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REMAKING A MAN

ONE SUCCESSFUL METHOD OF MENTAL REFITTING

BY

COURTNAY BAYLOR

OF THE EMMANUEL MOVEMENT, BOSTON, 1919
 

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at Jim B's aa history site

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This Book is Available full Length Online
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The importance of the Emmanuel Movement is the introduction of lay therapy, that is treatment by laymen, just as AA is made up of alcoholics helping alcoholics. Some of the success stories from the movement included Courtenay Baylor who, as a recovering alcoholic, began working with Worchester in 1912. He was the author of the Book "Remaking A Man"
He may have been the first lay therapist. Another success was
Richard Peabody, the author of Common Sense of Drinking.
Peabody was treated by Baylor.

 

It is noteworthy that three outstanding lay therapists for alcoholics in this country, Courtenay Baylor (who carried on the work at the Emmanuel Church for a time after Worcester’s death), Richard Peabody, and Samuel Crocker, were products of the movement. A lay therapist is a nonmedical practitioner who specializes in helping alcoholics professionally. For a description of the method of treatment used by Courtenay Baylor, see Dwight Anderson’s "The Place of the Lay Therapist in the Treatment of Alcoholics," Q.J.S.A., September, 1944
Clinbell Book Chapter on RELIGION PLUS PSYCHOTHERAPY
Quote Above From –
Understanding and Counseling the Alcoholic Howard J. Clinebell, Jr. (1956)

From Courtenay Baylor's book: Remaking A Man - "…in the glorious certainty that he need never fail again - he finds perfect freedom and happiness." (From August to September 1934, Baylor treated Rowland H. in Mass. - Rowland brought the message of the Oxford Group to Ebby T., who in turn brought the message to Bill).

 

From Dwight Anderson
the Place of Lay therapy in Treatment
1944 Journal of Alcohol Studies

Courtenay Baylor of Boston was specifically credited by Peabody as his preceptor. Peabody stated: "The treatment. . . has been carried on by Courtenay Baylor for seventeen years. I can never sufficiently acknowledge my debts to him for being able to write it." In his book Peabody quotes directly from Baylor;

To substantiate the theory I have described, quotations from Mr. Courtenay Baylor’s book, "Remaking a Man," are pertinent. "I recognized," he writes, "that the taking of the tabooed drink was the physical expression of a certain temporary but recurrent mental condition which appeared to be a combination of wrong impulses and a wholly false, though plausible philosophy. Further, I believed that these strange periods were due to a condition of the brain which seemed akin to a physical tension and which set up in the processes a peculiar shifting and distorting and imagining of values; and I have found that with a release of this "tenseness" a normal coordination does come about, bringing proper impulses and rational thinking."

 

And again,"Underlying and apparently causing this mental state (fear, depression or irritability), I have always found the brain condition which suggests actual physical tenseness. In this condition a brain never senses things as they really are. As the tenseness develops, new and imaginary values arise and existing values change their relative positions of importance and become illogical and irrational. Ideas at other times unnoticed, or even scorned become, under tenseness, so insistent that they become controlling impulses. False values and false thinking run side by side with the normal philosophy for a time; and then with the increasing tenseness the abnormal attitude gradually replaces the normal in control. This is true whether the particular question be one of drinking or of giving way. to some other impulse; the same indecision, changeability, inconsistency, and lack of resistance mark the mental process. In fact, the person will behave like one or the other of two different individuals as he or she is not mentally tense."

Peabody then continues to amplify Baylor’s thought:
"We must not overlook one very important but little-recognized stimulus to drinking. Emotional instability (tension) can be created by legitimate excitement (such as attending a football game where the home team is victorious or, for that matter, by any other form of pleasant emotional stimulation) just as surely as it can by worry and unhappiness. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that the alcoholic has to learn to withstand success just as assuredly as he does misfortune, strange as this statement may seem. Many drunkards claim that they do not use alcohol as a refuge but as a means of celebration, and they are probably right as far as their conscious minds are concerned."

