abuse to addiction,
and from normal ego-control ability to no ego-control ability as the
Addiction-Shadow-Complex takes over the psyche and rules it
completely.
Linda Leonard, in her book on addiction and creativity, addresses
this first part of the recovery process. She says of Step One of A.A.:
“Driven to the bottom by their addiction, they face a humiliation that
can be transformed only through humility, through accepting that they
are no longer in control or the masters of their own being.”2 In relation
to Step Two of A.A., she says that “the addiction can ... serve to bring
humans to the consciousness that they are out of relationship to the
higher powers of creation.”3 Leonard argues that addiction is about
the wrong alignments of human beings with the wrong powers and
that healing and recovery (and creativity as part of this) is about the
right alignments with the right powers of the universe. It is about
taking a leap of faith, which seems absurd; it goes beyond all logic
and reason. Kierkegaard says that “it takes humility to take a leap of
faith, for the leap is beyond rational control.”4 Giving up ego control is
the biggest leap of faith I can imagine.
It is this openness on the part of the recovering alcoholic in Step
Two which reaches out to archetypal, transpersonal powers, beyond
oneself, perhaps unnamed and unknown, which have the potential to
realign one’s psyche away from possession and toward a life-giving,
life-saving principle. It can truly be a realignment of one’s stars, one’s
fate, one’s destiny.
This power greater than ourselves could be God or the A.A.
community or the Twelve Steps or even just the possibility that
something bigger and greater than us could help us. What is crucial is
that we admit we don’t have the answers, that we can’t figure it out
and that we can’t control it. This small, yet gigantic step, this shift in
attitude consciousness does two things; it opens us to a non-ego
solution possibility and it calls upon transpersonal powers or grace to
help us in the process.
The ego in service to the Self does not serve itself. The ego trying
to truly serve God does not serve the Devil. The ego trying to do the
will of God is constantly countering the pitfalls of egotism and
choosing against Archetypal Shadow. Bob Dylan had a song with the
constant recurring refrain, “you gotta serve somebody” which
enumerates all the people and things we can serve, but the point of
his song is that we all have to serve something and somebody
somehow, so we need to make a conscious choice of who or what it’s
“gonna be.”

B. SHADOW WORK: STEPS FOUR THROUGH TEN OF A.A AND

STAGE FOUR OF THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF RECOVERY

Once the conscious ego has aligned with the true Self and the
cork is back in the bottle, so to speak; that is, once Steps One, Two,
and Three in A.A have been taken—the ego has recognized the
Addiction-Shadow-Complex, disidentified with the false self, and
subordinated itself to the higher spiritual power (Self, God, H.P., etc.),
which has resulted in the cessation of the addictive behavior (being
sober, clean, abstinent, etc.)—then the psychodynamically hard,
difficult work of facing and integrating the personal shadow begins.
(Remember that Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil can only be
checked and neutralized; it cannot be cured, integrated, or
eliminated, at least not by human beings.)
Steps Four through Ten of A.A. can all be considered personal
shadow work from a Jungian perspective. (On the chart on page 98 it
is designated by the grouping of the steps and stages categories
under the letter “B.”) In the process of individuation, becoming
conscious of, accepting and integrating and taking psychological
responsibility for our own personal shadows is a major piece of what
is worked on for a long time in Jungian analysis.
In A.A., Step Four reads: “Made a searching and fearless moral
inventory of ourselves.” A.A encourages a person to take a long,
honest reflective look at oneself, to face what A.A. calls “character
defects,” one’s failures and weaknesses that have damaged and hurt
oneself and others. This requires courage, because this is not easy,
so it needs to be fearless and it should be thorough, with no
minimizing, rationalizing, or evading of the truth. Therefore it should
be a searching inventory, and the moral aspect of the inventory is that
one take responsibility for the consequences and effects of his or her
choices, decisions, and actions—without excuses.
Note that the moral inventory is of ourselves and not of others, as
tempting as that might be. A.A. frowns upon and cautions against
what they call “taking other people’s inventory,” because it is fruitless,
often judgmental, and ultimately has nothing to do with one’s own
sobriety and serenity. The inventory also includes an honest
assessment of one’s strengths, positive attributes, and good qualities,
without exaggeration or devaluing. It is the truth—whatever it is,
positive or negative—that sets us free. The inventory also has the
benefit of working against pride and inflation, as well as the
temptation to start overidentifying once again, in self-righteousness,
with an over-idealized persona. Inventory and personal shadow work
reinforce humility.
The A.A. book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions recommends
that one examine the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, lust, anger,
glut-tony, envy, and sloth for starters in taking one’s inventory.5
 Bill W. saw the addiction as turning the natural instincts for sex,
relationship, and security, as well as the normal human desire for
money, romance, companionship, and prestige into destructive,
distorted drives. He felt that the distortion occurred because of
“demand.” He said: “We have been making unreasonable demands
upon ourselves, upon others and upon God. ... Either we ... tried to
play God and dominate those about us or we ... insisted on being
over-dependent on them.”6
Remember our definition of the personal shadow: it is the “hidden
unconscious aspects of [ourselves], both good and bad which the
ego has either repressed or never recognized.”7 It is all the
incompatible thoughts, feelings, desires, fantasies, and actions that
we have suppressed or repressed into the personal unconscious,
along with our more primitive undifferentiated impulses and instincts.
Just add our human tendency to power, inflation, and dependency,
and this description of the personal shadow is very close to Bill W.’s
view of the distorted instincts in alcoholism.
Step Five in A.A. reads: “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to
another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” After the
inventory, Step Four, comes confession, which we are told is good for
the soul. For those in recovery, Step Five continues the path toward
psychological honesty and true humility. When we have to tell not
only ourselves, but God and another human being, about our
deepest, darkest, most embarrassing, shameful, and humiliating
secrets it is not an easy task. Remember those bastard children we
had locked up in those closets, attics, and basements of our psyches
—well, now it’s time that they came out and saw the light of day.
Exploring, owning, and sharing our personal shadow is much of
what goes on initially in Jungian analysis. As in A.A., the unburdening
of these painful truths about ourselves to another person is a healing
and freeing experience, just as it is when one goes to confession (the
Sacrament of Reconciliation in Christian tradition) with a good
confessor or spiritual director. To no longer have to hide and carry
around that shameful bag of sins and failings and humanness is a
great relief. Just to have someone else know lightens the load,
because we are no longer isolated and alone; we have shared it with
another person. Of course it is important to choose a good listener,
someone compassionate and understanding who will not judge and
condemn us; someone who knows the pain of being human, of being
a wonderfully flawed creation.
The Jungian analyst John Sanford, in his book Healing and
Wholeness, writes about this personal shadow work from the
perspective of the healing rites of Asklepius (his spelling of
Aesculapius), the Greek god of healing and medicine. Sanford says:

Once the individual arrived at the temple [of Asklepius], we saw

that he had to undergo rites of confession and purification. Until
one is right with oneself and one’s neighbors, the healing
powers of the soul cannot be put into effect. It was at the
moment of arrival that the priests at the temple required the
supplicant to make amends for his sins before entering the
inner sanctum to petition the god of healing. In the language of
depth psychology [another term for Jungian Psychology], we
call this ‘dealing with the shadow,’ the inferior, unwanted part of
our life and personality. Until one is willing to face one’s
shadow, the dark side of one’s life, the unconscious simply
does not open up, and the forces of healing are locked within.
Of course the supplicant knew a confession and purification
would be required of him, and we can imagine that on his
journey to the temple he was engaged in taking what Alcoholics
Anonymous calls his ‘personal inventory.’ He knew that he
would be expected to make his life right, to set his house in
order and while this is a painful task, he was driven to it by the
greater pain of his illness. This is also part of the reason
wholeness is not possible without pain, for there is great
resistance to seeing our shadow; few face their darkness
without being driven to it by a greater pain. Yet without this self
examination, little or nothing happens.8

One of my observations of many of the alcoholics I know is that

they’d rather take a bullet to the chest than to have to suffer
emotional and psychological pain.
 Eckhart Tolle, in his book The Power of Now, echoes this
observation when he says: “Every addiction arises from an
unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every
addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the
substance you are addicted to—alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs,
or a person—you are using something or somebody to cover up your
pain.”9 Steps Four and Five force recovering alcoholics to deal with
emotional and psychological pain without the numbing escape
mechanism of their addictions.
When you make a moral and fearless inventory, confront and
psychologically own your personal shadow (Step Four), and then
have to go through the often embarrassing, humiliating, and shameful
acknowledgment and sharing of that inventory with God and another
person (Step Five), it puts you right smack in the middle of significant
suffering of your emotional and psychological pain, especially
knowing and facing the pain and suffering and hardships you have
inflicted upon others in your life.
Steps Four and Five do not allow for denial, minimizing,
rationalization, evasion, or excuses, and you can’t just keep it to
yourself as a secret. These steps involve a level of ruthless self-
honesty that most alcoholics and addicted individuals are
unaccustomed to. A.A. sponsors are especially helpful in guiding
individuals through these steps. It should also be noted that inventory
is not just about failures, bad or unacceptable qualities in a person,
but also includes positive attributes, talents, and gifts. Often our
personal shadow contains unclaimed instinctual, positive, and
creative aspects that have been repressed, devalued, or denied.
They too belong on the list. The inventory and sharing of it are not
meant to lower self-esteem, self-concept, or self-worth; they are
meant to help us see ourselves more objectively, honestly, and
truthfully as we are. Since the Addiction-Shadow-Complex traffics in
deception, dishonesty, and lies, it does not like it when we traffic in
the truth or what really is. An honest inventory reduces some of the
potential avenues the addiction can take to try to manipulate us for its
purpose.
 For those wanting a better, more in-depth understanding of the
Twelve Steps of A.A., I greatly recommend the A.A. book Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions as the best, clearest, most readable
explanation of the Twelve Steps, how they work and why we take
them.
Marion Woodman encourages addicted individuals to take up and
bear the cross of their inventory and confession so that
transformation may occur. She says: “By contacting that energy in a
numinous experience of suffering, dying and then rising again, the
ego sacrifices itself to a Higher Power, is enlarged and transformed
so that it returns to ordinary life with a new outlook.”10
With all of the meaningless, senseless, chaotic suffering that the
addicted individual has gone through and inflicted on others while
using, it is a gigantic leap of faith to believe that now self-embraced
suffering and pain can have inherent meaning and redemptive value
in one’s recovery process.
Bill W., in his first published Christmas card, hails with “Greeting to
All Members,” and affirms this necessary principle of suffering in his
own eloquent way when he says, “Nor can men and women of A.A.
ever forget that only through suffering did they find enough humility to
enter the portals of that New World. How privileged we are to
understand so well the divine paradox that strength rises from
weakness, that humiliation goes before resurrection: that pain is not
only the price, but the very touchstone of spiritual rebirth.”11
A.A. Steps Six and Seven can be seen as a continuation of the
process of integrating personal shadow work by placing these
defects of character in the hands of a Higher Power (God) and asking
him to heal and remove them if that is his will. Step Six reads: “Were
entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character,”
and Step Seven reads: “Humbly asked Him to remove our
shortcomings.” The readiness of a person recovering from addiction
to place everything in the hands of the higher spiritual power and to
rely on transcendent grace, not personal ego, to be transformed,
follows the best of all the great spiritual traditions. Steps Six and
Seven continue to emphasize the humbling of the ego, which makes
it much harder for the Addiction-Shadow-Complex to get back in
control of the recovering individual. These steps are like inoculations
that protect us and prevent us from getting reinfected by the
potentially fatal disease.
In psychodynamic terms, we bring all our personal shadow work
to the Self, to comment on, to integrate, and to transform. We keep
open to the promptings from the Self in our dreams, relationships,
experiences, and synchronicities to teach us what we need to learn
about becoming spiritually whole. Information from one’s dreams and
from the unconscious is essential in getting honest and truly knowing
oneself, especially the nature of one’s persona and personal shadow.
A.A. says that Steps Eight and Nine are about putting the faith of
Steps Six and Seven into action: “Faith without works is dead.” Steps
Eight and Nine are the works that keep the faith alive. Step Eight of
A.A. reads: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became
willing to make amends to them all.” Step Eight emphasizes “the
willingness” to make amends to “all,” so we are not tempted to
minimize, cut short our list, or begin “crayfishing” (backing out) before
anything has been truly explored and owned. We must continue our
ruthless honesty in assessing the list of the people we have hurt or
harmed. We cannot apologize or make amends if the specific nature
of our offenses against others is not clearly known and understood—
more painful shadow work to do!
Step Nine reads: “Made direct amends to such people wherever
possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”
Generalizations and global generic apologies are not what Steps
Eight and Nine are all about. The intention is not to comfort ourselves
and feel good about forgiveness or absolution. These steps are about
paying back debts we owe—financially, emotionally, relationally, and
spiritually; about fixing things we have broken or neglected; about
righting the wrongs of our lives toward others. If that results in us
feeling better in the end, that’s fine, but that is not the goal or primary
purpose of these steps.
Take note that Step Nine instructs, “direct amends”—indirect
amends are not being advocated here; asking a friend to apologize
for us won’t cut it. Which people we go to, of those on our list we have
harmed, should have nothing to do with whether they are willing or
able to forgive us. Just going to safe people on the list who we are
confident will be understanding and forgiving misses the main point
once again—these steps are not about me and my comfort; they are
about my concern and commitment to the well-being of others I have
injured or hurt in some way. Steps Eight and Nine are concrete,
operationalizing actions of the Golden Rule principle of treating
ourselves and others as we would like to be treated (Love thy
neighbor as thyself).
Once again, these steps are rooted in ego humility, in
selflessness, in honesty, and in taking personal psychological, social,
and moral responsibility for our behaviors and their effects on others.
Some people might say Steps Eight and Nine are about righting our
karma or about cultivating the Buddhist understanding of right
thoughts and right actions. When we have a history of broken
promises, of disappointing, hurting, and betraying others, of lying,
cheating, and stealing, especially for the sake of our addiction, the
Addiction-Shadow-Complex would love us to minimize, rationalize,
ignore, deny, and forget the destructive wake left behind from our
actions and behaviors, because real conscience and real guilt are
deadly to the addiction.
Steps Eight and Nine are about taking moral responsibility for our
past and wanting to set it right. Steps Eight and Nine are about taking
action, not just having good intentions which we know pave the road
to hell.
Linda Leonard comments on Step Nine and making amends: “To
amend means to grow or become better by reforming oneself, by
improving one’s life, thus acknowledging authentic guilt, the debt of
existence that we owe our Creator.”12
In the Roman Catholic Church tradition, an essential component
and condition for forgiveness from God or the absolution of our sins in
what is known as the Holy Sacrament of Reconciliation (more
commonly known as going to confession) is that a person must make
amends, substantive restitution, for the sins and offenses one has
committed against others. The sacrament obligates one to rectify the
wrong through some action, if possible, or else the forgiveness is not
granted by God through his priest-representative. One must also be
firmly committed to change one’s behavior and “to sin no more,” that
is, to mend and repair by action and not just intention. The priest will
often require what is known as a penance, a specific restitution or
righting of the wrong committed against others, and these penances
involve the doing of something very direct by the person asking
forgiveness. Examples of such penances are: paying back stolen
property or money, direct apologies, volunteering to help others,
replacing broken objects, saying only nice things for five days, giving
to the poor, refraining from criticism, visiting people in need, praying
for an enemy, donations to charity, an anonymous act of kindness,
offering the olive branch first, and of course saying three Our Fathers
and three Hail Mary’s, etc.
One of the psychologically helpful aspects of Steps Eight and
Nine is that it directly attacks the self-referencing narcissism of the
addicted person and provides a direct and powerful opportunity to put
others before oneself in thought, feeling, and action. Even the proviso
in Step Nine that one should not try to make amends when it will hurt
or injure others demands that one operate thoughtfully and
considerately toward others’ well-being, not just in the mechanical
way of obligation. For some this is a completely new experience and
way of relating to other human beings.
In Jungian terms, integrating the personal shadow or doing
shadow work involves much more than just a theoretical awareness
of things. It is not just abstract intellectualizing. It involves more than
insight and understanding. We must learn to eat our shadow, so to
speak—to digest it, to break it down, assimilate it, and integrate it into
the cells of our bodies, our spirits and souls. This involves the moral
imperative to change the way we treat ourselves and others through
the way we live and act and think and feel. We cannot truly own and
accept our shadow without it making us kinder, fairer, more
compassionate, forgiving, merciful, and less judgmental of others and
of ourselves.
 Jung actually viewed the personal shadow as synonymous with
the Christian concept of “original sin,”13 which we are all given by
virtue of being human and must struggle to own, become conscious
of, and redeem through the Self (or through Christ in the Christian
tradition or the Higher Power in A.A.).
The Jungian analyst Jolande Jacobi, in her book The Way of
Individuation, echoes and amplifies these thoughts about shadow
integration and A.A. Steps Four through Ten when she says:

The concept of integration involves more than a mere

knowledge of the [personal] shadow’s qualities. For example an
alcoholic in order to be cured [perhaps the wrong term to use],
must not only be conscious of his tendency or compulsion to
drink—which many of them deny—but must also discover the
deeper reasons that have induced his craving. These reasons
are always shadow qualities which he cannot accept, which he
flees from in order to rid himself of the pangs of conscience
their recognition would entail. The precondition for a cure [I
prefer recovery], therefore, is that the alcoholic should keep
these shadow qualities constantly before him, seeing in his
mind’s eye this drinker in himself as his unswerving companion,
until he can no longer forget his presence. For “a content can
be integrated only when its double aspect has become
conscious and when it is grasped not merely intellectually but
understood according to its feeling value” (Aion, CW, Vol. 9,
Part II, p. 30).14

It may seem strange, but one of the greatest danger points for
alcoholic and addicted individuals to relapse and return to the living
hell of their addiction is that they forget that they are still alcoholic and
addicted; things get going so well sometimes that they begin to
believe that perhaps now they can have that drink or drug or sexual
encounter or play a slot machine and still remain in control. This ego
inflation, self-permission deception is all the opportunity the
Addiction-Shadow-Complex needs to re-hijack the ego system and
re-control the psyche. A.A. cautions that health, wealth, and
intelligence can be the biggest dangers to sobriety. They can make it
easy to forget that one is still an alcoholic. This is one of the helpful
psychological reasons why at A.A. and other Twelve Step meetings
people always introduce themselves by their first name and then
name what their addiction is; for example, “Hi, my name is Tim. I am
an alcoholic.” Or “Hi, my name is Ann. I’m addicted to alcohol, drugs,
and sex.” This is not done masochistically or punitively; it is not
superfluous. It is not done to limit one’s identity to being only alcoholic
or addicted, nor is it done to diminish or devalue the person or their
self-worth or self-esteem in any way. It is done so that the person
continually reminds him or herself and others that he or she is
addicted, and that it is crucial that one never forget this fact, because
forgetting it puts in peril one’s sobriety and one’s very life.
Once one is touched by Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil, the
contamination, like radiation, creates a permanent vulnerability, which
is very dangerous and should never be forgotten. One should always
be on guard against physical or psychological re-exposure. Owning
the addiction in a direct and personal way at A.A. and Twelve Step
meetings is a kind of collective and self ritual inoculation against the
ever-present dangers of the cunning and manipulative addiction, by
this remembering, not forgetting, and affirming it out loud for oneself
and for everyone else.
This is also the reason that A.A. is seemingly fanatical about its
advice that, once sober, the addict must try never to take the first
drink, because for alcoholics it opens the door to the rest of the
addiction and to the overwhelmingly murderous energies of
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil. This position taken by A.A. is not
about overkill or some unexamined puritanical streak in the program;
it is based on the practical, hard-won experience and price paid by
many who were sober and doing well, but took the first drink and
were lost forever in the black hole of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex
—they paid for that first drink with their lives.
The anonymous aspect of A.A. and its tradition of using only first
names is done not only to protect the alcoholic, addicted person from
the condemnation and judgment of others in society, but also as a
self-protection, so that the person is not tempted to make his or her
recovery into an inflated-persona ego trip, where he or she becomes
the poster child winning the national award for being the most
outstanding recovering alcoholic or addict in the country. Anonymity
also protects people from themselves and from the dangers of that
inflated ego, which can open the door to reactivate the addiction.
How important it is to stay conscious of the addiction as one’s
perpetual “unswerving companion”! The “feeling value” referred to in
Jacobi’s quote of Jung does not refer to emotions or affects. The
translation of this term in English is very confusing, and I wish we had
another, easier word or phrase to better describe and clarify the
psychological phenomenon to which Jung refers. What Jung means
by “feeling value” is more about the conscious, reflective, thoughtful
values we embrace in our lives, which influence and guide our
decisions, choices, and behaviors—the values by which we truly live
our lives. Jung is saying in this quote that for something to be
integrated psychologically we must become conscious of its “double
aspect”—of its shadow, of what is constructive and destructive,
helpful and damaging about it—and then we must apply this
conscious awareness to our values and how we live our lives. If we
apply this idea to dealing with addiction dynamics, it is a great
prescription for discernment, becoming more conscious and
transforming toward wholeness.
Step Ten in A.A. reads: “Continued to take personal inventory, and
when we were wrong promptly admitted it.” Step Ten moves our
shadow work from focusing on our history and past manifestations of
personal shadow and begins applying it through the continuation of
our taking our personal inventory into the present as a normative
process in the way we live our lives, and into the future. It encourages
continued examination of our thoughts, motives, and actions. It
encourages us to continue to try to stay conscious, especially with an
eye toward ever-present shadow issues and how they affect our
dealings with other people. When we go unconscious and hurt others
because of our personal shadow, we admit it “promptly,” take
responsibility, own it and make amends.
 Jung’s assertion that for something to be integrated into the
psyche it must be consciously wrestled with in its positive and
negative implications (its double aspect) and then it must take hold in
making a difference in how we live our lives (its feeling value) is the
essence of Steps Four through Ten of A.A.: making a moral inventory;
admitting the exact nature of our wrongs to ourselves, to God, and to
another human being; being ready to have God remove our defects
of character and asking him to do so; making a list of all persons
harmed and making amends to them when appropriate; and finally to
keep practicing these steps for the rest of our lives. Wow, what a way
to live!
The importance of confronting and integrating the personal
shadow in the addiction recovery process cannot be
overemphasized. It literally takes up over half (seven) of the Twelve
Steps of A.A. In addition to all the reasons already stated of why this
shadow work is so crucial, there is one more that has been alluded to
previously but not spelled out directly, and this is that the wounding
aspect of both the personal shadow and of Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil sets into motion the Wounded Healer
archetype, which may be the ultimate key to the transpersonal energy
and grace necessary for healing and recovery from addiction. We can
see the Wounded Healer motif previously touched on in the fact that
the best A.A. sponsors have been to hell and back, in the comments
by Marion Woodman about the numinous experience of suffering
being redemptive, in Bill W.’s Christmas card about pain being the
touchstone of rebirth, and in the section on how integrating personal
shadow makes us better and more compassionate human beings.
We can even make a case for the fact that Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil, for the alcoholic or addicted person, is the
impetus for the search for Archetypal Spiritual Good (God, the Higher
Power, the Self, etc.), without which all is lost. So even the horror and
terribleness of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil has a potentially
positive aspect through its wounding, in that it drives and motivates
the person, like nothing else, to find a way to not die sacrificed on the
altar of addiction.
 Awareness of the Wounded Healer archetype can be very helpful
—to understand this great, long-standing, mysterious archetype, how
it is universal, and how it has emerged again and again at every time
in history, from Shamans through Asklepius, the Greek god of healing
referred to by John Sanford, to Jesus, the Christ, who redeemed the
world through his suffering, death, and resurrection.
Acceptance of personal wounding, suffering, and pain as an
essential, meaningful prerequisite for healing and transformation and
redemption, as well as for the benefit of others, is what the real payoff
is for integrating the personal shadow and finding the proper ego
attitude to deal with and neutralize Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal
Evil by turning to the great, powerful, positive reservoirs of Archetypal
Spiritual Goodness and Light (the Higher Power, God, the Self, etc.).
If a recovering alcoholic or addicted individual can see
themselves not as an isolated, alienated, lonely individual caught in
useless, meaningless suffering, but as a specially chosen one, as a
co-wounded healer in union with all the great (but always humble)
wounded healers of human history, it can make all the difference in
being saved and perhaps helping save the world, or at least a part of
it.
I always suspect, when I’ve heard someone who I know has
suffered greatly, refer to themselves with a slight knowing smile as a
“grateful alcoholic,” that they have gained a true appreciation for the
wounded healer from the inside out. I think it is a statement of true
humility and great honesty.

C. STAYING IN THE LIGHT: A.A. STEPS ELEVEN AND TWELVE

AND STAGES FIVE AND SIX OF THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF
RECOVERY

Step Eleven of A.A. reads: “Sought through prayer and meditation

to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him,
praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry
that out.”
 Step Twelve reads: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the
result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and
to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
In the psychodynamics of recovery this is Stage Five, “Ongoing
Maintenance of the Ego-Self Axis,” and Stage Six, “Living in Service
with the Self.” (On the chart on page 98 it is designated by the
grouping under the letter “C”.)
These two steps of A.A. and stages of recovery go hand in hand.
Jung often remarked that the greater one’s consciousness, the
greater is one’s responsibility psychologically to oneself, to others, to
the world, and to God. Step Eleven of A.A. can be translated in
Jungian terms as the need to continue to nurture, maintain, and
protect a strong, vital ego connection with the Self, that is, to keep the
Ego-Self axis open and functioning and working properly. This is the
ongoing process of personal analysis and our ongoing journey in light
of the Self. This is about the discernment and self-reflection of prayer
and meditation toward knowing and doing the will of God. In Jungian
terms, it is actively and consciously living out our individuation.
Linda Leonard says that Step Eleven of A.A. “allows us to dwell in
this silent spring of life. ... to be a channel for the creative process. ...
[and attend to] being in the moment.”15
Step Eleven reinforces and helps operationalize the A.A. slogans
“Let go and let God,” “Easy does it,” and “One day at a time.” To “let
go and let God,” we have to be willing to give up our ego agendas
and cultivate a desire to do the will of God and to turn over the
ultimate control to him. To know the will of God, we must pray and
meditate and reflect, as well as listen to our bodies, our emotions, our
thoughts, our intuitions, our dreams, our deepest values, and to what
the universe sends us through other people and through
synchronicities. Once we have discerned God’s will in our life, then
we can pray for courage and strength to carry it out. “Easy does it”
reminds us that we don’t have to have all of the answers all of the
time—in fact, not even most of the time—so we can relax and trust
that if we put ourselves in the hands of God, no matter what happens
God will help us get through it, including sickness, suffering, and
death. Finally, “One day at a time” reminds us to stay in the now, not
to try to bite off more than we can chew, not to worry about the past or
the future, which we can’t do anything about. “One day at a time” is
not only about sobriety, but about being more present to the present,
more alive to the fullness of this moment today.
Step Eleven of A.A. leads directly to Step Twelve. If all we have
learned is not put into service for others, to somehow make the world
a better place, then it is useless. Step Twelve calls upon recovering
alcoholics and addicts to bring their faith, hope, strength, and
experience to others suffering from addiction, and to practice the
principles of their spiritual awakening in all areas of their lives. Once
again, Linda Leonard comments beautifully on Step Twelve: “Without
this creative transformation there would be no gifts given or received.
This energy of creative love through spiritually transformative giving
is the very same that happens through the twelfth step, the act of
gratitude and giving through which a person shares experience,
strength, and hope with others. This helps enable the process of
recovery from addiction.”16
Jung believed that one of the benefits of the individuation process
is that it makes for better citizens of the world. The more of our own
evil and personal shadow we can contain and transform in our own
process, the less gets projected onto others and into the world. The
more authentically we are living our unique destiny, the more we
have in common and the more we are connected with all of humanity.
The more conscious we are, the greater is our responsibility to our
fellow human beings and to all creation.
The Twelve Steps of A.A. allow the opportunity and the chance for
alcoholic and addicted individuals to embark on their unique path and
spiritual destiny; they allow for alcoholic and addicted individuals to
participate in the individuation process.
Two final comments on A.A. and the Twelve Steps. The entire A.A.
program is geared toward sobriety, healing, and recovery through
relationships both human and spiritual (the fellowship of other
recovering alcoholics, sponsors, and the Higher Power). A.A. is about
community. It is about bringing the addicted individual out of the
lonely, torturous isolation of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex into the
loving, caring, compassionate community, especially of those who
truly understand and know.
All of the Twelve Steps are written in plural form—“we, our, us”—
not once is “I, me, or my” used, the point simply being that one is
never alone in the recovery process and this should never be
forgotten. A.A. is about a community of support, of fellowship, not
about a “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” individualism.
A question I haven’t yet addressed is what happens
psychodynamically in the recovery process, to the ego that has
previously been completely controlled and dominated by the
Addiction-Shadow-Complex, after it has surrendered and put itself
out of commission through the first step of A.A. Jung reminds us that
we must have a functioning ego to operate psychologically, that is,
we must have an ego to process and integrate, to register feelings
and information from the unconscious, as well as to focus, think,
make decisions and judgments and take action.
The ego continues to exist after taking Step One, but the
detoxification from the Addiction-Shadow-Complex takes time, as
well as sobriety and abstinence. Once the Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil is neutralized by the Higher Power, the ego
begins to align away from the Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil
toward the Higher Power or true Self. This allows the ego to begin to
have a chance to return to a normal, healthy role as the central organ
of consciousness in the psyche. But initially, it is so weak and
confused and abused by the Addiction-Shadow-Complex, which has
so thoroughly dominated and controlled it, that it cannot rely upon
itself to do the job it is meant to do, so it must initially rely upon an
ego-surrogate support system of sponsors, recovering peers, A.A.
meetings, program readings, working the Twelve Steps, and
transpersonal grace from the Higher Power or Self.
My observation is that gradually the ego detoxifies, strengthens,
and returns in most cases to its normal, healthy role in the psyche. In
a study referred to by The Harvard Medical School Mental Health
Letter, the findings support such a conclusion:
 Studies suggest that serious tension, depression, feelings of
inadequacy and personality disorders often persist [after
sobriety has begun, but] ... that abstinence does make a big
difference, but only after a long time, as much as two or three
years. ... [Stopping drinking] for many months is no guarantee
of recovery. One long term study found that alcoholics who had
not had a drink in ten years were hardly distinguishable from
people who had never been alcoholic at all; those who had
been abstinent for less than three years had most of the same
psychological and social problems as active alcoholics [they
were, however, less likely to die of illness caused by alcohol].17

Once again, the practical, firsthand experience of A.A. has

operated with this knowledge and understanding for many years, in
that it advises newly recovering alcoholics and addicts to not make
any major life decisions or changes in the first year of sobriety.
Obviously one’s judgment, assessment, and perceptions of things
(the ego’s normal job) is still shaky and not to be trusted. There is
also, by sponsors, an informal referring to people who have only been
in recovery one or two years as “babies,” because it takes time to
recover, to get the program, to learn how to walk the walk, to
strengthen and heal. The insanity of addiction does not leave
overnight because a person has stopped the addictive behavior.
The good news is that over time, ten years or more, the ego
functioning of sober, recovering alcoholic and addicted individuals is
indistinguishable from the healthy, normal ego functioning of
nonalcoholic, nonaddicted individuals.
So the ego does seem to be able, under the right conditions and
circumstances (sobriety and recovery), to overcome in time the
terrible, destructive, and devastating effects of the addiction and to
return to its appropriate, healthy role and function in the psyche, as
long as the addiction is not reactivated and the Addiction-Shadow-
Complex is not allowed to hijack the ego system and consciousness
once again.
The healing process of recovery in A.A. through the Twelve Steps
has mapped out and operationalized Jung’s observations in his letter
to Bill W. that what he calls a “higher understanding” (recovery) can
happen “by an act of grace” (Steps One, Two, and Three of A.A.) or
“through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere
rationalism” (working the Twelve Steps of A.A.). Jung understood how
crucial grace and community are to resisting the power of evil, and
saw clearly that both were in great abundance in the program of
Alcoholics Anonymous.
 CHAPTER FIVE

“Using Dreams” of Recovering Alcoholic

and Addicted Individuals

I have added this chapter to the book in the hope that it will help
alcoholic and addicted individuals to appreciate and utilize dreams
as an aid in their healing and recovery process. I also believe this
material can be helpful to sponsors, addictions counselors,
psychoanalysts, and mental health practitioners in general in their
work with people in recovery. I believe dreams can be of value in
diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of addiction.
Reed Morrison, a psychologist who specializes in chemical
dependency treatment, published an article entitled “Dream Mapping
in Chemical Dependency Recovery.”1 In the article, he presents a
general theoretical view of certain types of dreams appearing at six
progressive stages of recovery, which he believes can be tracked
and assessed. He gives these six stages literary and mythological
titles. The first stage is “The Dark Night,” when the person is still
using, that is, actively participating in one’s addiction behavior. This
stage is characterized by a sense of being lost, divided, and
confused. It may be filled with poor sleep and threatening, guilt-ridden
dreams that may lead the person to seek help.
Stage two is called “Pandora’s Box”: this is when the alcoholic or
addicted person gets help and treatment and initially gets sober and
stops using. The dreams here usually resume with great force, and
are characterized by themes of alienation, violence, mutilation,
bizarre sexuality, and persecution. Morrison sees the time frame on
these dreams to be within the first forty-five days of recovery.
 Stage three is called “The Dragon Fight,” where the alcoholic or
addicted person confronts the denial and rationalization of the
addiction. Dreams in this stage, he believes, are about confronting
fear, with images of battles and struggles with demons. This stage is
about taking ownership of oneself and developing new roles. The
time frame is twenty to ninety days in recovery. Obviously, these
stages are not precise and clear-cut in terms of overlapping
processes and time frames.
Stage four is called “Rebirth.” This is the stage where the person
feels relief and freedom from the addiction and is on a kind of
sobriety-abstinence “high,” and dreams about positive movement,
new living spaces, acceptance, spiritual presence, rescue, ownership,
and positive self-identification.
Stage five is called “The Descent.” It is where the person either
relapses, goes on a “dry drunk” (meaning that they regress back to
old drinking and dysfunctional behaviors while still sober), or gets
very discouraged again, feeling like they are slipping back into the
abyss. Dreams at this stage are about unfinished business, guilt, and
confusion. The estimated time frame on this stage is sixty to one
hundred and fifty days in recovery.
Stage six is called “The Return.” It is where the person is
beginning to integrate and solidify new and positive behaviors in
recovery. Dreams here are characterized by images of wholeness,
home, and renewal. This stage is from ninety to one hundred and
eighty days in recovery.
Morrison then observes a continuous process of confrontation,
descent, and reintegration along with their corresponding dreams,
which he places under the broad general context of growth and the
individuation process.
I find Morrison’s dream mapping interesting and encouraging in
many ways. It is attempting to link dreams and addiction and the
recovery process in a meaningful way. It offers a kind of broad
general outline of what the process may look like, and he encourages
those in recovery to take their dreams seriously.
 On the other hand, I think his map of the phenomena of dreams in
the addiction recovery process is too simplistic, overly sequential,
and that the time frames of the dreams’ occurring feels arbitrarily
determined and, I think, unrealistic. There is so much individual
variation in dreams and in different people that generalization
schemes can be dangerous and not reflective of the complexity and
variety of the phenomena and of what is possible. Perhaps if
Morrison had mapped and observed more than one person’s dream
process in recovery before he published his article it would have
produced a better, more nuanced, and perhaps more accurate
offering to help people better understand how dreams can mirror,
inform, and aid in the recovery process.
My focus regarding dreams will be specifically on the
phenomenon of the “using dreams” of recovering alcoholic and
addicted individuals. It is based on a self-report survey given to
patients in treatment at an alcohol/drug treatment facility in Louisiana
where I was working over a two-year period in 1990 and 1991. I
received 104 responses from patients. Thirty-seven people, or
approximately 36%, reported a decrease in their normal ability to
recall their dreams once they began abusing either alcohol or drugs.
Fifty-seven people (57%) reported having dreams in which they were
participating in drinking alcohol or taking drugs, which is the
phenomenon I am referring to by the term “using dreams.” I also
interviewed and discussed the issue of “using dreams” with many
individuals and groups with a range of abstinence/sobriety from one
day to over forty years, as well as tracking the dreams, using and
otherwise, of my recovering alcoholic and addicted clients who were
or are in analysis with me. Though my results and assertions are not,
strictly speaking, scientific, I do believe they are a fairly accurate
reflection or map of the phenomenon of “using dreams” of recovering
alcoholic and addicted individuals.
What I found was that, in general, alcohol/drug addicted
individuals have poorer recall of their dreams than the normal general
population. They seem to have either totally blocked their dreams or
to have diminished recall in the quantity and quality of the dream
material remembered. Of course, this varies from individual to
individual depending upon a number of factors, including the stage
and progression of one’s addiction, the heaviness of usage as well as
the nature of the substance abused, and what one’s normal dream
recall looks like. Some people, addicted or not, are better at dream
recall than others.
Numerous studies have confirmed that most drugs disturb natural
sleep patterns and decrease REM (Rapid Eye Movement) time
during sleep. Most dreams, not all, occur during REM sleep time. All
of the following drugs have been found to decrease and disturb REM
sleep: alcohol, barbiturates, amphetamines, and some
antidepressants. My observation is that dream recall is also
significantly diminished during initial physical alcohol/drug
detoxification and in early recovery. Recall seems to improve
significantly by six months into sobriety and abstinence (number of
dreams remembered increases as well as the content details of the
dreams in general).
The area of dreams related to addiction that has always most
interested me personally and professionally has been the “drinking
dreams” of alcoholics and the “using dreams” of those addicted to
drugs and other substances and behaviors. A “using dream” is any
dream where the addicted individual is involved in his or her dream in
participating, or being tempted to participate, in his or her addictive
behavior. In observing this phenomenon I found that the reaction of
the dream ego (that is, the dreamer’s subjective ego-reaction in the
dream itself), as well as the actual reaction of the waking conscious
ego, which is the person’s actual, normal waking reaction to “using,”
are diagnostically and prognostically very significant.
When we sleep, the dream ego is the person or perspective in the
dream that we identify as ourselves in the dream, as opposed to
other characters or aspects of content in the dream that we don’t
experience as ours. It is what we hear, see, feel, smell, say, think,
touch, imagine, and do in the dream itself. It is the character or aspect
of the dream we refer to as “I” when we tell the story of the dream.
The waking ego is what we normally identify as the “I” in our everyday
waking life, our reactions and experiences and perceptions of things,
etc.
The dream ego and the waking ego are not identical; they don’t
always react or experience or perceive in the same way. Sometimes
they are polar opposites. For example, in a dream I might see my
best friend executed and my reaction in the dream might be to calmly
and unemotionally observe, and nod in consensual agreement.
Contrast this with my reaction when I wake up. I am horrified and feel
guilty that I tried to do nothing in my dream to stop the execution or to
save my friend. Sometimes the reactions of the dream ego and the
waking ego are completely congruous, sometimes similar, sometimes
different, and sometimes they are so opposite it seems like two
different people. Sometimes our dream ego will say and do and feel
and not feel things that seem strange and alien, and completely
foreign and out of character to our conscious waking ego. This is a
great opportunity to look at potential shadow issues, to see and own
thoughts, feelings, motives, and actions that we are denying,
minimizing, rationalizing, or trying to avoid. These differences are
psychologically significant and are to be consciously and reflectively
explored.
Traditional wisdom, of a Jungian sort, holds that the dream ego
always, in a sense, precedes the conscious waking ego because it
already knows something more, is a little bit ahead of the game, has
more information because of its access to the unconscious. It often
sees and knows things already that the waking ego is unaware of or
is just beginning to realize.
I have found a wide range of dream ego and waking ego reactions
to drinking and using dreams of alcoholic and addicted individuals, in
recovery or not. How long an addicted person has been sober,
straight, clean, or not using; what one’s attitude toward sobriety and
recovery is; as well as whether a person is, as they say in A.A.,
“working their program” (that means participating actively in recovery,
using their support system, going to A.A. meetings, doing the Twelve
Steps, reading the Big Book and recovery literature, talking with their
sponsors, etc.), all can affect the nature of the dream ego and the
waking ego’s reactions to drinking or using in a dream.
The reactions of the dream ego and the waking ego seem to
move between two primarily opposite poles from a “Feels Great”
reaction to drinking or using to a “Feels Awful” reaction to the same.
The third possibility is that the reaction falls somewhere in between
the “Feels Great”/“Feels Awful” poles. In assessing a using dream it is
important to compare and contrast the dream ego with the waking
ego’s reactions to the using in the dream. (Refer to the diagram on
page 132.)

“FEELS GREAT” USING DREAM REACTIONS

Typically, a using dream with a “Feels Great” reaction by the

dream ego involves the addicted individual participating in his or her
addictive behavior (drinking, drugs, gambling, sex, smoking, food,
etc.) in the dream and finding it pleasurable and enjoyable. It is often
experienced in the dream as getting high and as if the person is
getting away with something, breaking the rules, getting around the
system, and not getting caught or having to pay the consequences.
The dream ego very much likes and feels good about the using—the
“Feels Great” reaction. There is no sense of guilt or fear or anxiety,
failure or remorse involved.

“Using Dreams”

The reactions of the Dream Ego and the Waking Ego to addiction use
in a dream can be viewed on a four-point scale, ranging from one pole
of “Feels Great” to use, to the opposite pole of “Feels Awful” to use.
 Assess both the Dream Ego’s and the Waking Ego’s reaction to a
Using Dream.

A. “Feels Great” Using Dream

B. “Feels Awful” Using Dream
C. Somewhere-in-between Using Dream

When the person awakens from the dream, the waking ego
reaction is also very important. If the waking ego reaction is identical
to the dream ego reaction—in that it feels great to at least be able to
use and get high in one’s dream when actual using in external reality
is not possible or acceptable at the time—this is a strong indication
diagnostically that the person is still very much under the powerful
control of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex, and probably has not
successfully and effectively taken Steps One, Two, and Three of A.A.
The person has not yet had the necessary and essential experience
of the relativizing of the ego in relation to the Self (the Higher Power).
In A.A. terms, he or she has probably not “hit bottom” yet. Often the
individual has been forced or pressured into some sort of sobriety or
non-using or treatment program by others (the spouse, the family, the
courts, the boss, the EAP, etc.), but at this stage is not really invested
in or committed to his or her own recovery process. The motivation at
this stage is usually to “get the heat off” oneself so that resumption of
the using can continue under the radar when things cool down. The
probability of this person relapsing into the addiction is very high as
soon as he or she has the chance or the opportunity to do so. The
vulnerability is still very high. He or she is still not ready to take the
steps necessary to save one’s life.
 This congruous alignment of dream ego and waking ego as a
“Feels Great” reaction to using in a dream usually occurs very early in
sobriety and recovery, or else it comes when individuals are very
close to or on the verge of, if not already, relapsing into the addiction
by actually using again. The dream can be a warning anticipation or
actual confirmation of this fact.
This kind of “Feels Great” dream can also be viewed as an
unconscious compensation for not being able to use because the
addiction is being suppressed and denied satisfaction by the
circumstances (being in detox, a treatment facility, or temporarily not
having access to the addiction behavior). It is, in a sense, a classic
Freudian wish-fulfillment dream with potentially very dangerous
consequences.
James Hall, a Jungian analyst, in a book he wrote on Jungian
dream interpretation, says of this type of dream: “Non-drinking
alcoholics, for example, not infrequently dream of drinking soon after
they have ceased to drink in their daily lives. The same type of dream
can be observed in cigarette smokers who give up tobacco. Such
dreams, simple in structure, suggest that the pattern of ego-identity in
which the shadow activity [the addiction behavior] was embedded
still persists, although the ego no longer identifies with it. To see these
dreams simplistically as wish fulfillment risks miring the ego in past
attitudes and behavior patterns, rather than encouraging its
movement away from them.”2
I agree with Hall that interpreting a using dream to justify a
reductionistic regression back into addictive behavior does not serve
the best interest of the individual and would better be interpreted as a
caution, a warning that “there is still danger here,” which helps one
move toward the light and freedom of recovery in the Self, in the
Higher Power.
The diagnostic implications of this kind of “Feels Great” using
dream early in recovery is that the ego-identity of the person is still
primarily under the psychological domination of the Addiction-
Shadow-Complex and its prime directive and desire to continue its
power, influence, and control over the person through the person’s
participation in the addiction behavior. Remember that the Addiction-
Shadow-Complex is fed and fueled through the addictive behavior,
and when that is cut off, for whatever reason, it goes into a panic-
driven survival mode, attempting, demanding at all costs that it be fed
and not be slowly starved to death or, perhaps more aptly, not be put
in some kind of suspended hibernation. The Addiction-Shadow-
Complex uses whatever is available to try to regain control, including
using dreams to tempt and try to erode fledgling resolve and barriers
to reenactment of the addictive behavior that allows it to actively live
on and flourish.
If the Addiction-Shadow-Complex can reactivate the
overwhelming craving and obsession with the addictive behavior, it
has a chance to get back into the driver’s seat and run the show once
again, to the destruction of the addicted individual and his or her life.
The Addiction-Shadow-Complex is constantly looking for any
weakness, any vulnerability, any opening in one’s thoughts, feelings,
desires, and attitudes; in one’s body and physiology; in one’s
relationships and, yes, in one’s dreams to exploit the situation to its
advantage.
Recall the study in the Harvard Medical School Mental Health
Letter I referred to previously, about the continuing psychological and
social problems of recovering alcoholics being basically the same as
actively using alcoholics for up to three years of abstinence and
sobriety. The phenomena in this study are congruous with my
observations that most of the “Feels Great” using dreams occur in the
first three years of sobriety, when the addicted person’s ego and
psychological processes are still confused, shaky, and more
vulnerable to the persuasions of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex.
After three years of sobriety or not participating in one’s addictive
behavior, the Addiction-Shadow-Complex is much weaker and
thinner, and may even dismember to some extent—but remember
that it always has the potential, because of the Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil aspect in the addiction, to come back with a
vengeance if the circumstances, conditions, and poor judgment
decisions from the past coalesce in just the right way to reactivate it.
This is why A.A.’s experience says, “Once an alcoholic, always an
alcoholic.” A person’s choice is not in being an alcoholic or not; it is in
being a sober, recovering alcoholic or in being an out-of-control,
practicing, using alcoholic. So the A.A. proviso that, once sober,
“Don’t take the first drink,” follows in the most logical and reasonable
way the practical implications of this aspect of the addiction reality.
Too many people in A.A. and addiction recovery have witnessed
the horrifying experience of good friends who were once sober,
sometimes for many years, losing everything, including their lives,
after what many thought was only a minor slip, but was actually a
relapse that they would never come back from, which killed them
either literally or figuratively. It is a sad and terribly sobering
experience, and a warning to never underestimate the power of an
addiction or to take one’s sobriety and recovery for granted.
Another way of looking at the “Feels Great” using dream is that
addicted individuals in early recovery are still in varying stages and
degrees of denial about being addicted, and the dreams are a
mirroring and a part of this ongoing struggle and battle with
acceptance of this painful reality on both a conscious and an
unconscious level.
Later in recovery, especially after the first three years, a “Feels
Great” using dream is more likely to be about an ego-identity that is
slipping back into dangerous territory, where the deceptive
whisperings of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex are beginning to have
their manipulative, distorting influence once again. Sometimes the
person is doing so well they begin to believe they are no longer
addicted, that they can handle the alcohol, smoke the joint, roll the
dice again without it becoming a problem. A.A., in its direct, simple,
to-the-point way of looking at things, calls this “stinking thinking.”
Sometimes a person gets too far away from the initial excitement,
attention, and reinforcement of early sobriety. Sobriety becomes
boring and mundane and blasé and routine. The recovering individual
isn’t being regularly congratulated anymore for not drinking or using.
Non-using is now normative. It becomes easy to become complacent.
This is often accompanied by discontentment, moodiness,
impatience, and general irritability. For family and friends, the
addicted person can become very difficult to communicate with, to
relate to, and to be around. A.A. calls this experience a “dry drunk.”
During these times, recovering individuals may be tempted by “Feels
Great” using dreams.
If a recovering addicted person I’m working with has a “Feels
Great” using dream, I see it as a warning that he or she may be
slipping back toward potentially using again. Usually they are starting
to minimize, rationalize, or deny important aspects of their lives,
including the reality that they are still addicted individuals. Sometimes
stresses are building up in their lives, and they are being tempted to
revert back to their old, familiar coping mechanisms of the addictive
behaviors. Sometimes they have consciously or unconsciously begun
to dismantle their support system and recovery program. They’ve
stopped going to A.A., stopped associating with other people in
recovery, stopped talking with their sponsors, stopped working the
Twelve Steps, stopped praying and meditating, stopped helping
others toward recovery. Sometimes circumstances have changed
things—a sponsor has moved away, a new job keeps one away from
his or her favorite meeting, or the family has had to relocate, etc.
A “Feels Great” using dream offers an opportunity to stop and look
at what is going on; to prevent a slip or a relapse; to reinforce what
needs to be reinforced and strengthened as well as to let go of things
that need not be held onto any longer; to reassess priorities, support
systems, and one’s recovery program, as well as one’s current
relationship to the Self or the Higher Power.
If a person with a good stretch of sobriety has a “Feels Great”
using dream where both the dream ego and the waking ego are
supportive of the using in the dream, then this person is of course at
very high risk for relapse, and may need more intensive help and
support and treatment intervention.
In most cases with significant sobriety when a person has a
“Feels Great” using dream where the dream ego and the waking ego
are at odds—where usually, but not always, the waking ego is less
enthusiastic or even ambivalent about the using—this indicates that
the person has been enjoying and appreciating, to some degree, the
benefits of sobriety and does have an investment psychologically in
recovery. The more healthy, normal ego may be returning to
functioning and strengthening. It may be more able to discern and
combat and counter the whisperings and lies and deceptions and
temptations from the weakening Addiction-Shadow-Complex.
As you can see, in the “Feels Great” using dream there needs to
be a weighing and discerning of what the dream ego’s position is in
relation to the waking ego’s position, and a judgment made about the
implications diagnostically, as well as what is called for
therapeutically in each situation.
Just remember that any using dream must be viewed in the
gestalt of the whole situation in working with the recovering individual.
The dream needs to be viewed, like other dreams, in the very specific
personal context and circumstances of the dreamer’s life situation.
Using dreams should not be taken as oracles or fate or prophecy, but
as potentially helpful aids in understanding the current dynamics
going on in that addicted person’s situation.
Now I’d like to give a case example to illustrate how the “Feels
Great” using dream can operate in the dynamics of an individual
process.
A young white male, twenty-seven years old, whom I’ll call Bill,
came to see me for outpatient psychotherapy. He was addicted to
alcohol, marijuana, and extremely destructive codependent romantic
relationships. I usually don’t try to work in outpatient psychotherapy
or personal analysis with someone just getting sober or in very early
recovery, because I have found it to be much less helpful and
effective than going to A.A. (90 meetings in 90 days) or into an
intensive primary treatment program for addiction, whether inpatient
or day patient or even intensive outpatient (5 nights a week for 4 to 6
weeks). My experience is that early in recovery people need a great
deal of repetitive daily structure, reinforcement, support, education,
and encouragement if they are going to have a decent shot at getting
and staying sober and truly recovering from their addiction. A once-,
or at most twice-a-week, one-hour session is, in most cases, not
nearly enough of what is needed. I do often encourage addicted
individuals who initially come to me for help to first get sober and
straight, to go to A.A., N.A., O.A., G.A., and/or an intensive primary
treatment program for addiction. Then, after six months to a year or
more of sobriety and recovery, to come back and see me for
psychotherapy or personal analysis. My experience is that once the
dust has settled, with a measure of sobriety under one’s belt—once
the cork is back in the bottle for a while and the person has had the
opportunity to experience the initial benefits of getting sober and not
indulging in the addictive behavior and to see how much gets better
how quickly—the individual dynamics (persona, personal shadow,
complexes, anima/ animus, developmental history, etc.) can then be
more effectively explored and addressed in traditional psychotherapy
or personal analysis.
Initially, as the study from the Harvard Medical School Mental
Health Letter clearly indicates, the psychological effects of addiction
are so mixed up and confused and distorting of the individual psyche
and its dynamics that it is very difficult to sort out and clarify what is
affecting what in the process. A good example of this distortion and
confusion I observed personally when working as an inpatient
addictions counselor at a primary treatment facility in Louisiana a
number of years ago. As part of our admission procedures, we had
our resident patients take an M.M.P.I. (Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory) test the day they were admitted to the facility.
Most of these people were still under the influence of drugs or alcohol
when they were admitted; the substances were still significantly in
their bodies. Many were going through medical detoxification.
What was particularly interesting and baffling to the treatment staff
was that a great number of these people were scoring off the charts
with extreme elevations on most of the psychopathology scales of the
test. It looked like, under the influence of their addictions, they were
the most disturbed, most mentally ill folks on the planet, and I guess
in a way they were. Individuals would have off-the-chart elevations on
numerous scales under Schizophrenia, Hypochondria, Depression,
Hysteria, Sociopath, Borderline, Paranoia, Gender Identity, Phobia,
Obsession/Compulsion, and Mania. The results made it seem as
though an electrical wire in the system had shorted out on the test
and the results were registering all over the place.
When the clinical director and counselors looked at the results, we
knew there was something wrong. These scores could not be
accurate and valid representations of the personality tendencies and
issues in our patients—if so, then everybody had just about
everything! So we discussed the issue and decided to also
administer the M.M.P.I. test later in treatment, past detox and at least
two weeks into recovery. The results were vastly different. People
who previously were scoring off the charts now were scoring within
the relatively normally expected ranges of psychological personality
disturbance for individuals in initial recovery. The psychological
influences and effects of an addiction should never be
underestimated at any time in the process.
It was clear from this testing experience that the immediate effects
metabolically of alcohol and drugs on these addicted people was to
create a level of psychological disturbance and insanity that was
almost unimaginable, and so greatly distorted the true nature of their
personalities that they were almost unrecognizable as individuals. It
also lends support to my contention that the Addiction-Shadow-
Complex is so powerful and dominating a force in the psyche when it
takes over that it literally obliterates the ability of people to truly be
themselves in any kind of a healthy, normal way. It demonstrates
Step One of A.A.—our powerlessness over alcohol and the out-of-
control unmanageability of our lives. These are all different
descriptions of the same phenomena.
In any case, I usually don’t see people in their initial getting-sober
stage of recovery, but I did agree at the time to see Bill. Two weeks
into his sobriety, he reported having dreams that he was getting
drunk and smoking grass and enjoying it. In his third week of
recovery, he dreamt that he was driving and had been stopped by the
police, who were checking for his license, which he didn’t have
because it was suspended for a D.W.I. (Driving While Intoxicated)
offense. He talked his way out of being arrested or ticketed for driving
illegally and was very pleased with himself that he had gotten away
with it. The scene changed, and he was then on an airplane with his
parents. He saw a girl he didn’t know and decided he wanted to have
a sexual affair with her on the spot. The impulsivity, need for
immediate gratification, being above the law, and grandiose
manipulation of circumstances were all obvious in these dreams. A.A.
describes it as “self will run riot.” It is clear that Bill at this time was
having “Feels Great” using dreams for both his dreaming and waking
ego. His commitment to sobriety was tenuous. He hadn’t really
surrendered his addicted ego to the Higher Power and was still very
much under the influence and control of the Addiction-Shadow-
Complex. He was trying to stay clean and sober with willpower, self-
discipline, and ego control alone—what A.A. calls “white-knuckling it,”
which as we know never works if a person is truly addicted because
he or she is trying to control what cannot be controlled by one’s ego.
Bill started drinking and smoking pot again, and returned to a very
destructive relationship with an old girlfriend after two months of
sobriety. One of the conditions for my continuing to see Bill in
psychotherapy was that he remain sober and straight and abstinent. I
confronted him about our agreement. He missed several
appointments and arrived late often. He reported putting together
three weeks of sobriety and then began using again; this time it was
out of control. I referred him to an inpatient intensive primary
treatment program for addiction. He remained in treatment there for
five weeks. When he returned to see me in outpatient psychotherapy,
he was not going to A.A. or N.A. with any regularity, not working the
Twelve Steps, hadn’t gotten a sponsor, and wasn’t attending his
aftercare support group.
After sixty days of his most recent sobriety, he had completely
stopped participating in any form of recovery or support system for
his addiction problems. He reported having another dream about
getting drunk, which he thoroughly enjoyed in his dream, and when
he woke up he felt relieved that he could at least enjoy drinking in his
dreams. Both his dream ego and waking ego continued to respond to
his using dreams in a “Feels Great” way. Bill went back to one more
A.A. meeting at my encouragement, and then he stopped altogether
and started using both alcohol and marijuana again. He no-showed
for the rest of his appointments with me and would not return my
phone calls. His family and friends told me that his alcohol and drug
use was even worse, and completely out of control. He told them he
had no further interest in any help or treatment for his addictions.
Sadly, the Addiction-Shadow-Complex had sunk its teeth into Bill
at this point and wasn’t about to let him go again. The “Feels Great”
using dreams were indications all along, even with his hit-and-miss
sobriety, that he was in deep trouble because he had not had the
necessary shift psychologically—the conversion experience, the
relativizing of the ego taken in Steps One, Two, and Three of A.A.
Without taking those first three steps—the neutralizing of the
Archetypal Shadow/ Archetypal Evil aspect of the addiction—all of
Bill’s other efforts were in vain, useless, and ineffective.

“FEELS AWFUL” USING DREAM REACTIONS

Typically, a using dream with a “Feels Awful” reaction by the

dream ego and/or the waking ego occurs later in sobriety and
recovery. Often, in the dream, the addicted person is tempted or slips
or unknowingly drinks and uses. The reaction of the dream ego is not
one of pleasure or enjoyment in using. The dream ego’s reaction is
more likely to range from being very upset and disappointed that one
has lost his or her sobriety to at least a very uneasy, ambivalent
feeling about it. Feelings of fear, failure, guilt, shame, disappointment,
anxiety, and remorse are not uncommon. Many people report that in
the dream itself they just felt awful about what had happened—thus
my calling it a “Feels Awful” using dream. They felt terrible that they
had slipped, relapsed, lost their sobriety, and were in danger of being
swallowed up in the addiction once again.
Even if the dream ego takes some mixed pleasure in using in the
dream, when the person wakes, his or her waking ego reaction is
more significant. Most people’s waking ego reactions to using in the
dream are at first that they are very upset and feel awful that they
may have relapsed. It takes some people a little time to realize it was
a dream and not external reality; that they didn’t actually drink or use.
When they do realize this, they are tremendously relieved to know
that their sobriety is still intact and that it was “only a dream,” as
people often say in their ignorance of the importance of dreams. But
they then quickly begin to wonder what the using dream is all about,
and why their psyche would send them such a dream. This is a great
opportunity for these dreamers to look at where they are in their
recovery process, the stresses in their lives, the strength of their
support system, how well they are working the Twelve Steps, etc.
If a recovering addicted person has a “Feels Awful” using dream,
diagnostically it is a good sign that the ego-identity of the person is
more committed to sobriety and recovery and less to the addiction.
The individual has progressed beyond the initial denial stage, is
realizing the dangers of the addiction, is accepting the powerlessness
over it on a much deeper level. The ego is not under as much of the
addiction distortion and has internalized a true desire for sobriety. It is
clear in these cases that sobriety is much more highly prized and
valued, that the benefits of living sober are now something much
more worth holding onto. A “Feels Awful” using dream is an
indication, as they say in A.A., that “the program has taken hold.”
In psychodynamic terms, it means the person is much more
consciously invested in sobriety and healing; it indicates that the
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil aspect of the Addiction-Shadow-
Complex has been neutralized and the recovery battle can be fought
on the human level, not the archetypal, with a healthier, more
functioning ego to assist in the process. Now the psychological tools
and resources of willpower, self-discipline, and ego control do have
some power and say, and so can be of service to the Self (Higher
Power) and can play a significant part in the thoughts, feelings, plans,
decisions, and actions taken.
Treatmentwise, the “Feels Awful” using dream can have a number
of potential meanings. It could be a reminder to the person that he or
she is still addicted, if they have somehow forgotten or begun to
rationalize away the fact. In this case it is a wonderful warning from
the Self to take note and pay attention. It could also be a warning to
the person that he or she is getting overconfident, inflated, and
maybe thinking they can handle the addictive behavior after all, since
they have learned and grown so much. A “Feels Awful” using dream
can have the effect of bringing a person crashing back down to
reality, regrounding and reminding one of all there is potentially to
lose in a relapse. Perhaps such a dream is a caution, a warning about
stresses that are building to dangerous levels, or that the person is
not taking good enough care of him or herself and is more vulnerable
than they realize.
The following is a case example to illustrate how a “Feels Awful”
using dream operates. Tom was a 35-year-old white male who came
to see me after four months of sobriety through his involvement with
A.A. and N.A. He was in a professional graduate school at the time.
He was addicted to alcohol and to almost every drug imaginable. He
also was addicted to food, sex, and overly dependent relationships.
At eight months of sobriety, he almost relapsed when on an airplane
flight he got as close as holding the icing glass filled with Jack
Daniels in his hands, reaching towards his mouth, before he put it
down and did not drink. Shortly after this incident, Tom had a dream
in which he felt overwhelmed, that everything was out of control. He
was having difficulty writing his dissertation. His relationship with his
girlfriend was miserable. He was drinking and drugging in the dream
with complete abandon. The scene shifted and he suddenly jumped,
leaped into a swimming-pool-sized fire ant hill, and woke up terrified,
feeling scared and awful. Talk about being in over your head, with
ants in your pants, whose fire could eat you alive. He got the
message of the dream that he was at high risk to start using again, as
a coping mechanism to handle the current stresses of his life that
were building up to very dangerous levels. He realized he needed to
beef up and strengthen his recovery program and support system; he
needed to simplify, to reduce the stress factors in his life and to
reprioritize. He did take the appropriate action, maintained his
sobriety and recovery, and successfully graduated from his
professional school. The last I heard of him was that he was sober
and doing well.
Sometimes recovering alcoholic and addicted people have a
drinking or using dream ten, twenty, or thirty years into sobriety,
which seems to come out of nowhere and is not linked to anything
that they can discern is going on or bothering them in their lives. Even
if this using dream is not experienced as a “Feels Awful” using dream
by the dream ego, or as somehow a warning of a serious threat to
their sobriety, it is still, in most cases (of people I have spoken with),
experienced by the waking ego subjectively as uncomfortable and a
bit anxiety provoking. My guess is that these dreams occur
periodically just to remind the recovering person that the addiction
has not disappeared after all these years of sobriety, and that the Self
or the Higher Power every once in a while taps him or her on the
shoulder, through a using dream, just as a reminder to not forget the
truth about addiction—that the indelible mark left by Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil leaves a perpetual scar and vulnerability to
the reactivation of the addiction. A.A. communicates this reality to its
members both young and old in sobriety when it reminds them that
they are potentially “only one drink away” (so to speak) from the
unmanageability of their previous lives and the insanity of a
reactivated addiction, which they have struggled so hard to avoid.
If there is a discrepancy in the ego states, in that the dream ego
has a “Feels Awful” reaction to using in the dream and the waking
ego has a “Feels Great” response, this incongruity, though rare,
would indicate an urgent need to explore the nature of this unusual
split. Is the person in some exceptional circumstance physically,
psychologically, socially, or spiritually—a severe grief reaction, a
clinical depression, some extreme loss, an existential crisis, a brain
tumor, etc.—that would help explain the waking ego’s
uncharacteristic reaction? Whatever is discovered should be made
more conscious and worked on through better integrating the new
elements and issues into the picture psychologically.
 “SOMEWHERE-IN-BETWEEN” USING DREAM REACTIONS

I’ve illustrated the “Feels Great” using dream with Bill’s case and
the “Feels Awful” using dream with Tom’s case. The “Somewhere-in-
between” using dream situation is where there is truly a mixture, a
combination of varying reactions by both the dream ego in the using
dream as well as the waking ego afterwards, with a variety of different
reactions coming at different times from the same person. Sometimes
he or she seems to be and truly is committed to sobriety and
recovery, and this is reflected in the dreams. Sometimes the person
is caught in the middle about it, ambivalent, and sometimes he or she
is back again being swayed by the Addiction-Shadow-Complex, all
reflected in the dreams.
I’d like to illustrate the “Somewhere-in-between” using dream
situation with a case example of a young woman who worked with me
over a relatively long period of time. Sally was a very attractive white
female, twenty years old, in college when she first came to see me.
Her drinking at the time was out of control and it was affecting her
school performance, dating relationships, and her family. It was also
putting her into some very dangerous and frightening situations
physically and sexually. At my encouragement, she hooked up very
positively with A.A., established sobriety, stabilized, and was feeling
good about herself and her life.
At five months into her sobriety and recovery she dreamt that she
was a slave to her A.A. sponsor and resented it very much. At seven
months, she had not attended A.A. for six weeks, was in the
emotional doldrums, and feeling very uneasy. Her A.A. sponsor had
been out of town for a while, and Sally had begun going to bars again
with her friends. She wasn’t drinking, but she told me she had been
thinking about it a lot, and part of her was more and more wanting to
start drinking again. At this point, she had a dream where she started
sipping on a gin and tonic, stopped, put the drink down, and watched
it all night long as the ice melted and gradually watered the drink
down. In the dream, she felt ambivalent, debated in her mind her
desire to drink versus losing seven months of sobriety and all the
things she had gained in the process.
Her dream ego was not upset that she had slipped and broken her
sobriety by sipping the drink—in fact, the dream ego acted almost as
if she were still sober and trying to make a decision, instead of
actually already having crossed the line. Her waking ego’s reaction
was also not very upset that she had drunk and lost her sobriety in
the dream. It also didn’t seem concerned that she was seriously
debating the question of returning to alcohol on a regular basis. What
her waking ego was most concerned about was losing the seven
months of sobriety and having other people be upset and
disappointed in her. She also didn’t like the idea of having to start
over and work so hard again to put together another seven months of
sobriety. She didn’t say it, but what she really wanted was to be able
to drink again without it counting against her sobriety. I’ve known
others struggling with this issue of honesty, self- and communal
deception, and trying to keep up a positive A.A. persona. Some
denied slips, forgot them, or rationalized that they weren’t significant
enough to have constituted a loss of sobriety, so they continued the
illusion of a longer record of sustained abstinence than they really
had.
This is why A.A. emphasizes one day at a time with sobriety.
Acknowledgment of accumulated sustained sobriety, with chips being
given for numbers of years of abstinence on anniversaries of
stopping drinking, is part of A.A.’s support and encouragement, but it
is not what is most important or emphasized. Yesterday’s sobriety no
more guarantees today’s or tomorrow’s, than yesterday’s binge
means you can’t get sober today and have the same change
tomorrow. The insidious, manipulative, and reality-falsifying nature of
the Addiction-Shadow-Complex is truly staggering. A.A. knows this
aspect of addiction well when it cautions its members to remember
that alcoholism is “cunning, baffling, and powerful!”3
I interpreted Sally’s dream as a warning dream to Sally that her
ambivalence about her sobriety was putting her in a weak,
vulnerable, and confused place where her focus was on watching in a
mesmerized way her drink water down all night long, and on what
other people think of her. Is a watered-down drink somehow more
acceptable than a full-strength one? Does the watered-down drink
mirror, on the opposite side, her watered-down commitment to
sobriety?
We talked about how the dream described her present
psychological situation, where she wanted to maintain the benefits
and gains of sobriety while at the same time she was dismantling her
entire sobriety support system, putting herself in overwhelmingly
tempting situations where the next easy step was to order that gin
and tonic with the rest of her friends. Sally reminded me of that
expression about people “wanting to have their cake and eat it too.”
Sally responded well to the warning dream. She reinforced her
support system again, maintained and continued her sobriety. She
graduated successfully from college. She was two weeks away from
a complete year of sobriety when she dreamt that she did begin
drinking again, but she hid it from others and felt very upset and guilty
about it in her dream. She had a “Feels Awful” using dream. Both her
dream ego and waking ego were in agreement, and unhappy about
having the using dream and hiding it. You can see in this dream how
tenacious the Addiction-Shadow-Complex is, and how it never seems
to give up trying to seduce the person back into the addiction using
whatever means are available. When I explored the issue of hiding
her drinking, she reported that her family knew she was alcoholic but
that she still had not told her boyfriend and close friends about it. She
was hiding it out of shame and embarrassment.
A month later, which turned out to be our last session together,
after she’d been turned down for graduate school in a helping
profession, she reported that she dreamt she had gotten drunk while
taking care of others. She told me she had been wanting to drink
some wine for some time now, and she hadn’t been to A.A. meetings
for several weeks. She started trying to convince me and herself that
she was not really addicted to alcohol, but had only been abusing it,
and now she felt she really could control it. I could not support her
denial and rationalization of what was going on, and she left the
session very unhappy with me for not colluding and agreeing with her
self-deception. I felt sad and powerless and very concerned for
Sally’s well-being.
I received a letter from Sally three months later. In the letter, she
indicated proudly that she had successfully resumed drinking and
went into a lengthy explanation of how she was “doing fine” and, by
implication, how off base and wrong I was about the nature of her
drinking and my diagnosis of her as alcoholic. In the letter, almost as
an afterthought, she mentioned that she was recovering from a
terrible automobile accident heading home from a party. She wasn’t
wearing a seat belt and was almost killed. She required hundreds of
stitches all over her face and body. She was medically recuperating
at the time of the letter.
My guess is that she had been drinking at the party, which
affected both her forgetting to use her seat belt and her handling of
the car in the accident, but that it had not crossed her mind
consciously that there was any connection. The ability of a person
under the power of the Addiction-Shadow-Complex to delude,
minimize, rationalize, confound, and deny some of the most obvious
logical realities and consequences is a testament to its incredible
ability to manipulate and control a person psychologically.
Sally’s dreams indicated her ego-identity shifting back and forth
between the Addiction-Shadow-Complex and sobriety. She had
made it through the initial stage of denial, it seemed, and had put
together over a year of sobriety; then her ego shifted back into
delusion, denial, minimizing, and rationalizing, reflected in her
thoughts, dreams, decisions, and actions. Sadly, the Addiction-
Shadow-Complex kept calling her back to be under its domination
and control. In some ways I believe Sally never could quite take
Steps One, Two, and Three of A.A completely; there were always
these reservations and the addicted ego never was able to collapse
into the hands of the Higher Power or Self. There is a saying in A.A.,
“You must surrender to win” (Step One), and Sally could not
surrender enough to win and keep her sobriety.
 There is a postscript to Sally’s story. I did run into her briefly a
good while after the letter. She told me that she had continued
drinking and it was again out of control and very self-destructive, and
she knew it and wanted to stop, but just wasn’t ready to take the step.
Sally continued stuck in the middle, psychologically in between her
desire to stop using and her desire to continue drinking, which of
course is always exploited by the Addiction-Shadow-Complex to its
advantage. Once again, in the A.A. Big Book, A.A. understands this
dynamic oh so well when it says, “Half measures availed us nothing.”4
I encouraged Sally to make sobriety her number one priority and
focus, and emphasized how this was absolutely necessary for
healing and recovery. She countered my encouragement by telling
me she was seeing another therapist, a woman, and they were
working on sexuality issues, not on her drinking problem. I had
worked with Sally and others long enough to know that she wouldn’t
get very far working on her sexuality issues unless she could do it
clean and sober. I wished her the best for the future, and hope she
finds her way through grace to the healing power of the true Self.
When Sally was drinking, there was always a hostile, combative
edge towards me, a kind of belligerence with a “nobody’s gonna tell
me what to do” attitude of defiance. It was a one-hundred-and-eighty-
degree shift from her normally, most of the time, very positive
transference toward me to a very negative, disdaining transference
towards me. I’m sure the Addiction-Shadow-Complex saw me as its
enemy, with my clear position opposing Sally’s drinking. The
Addiction-Shadow-Complex used this to create a pseudo power
struggle between me and Sally, which was nothing more than a not-
so-clever, transparent distraction away from the issue of sobriety and
the ultimate consequences of Sally’s returning to alcohol use. The
power struggle was really between Sally and the Addiction-Shadow-
Complex.
This kind of reaction is actually not unusual, and I have often
experienced this negative transference reaction when my
patients/clients who are recovering from addiction are about to or
have begun participating again in their addictive behaviors.
 In summary, it is important to consider dreams in dealing with the
question of addiction. Dreams can help discern between abuse and
addiction; they can point to important issues and dynamics involved
in the addiction such as persona, personal shadow, false self,
complexes, anima/animus, and True Self/Higher Power interactions.
They can point to an ego-attitude position that can be used in
diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of the individual. Focusing
especially on the dream ego and the waking ego reactions in using
dreams can reveal a wealth of important information about where a
person is in the recovery process, warn of relapse dangers, and
encourage specific types of changes and interventions in the support
system and recovery process.
 Conclusion

I nperhaps
conclusion, I hope that this book has charted new territory and
created a better map in trying to image, describe, and un
derstand the psychodynamics of the phenomenon we know as
addiction. My hope is that it will open up dialogue and discussion
about what is and is not truly a psychological addiction. My hope is
that the reasons for the effectiveness of A.A. and other Twelve Step
programs in treating alcoholism and other addictions will be more
clearly understood and appreciated by others outside of the A.A.
community, especially by mental health professionals and the
general public. My hope is that the many potential misunderstandings
and misuses of the concept of Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil will
be avoided, and that it will be understood in the light in which it is
offered. My hope is that addiction counselors and recovering
individuals will more greatly appreciate the many helpful and often
parallel concepts in Jungian psychology, especially the extraordinary
potential of using dreams as a tool in the diagnosis and treatment of
alcoholism and other addictions.
In the 1980s, I had a dream that I was assigned the job or task or
role of carrying and transporting by hand a small, round container the
size of a coffee cup, which was filled to the brim with the most potent,
deadly, toxic concentration of archetypal evil imaginable, one tiny
drop of which would destroy the whole world and all of humanity. My
job was to walk very carefully, to keep my balance and not to slip or
fall until I had carried this vessel without dropping or spilling any of its
lethal contents to a preordained ritual site, where I was to gently
place the container on the ground in the center of an eternally
burning, moderate-sized wooden campfire, which would then be able
to contain and neutralize the archetypal evil, as in a crucible, and
which would protect humanity from being destroyed by it.
I feel as if I have the weight of the world on my shoulders as I walk
and concentrate with all my might not to stumble or spill a drop. I am
terrified I will fail, as my body is losing strength. I am completely
drenched in sweat from the tension and pressure and stress of the
task at hand. I become totally exhausted, and am not sure I can make
it. Finally, with every ounce of effort in my being, physically,
emotionally, and spiritually, I successfully place the container vessel
of evil in the center of the sacred fire, step back, and feel as if my life
task has been accomplished.
I hope this dream is not about a grandiose inflation of my ego into
a role of exaggerated self-importance. I believe the dream was an
assignment from the Self in my individuation journey, which I didn’t
understand until I studied the Bill W./Carl Jung letters and began to
handwrite this book. It has been years in its journey toward being
published. My hope is that I have been able to place the Archetypal
Shadow/Archetypal Evil of addiction where it can be seen and
contained and neutralized in the eternal sacred fires of the Self and
the Higher Powers of healing, light, and grace. My hope is that some
of the veil of the Great Deceiver has been lifted for all to see and
understand.
When all is said and done, I hope I am counted among the friends
of A.A.

“spiritus contra spiritum”

 Notes

INTRODUCTION
1. Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketchum, The Spirituality of Imperfection:
Storytelling and the Journey to Wholeness (New York: Bantam, 1994), pp.
114-115.
2. Or, for example, as the combination of a physical allergy and a mental
obsession hypothesized by Dr. William Silkworth, who wrote the original “The
Doctor’s Opinion” section of the Big Book of A.A. Neither will this book go into
the considerable contributions of E. M. Jellinek, one of America’s premier
researchers into alcoholism, and his understanding of its stages and phases
and the characteristics of the progressive deterioration of the addiction
process.
3. Francis Kelly Nemerck, OMI, and Marie Theresa Coombs, Hermit, O Blessed
Night: Recovering from Addiction, Codependency and Attachment based on
the Insights of St. John of the Cross and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (New
York: Alba House, 1998), p. 5.
4. Gerald May, Addiction and Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of
Addiction (New York: Harper Collins, 1988), pp. 4-5.
5. Ibid., p. 24.
CHAPTER 1: SETTING THE STAGE, THE BILL W. – CARL
JUNG LETTERS
1. Reprinted from A.A. Classic Grapevine 35/6 (November 1978), pp. 26-29.
2. C. G. Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, trans. R.F.C. Hull, ed. H.
Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, Wm. McGuire, 20 vols. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1953-1979), vol. 18, § 558, 621. (Hereafter CW.)
3. Ernest Kurtz, Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City, MN:
Hazelden Educational Materials, 1979), p. 8.
4. Alcoholics Anonymous, The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and
Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous
Word Service Inc., 1976), p. xxvii.
5. Reprinted from Classic Grapevine 35/6, pp. 30-31.
6. Such as Buddhist meditation practice, the spiritual exercises of Ignatius
Loyola, Gestalt therapy, the Rule of St. Benedict, Kundalini yoga, Deepak
Chopra’s work, Taoism, the Course in Miracles, Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of
Now, and so on.
7. Harry M. Tiebout, Conversion as a Psychological Phenomenon (New York:
The National Council on Alcoholism, Inc.), p. 2.
8. Classic Grapevine 35/6, p. 31, italics mine.
 CHAPTER 2: THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF ADDICTION,
DEVELOPMENT OF A TYPICAL ADDICTION PROCESS
1. Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms and Concepts (Toronto: Inner
City Books, 1991), p. 123.
2. C. G. Jung, “The Shadow,” CW 9ii, § 14.
3. Linda Schierse Leonard, Witness to the Fire: Creativity and the Veil of
Addiction (Boston: Shambhala, 1989).
4. The World Book Encyclopedia, 1993 edition, Vol. 18, p. 898.
5. Marion Woodman, “Holding the Tension of the Opposites” (audiotape).
 CHAPTER 3: AN EXPLORATION OF ARCHETYPAL
SHADOW/ARCHETYPAL EVIL AS AN ESSENTIAL
INGREDIENT IN ADDICTION
1. John Sanford, Evil: The Shadow Side of Reality (New York: Crossroad, 1988),
p. 2.
2. Ibid., p. 9.
3. C. G. Jung, “Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy,” CW 12, §
44.
4. Sanford, Evil, p. 16.
5. James Hillman, ed., Evil, Studies in Jungian Thought Series (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1967), pp. 7-10.
6. Sanford, Evil, p.17.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Lionel Corbett, Psyche and the Sacred: Spirituality beyond Religion (New
Orleans, LA: Spring Journal Books, 2007), p. 153.
10. Ibid., p. 160.
11. Ibid., p. 150.
12. Ibid., p. 165.
13. Ibid., p. 174.
14. M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1983).
15. Ibid., p. 196.
16. Ibid., p. 199.
17. Paul Woodruff and Harry A. Wilmer, eds., Facing Evil: Confronting the
Dreadful Power behind Genocide, Terrorism and Cruelty (Chicago: Open
Court, 1988), p. 4.
18. Ibid., p. 24.
19. Peck, People of the Lie, p. 42.
20. Ibid., p. 44.
21. Hillman, Evil, p. 14.
22. Ibid., p. 16.
23. Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Devil (Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press), p. 23.
24. Woodruff and Wilmer, Facing Evil, p. 28.
25. Donald Kalsched, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the
Personal Spirit (New York: Routledge, 1996).
26. Ibid., p. 5.
27. Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig, The Emptied Soul: On the Nature of the
Psychopath (Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications, 1980).
28. Marie-Louise von Franz, C. G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time (New York: C. G.
Jung Foundation, 1975), p. 236.
29. C. G. Jung, “Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams,” CW 18, § 512.
30. Marie-Louise von Franz, An Introduction to the Psychology of Fairy Tales
(Irving, TX: Spring Publications, 1978), p. 96.
31. Ibid.
32. C. G. Jung, “The Shadow,” CW 9ii, § 19.
33. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and
Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (New York: Ballantine, 1992), p. 63.
34. Von Franz, Fairy Tales, p. 125.
35. Linda Schierse Leonard, Witness to the Fire: Creativity and the Veil of
Addiction (Boston: Shambhala, 1989), p. 4.
36. Cited in Hillman, Evil, pp. 6-7.
37. Ibid., p. 7.
38. Mario Jacoby, Verena Kast, and Ingrid Riedel, Witches, Ogres and the
Devil’s Daughter: Encounters with Evil in Fairy Tales (Boston: Shambhala,
1992), p. 24.
39. Ibid., p. 38.
40. In Hillman, Evil, p. 89.
41. Ibid., pp. 94, 96.
42. Kent and Maria Carr, Unraveling Collective Confusion: Archetypes and
Issues (Cornville, AZ: AI Publications, 2001).
43. Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves, p. 248.
44. Leonard, Witness to the Fire, p. 18.
45. Woodruff and Wilmer, Facing Evil, p. 61.
46. In Hillman, Evil, p. 100.
47. Ibid., p. 107.
48. Ibid.
49. Ernest Kurtz, Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City,
MN: Hazelden Educational Materials, 1979), pp. 13-14.
50. Liliane Frey-Rohn, “Evil from the Psychological Point of View,” in Hillman,
Evil.
 CHAPTER 4: THE HEALING PROCESS OF RECOVERY
THROUGH THE TWELVE STEPS OF A.A.
1. Ernest Kurtz, Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City, MN:
Hazelden Educational Materials, 1979), p. 61.
2. Linda Schierse Leonard, Witness to the Fire: Creativity and the Veil of
Addiction (Boston: Shambhala, 1989), p. 36.
3. Ibid., p. 185.
4. Cited in ibid.
5. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous
World Services, Inc., 1972).
6. Kurtz, Not God, p. 125.
7. Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms and Concepts (Toronto: Inner
City Books, 1991), p. 123.
8. John Sanford, Healing and Wholeness (New York: Paulist, 1977), p. 57.
9. Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
(Novato, CA: New World Library, 1999), p.127.
10. Marion Woodman, Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride
(Toronto: Inner City Books, 1985), p. 31.
11. Kurtz, Not God, p. 61.
12. Leonard, Witness to the Fire, p. 323.
13. C. G. Jung, “On the Psychology of the Unconscious,” CW 7, § 35.
14. Jolande Jacobi, The Way of Individuation (New York: New American Library,
1967), p. 40-41.
15. Leonard, Witness to the Fire, p. 335.
16. Ibid., p. 351.
17. “Treatment of Alcoholism, Part II,” The Harvard Medical School, Mental
Health Letter 4/1 (July 1987), p. 2.
 CHAPTER 5: “USING DREAMS” OF RECOVERING
ALCOHOLIC AND ADDICTED INDIVIDUALS
1. Reed A. Morrison, “Dream Mapping in Chemical Dependency Recovery,”
Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly 7/3 (1990).
2. James Hall, Jungian Dream Interpretation: A Handbook of Theory and
Practice (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1983), p. 30.
3. Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and
Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous
World Services Inc., 1976), pp. 58-59.
4. Ibid., p.59.
 Index

A
Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide, Lang 54
Adam and Eve 53
addiction
and compassion fatigue 95
and creativity 109
and developmental disorders 57
and narcissism 91, 117
and other disorders 64
and persona 33
and self-destruction 62
and sexuality 89
and telling lies 72
eating disorders 45
elements of 2, 23
explanatory maps of 1
Jungian view of 2
physical 5
medical definitions of 4–5
“positive” 5
predisposition to 38
physiological 65
psychodynamics of 2, 18, 31-46
psychological 2–4, 31, 37, 45, 149
definition of 3
seen as divine by addict 100
to hate 55
 to pain medication 44
to smoking 105
vs. “abuse” 106
Addiction and Grace, May 6
“Addiction to the Lesser Coniunctio,” Kalsched 62–63
Addiction-Shadow-Complex 7, 31, 40-45, 56, 64, 75, 79, 97, 99, 101, 103, 104, 105,
107, 109, 113, 114, 116, 118, 124, 125, 132, 133-136, 139, 140, 141, 144, 145,
146, 147, 148
Adonis 90
Aesculapius 91, 112, 121
Ahriman 50
Ahura-Mazda 50
Akron Group 104
alchemy 62, 66
alcohol
as spiritus 20
Alcoholics Anonymous 2–3, 9-29, 42, 48, 49, 55, 56, 72, 95, 97-126, 134–135, 137,
141, 143, 149, 150
and alternative treatment approaches 107
and psychodynamic language 2
and sustained sobriety 145
Big Book 17, 24, 25, 147
not a religion 23
use of first names 118, 119
warning against “first drink” 119
alcoholism
and family, friends of addict 42
and Jungian analysis 18
as spiritual thirst 19, 21
“binge drinkers” 43
concepts of 2, 11
“functional alcoholics” 43
moral condemnation of 21
Anderson, Hans Christian 72
Angelou, Maya 59, 61, 96
anima/animus 148
Antabuse 93
Aphrodite 90
Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil 7, 28–29, 38, 40–41, 47-96, 97, 101, 104, 118,
120, 124, 134, 140, 141, 143, 149, 150
allure of its power and energy 88
as Prince of Darkness 53
Eros as antidote to 86
neutralized by Self or Higher Power 85
perpetual mark of 80
Augustine, St. 51

B
Bacchus 76
Baldur 50
baptism and confirmation, Christian 80
bipolar disorder 93
Bluebeard 67
Bob, Dr. 104
Buddha 17, 26, 49
Buddhism 27–28, 51–52, 116
Burckhardt, Carl J. 68

C
Campral 93
Carr, Kent and Maria 72
Christ-consciousness 4, 17, 26
“Clever Gretel,” Grimm’s fairy tale 70–72
confession, sacrament of 116
and penance 116
conversion experiences 12, 15, 17, 24, 25, 93, 105, 140
Coombs, Marie 4
Corbett, Lionel 53–56

D
Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross 4
depression 93, 124, 138
Desire Chip 16
developmental disorders 57
Devil 20, 21, 25, 27, 48, 50, 51, 53, 57, 60, 67, 81–86, 89, 95, 109
as tempter of Jesus 88
Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorder 2, 45
Dionysus 53, 76–77
“Dream Mapping in Chemical Dependency Recovery,” Morrison 127
dreams 115, 127-150, 149
dream ego and waking ego 130–131
of battle between God and the Devil 60, 85
of vessel of archetypal evil 149
recall of in addicted individuals 129
“dry drunk” 128, 135
Dylan, Bob 110

E
ego 32, 41, 45, 94, 124
and false self 97
and inflation 90
defenses 35
in addiction 41, 42
in relation to the Self 17, 24, 49, 109
paralysis of 64
surrender to God/Higher Power 17, 50, 99, 104, 132
weak 32, 99
ego collapse 12, 17, 93, 104
ego-complex system 94
ego-Self axis 99, 122
Einstein, Albert 28
The Emptied Soul, Guggenbühl-Craig 64–65
Eros 82, 85
and Thanatos 61–62
as feminine principle 61
lack of 65
Estés, Clarissa Pinkola 67, 72, 75, 95
Eucharist 26
eucharistic wine 44
evil 19, 25, 26–27, 29, 45
absolute 66–67
flight as response to 69
terms for 92
and alcoholic parent 54
and alcoholism/addiction 29
and death 59
and good, as illusions 52
and good, battle of 25, 59, 78
and religious traditions 27
archetypal 25
as absence of conscience 54
as aspect of the Self or God 86
as opposition to life 59
concepts of 48-61
degrees of 48
divine and human sources of 52
goodness as antidote to 52
irredeemable or unintegratable 56, 58, 66, 67
“natural” vs. “moral” 49
Evil, Studies in Jungian Thought Series, Hillman 59
Evil: The Shadow Side of Reality, Sanford 48–50
exorcism 57, 58, 81

F
Facing Evil, Wilmer 58, 84
Fairbairn, Ronald 54
false self 31, 33, 41, 71, 89, 97, 101, 108, 148
“feeling value” 119
Fisher King 81
“For the Worst of Us, the Diagnosis may be ‘Evil’” 47
free will
as distinguised from willpower 103
Freud, Sigmund 13, 35, 61–62
Frey-Rohn, Liliane 92
Fromm, Erich 60

G
gender identity 138
God 5, 11, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 26, 33, 48, 52, 55, 82–83, 99, 100, 102, 116, 122
and Self 49
existence and nature of 86
union with 19, 23–25
Golden Rule 116
grace 19, 24, 29, 51, 126, 147
and addiction 6
Guggenbühl-Craig, Adolf 64–65, 85

H
H., Roland 9–10, 19–21, 105
Hall, James 133
Hare, Robert 48
Harry Potter series, Rowling 80–81, 85
Harvard Medical School Mental Health Letter 124, 134, 137
Healing and Wholeness, Sanford 112
Hercules 91
Higher Power 6, 15, 22, 25, 26, 49, 79, 97, 102, 114, 150
ego surrender to 17
neutralizing archetypal evil 56
Hillman, James 52, 59
Hitler 54
“hitting bottom” 24, 72, 76, 104, 107, 132
Holocaust 53
Holy Spirit 17, 26, 49, 80
human community 19, 25, 26, 51
as counteracting evil 85
in A.A. 24, 58, 123
hypochondria 138
hysteria 138
I
I Ching 13
Iago 68
individuation 49, 123
inflation 90–91, 118, 119, 142
humility as antidote 91
punishments for 91
The Inner World of Trauma, Kalsched 63
isolation 26, 58

J
Jacobi, Jolande 117
Jacoby, Mario 68, 95
James, William 12, 17
Jekyll/Hyde 94
Jesus 88, 121
man “cured by Jesus” 13, 15, 105
Jung, Carl 7, 9-29, 37, 51, 52, 65, 87, 91, 95, 105, 117, 120, 122, 123, 125
on addiction and evil 59
on evil 55
on integrating shadow 66–67
word association experiments 13

K
Kalsched, Donald 62–63, 66
Kast, Verena 68, 95
Kerenyi, Carl 50, 68, 96
on archetype of evil 59
Kierkegaard, Søren 109
Kundalini 80
Kurtz, Ernest 108

L
Lang, Berel 54
Leonard, Linda 68, 83, 109, 116, 122, 123
Loki 50
The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien 78–79
Lucifer 51, 52–53, 78
and the angels, story of 82–83

M
M.M.P.I. 138
Maenads 76
mania 138
May, Gerald 6
mind
higher education of 19, 24
“Moneylender” 83–84
Monroe, Marilyn 90
Morrison, Reed 127, 128

N
Naltrexone 93
Nemerck, Francis, OMI 4

O
obsession/compulsion 138
Osiris 50
Oxford Group 10–12, 16

P
Pandora’s Box 103, 127
paranoia 138
Paul, Saint 81
Peck, Scott 57–58, 59
People of the Lie, Peck 57–58
persona 32–33, 35–36
and addiction 33
persona/shadow tension, symptoms of 36
reconfiguration of 97
phenomenology 1, 92
phobia 138
possession, “being possessed” 4, 57, 58, 95
Potentially Addictive Behavior 31, 36–38, 71, 74
and Archetypal Shadow/Archetypal Evil 109
The Power of Now, Tolle 113
Presley, Elvis 90
“The Prince and the Princess,” Grimm’s fairy tale 82
Princess Diana 91
privatio boni 51
“The Problem with Evil in Fairy Tales,” von Franz 69
Prometheus 91
psyche
lacunae in 64
Protector/Persecutor aspect of 63
unintegratable aspects 66
Psyche and the Sacred: Spirituality beyond Religion, Corbett 53–56
psychoanalysis and alcoholism 14
psychopharmacology 93
psychotherapy
and recovery from addiction 94

R
recovery
and suffering 114
first year of 125
psychodynamics of 124
stages of 127–128
“The Red Shoes,” Anderson 72–74, 85
Riedel, Ingrid 68, 95
Rowling, J. K. 80
Russell, Jeffrey Burton 60, 84, 95

S
St. John of the Cross 4
Sanford, John 48–50, 51, 112, 121
Satan 51, 55, 57, 95
as murderer 59
Satan (“Beelzebub”) 50
schizophrenia 93, 138
Self 6, 15, 17, 22, 33, 41, 82, 100, 141, 142, 143, 147, 148, 150
archetype 49
conscious ego connection with 97
evil as shadow of 55
light side neutralizing dark side 56
relationship to 136
Set 50
shadow
personal 25, 31, 33-36, 97, 111, 115, 120, 123, 148
and “original sin” 117
assimilation of 66, 110, 117, 120
in Jungian analysis 112
Shoemaker, Samuel 10, 17
Silkworth, William D. 11, 17
Smokers Anonymous 106
sociopath 138
spiritus contra spiritum 20, 29, 61, 150
Star Wars 77–78
Stone, Michael H. 47
suicide 62, 69, 76
synchronicity 18, 115, 122

T
T., Edwin (“Ebby”) 11–12, 16
“taking of the pledge” 105
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 4
Thomsen, Robert 88
Tiebout, Harry M. 24, 105
Tolkien, J. R. R. 78
Tolle, Eckhart 113
transpersonal forces
archetypal evil 55
as both helpful and destructive 52
as unintegratable 60
Twelve Step Program 2–3, 8, 18, 22, 24, 25, 29, 48, 97-126, 107, 120, 123–124,
125, 132, 141, 147, 149
psychodynamic principles of 107
Step Eight 115–117
Step Eleven 122–123
Step Five 111, 113
Step Four 110, 113
Step Nine 115–117
Step One 15, 24, 42, 76, 99, 100, 101–102, 109, 124, 139
Step Seven 114
Step Six 114
Step Ten 120
Step Three 76, 101–102
Step Twelve 16, 122–123
Step Two 15, 76, 100, 101–102, 109
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, A.A. 111, 114

U
unconscious
collective 33
personal 33, 35
Unraveling Collective Confusion, Kent and Maria Carr 72
“using dreams” 8, 129-150
“Feels Awful” using dreams 140–143
“Feels Great” using dreams 131-140
and relapse 133
“Somewhere-in-between” using dreams, 143-148
V
vampire 67–68, 88, 95, 100
Varieties of Religious Experience, James 12, 17
Von Franz, Marie-Louise 65–66, 67, 69, 82, 84–85, 95

W
W., Bill 7, 9-29, 37, 88–89, 104, 111, 114, 120, 126
war of the gods 51, 59, 60
The Way of Individuation, Jacobi 117
Wilmer, Harry 58, 84, 95
Witches, Ogres, and the Devil’s Daughter, Jacoby, 68–69
Witness to the Fire, Leonard 68
Women Who Run with the Wolves, Estés 67, 72
Woodman, Marion 45, 68, 114, 120
Wounded Healer 120–121

Z
Zeus 91