"When a man under pleasant emotional stimulation seeks narcotic escape from reality in the same manner as he does from unpleasant emotions is an interesting question but difficult to answer. My own theory is that a neurotic is unconsciously, and possibly consciously, afraid when his emotional equilibrium is disturbed, no matter what the quality of the disturbance may be. When he is in a state of euphoria (happiness) he evidently feels the need of a stabilizer to the same extent as he does in dysphoria (unhappiness). Just as he is bored when he loooks inward, so he is frightened when he looks outward, if the customary scene has changed even a little."

 

That these ideas, first promulgated by Baylor thirty years ago, have proved their validity down to the present time, is one of the interesting facts in the history of the lay therapist. Extensive quotations from ‘Peabody and Baylor appear in Alcohol, One Man’s Meat, by Edward A. Strecker, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, and Francis T. Chambers, Jr., a lay therapist, published in 1941.

 

The Emmanuel Movement

From PRIMER ON ALCOHOLISM,
by Marty Mann, 1950. Chapter 7, pages 105-107.

Belief in the possibility of recovery is growing apace today, but it had a slow and feeble beginning not so very long ago. In the years following the first World War, word got around in certain circles (mostly wealthy) that a man named Courtenay Baylor in Boston was having some success in treating alcoholics. He was not a doctor, nor a formally trained psychologist: he was what is called a lay therapist, and he worked in a clinic which was part of Emmanuel Church, the seat of the Emmanuel Movement. The methods he used were both psychological and spiritual, combining to re-educate the alcoholic to a life without alcohol; he described them fully in his book Remaking a Man, published in 1919. The Emmanuel clinic was for all kinds of nervous disorders, and did not specialize in alcoholism, so that there was no great flood of recoveries to startle the world. Nevertheless a little hope was generated, and some alcoholics got well. A start had been made.

 

on ebay Pete from Palmer writes this about a reprint of Remaking a Man he is selling:

PLEASE READ ENTIRE DESCRIPTION; .."REMAKING A MAN" BY COURTNAY BAYLOR...

A VERY,VERY HARD TITLE TO FIND: **

 REPRINT W/MUCH ADDED INFO AS TO THE BEGINNINGS OF "LAY THERAPY" WHICH IS IN MOST PART CREDITED TO THE "EMMANUEL MOVEMENT"

(COURTENAY BAYLOR WAS A MEMBER/DISCIPLE OF THAT MOVEMENT).

"LAY THERAPY" IS THE PRACTICE OF A NON-PROFESSIONAL THAT HAS EXPERIENCED SIMILAR PROBLEMS AIDING ANOTHER WITH A LIKE PROBLEM

(KIND OF SOUNDS LIKE AA DOSEN'T IT...DON'T BE SUPRIZED AS THIS IS PARTLY WHERE OUR PROGRAM EVOLVED FROM, AS RICHARD PEABODY AUTHOR OF "THE COMMON SENSE OF DRINKING" (MENTIONED IN OUR "BIG BOOK") WAS ONE OF COURTNAY BAYLORS PATIENTS/THERAPISTS....

 THIS COVERS MUCH EARLY HISTORY PRIOR TO AA IN TREATING ALCOHOLICS IN THIS MANNER AND THEN HAS THE REPRINT OF THE BOOK "REMAKING A MAN". ....

THIS BOOK IS ONE OF THE MOST IF NOT THE MOST SCARCE OF ALL THE "ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS" RELATED BOOKS.

 SO MUCH IS IT SCARCE THAT THE "COMPLIER"(HE SOBERED-UP IN MID-50'S) OF THIS INFO/DATA/ETC. WAS ABLE TO FIND ONLY "ONE" COPY AND THAT WAS AT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE(WHERE DR. BOB GRADUATED FROM).

I ON THE OTHER HAND HAVE ONLY SEEN "ONE" COPY AND IT WAS THE COPY THAT I OWNED AND THAT HAD BEEN A "PERSONAL" COPY OF COURTNAY BAYLOR. ....

.PLEASE BELIEVE ME, IT IS VERY RARE. THE PERSON WHO COMPILED THIS YEARS AGO SOLD ME AND ANOTHER COLLECTOR SEVERAL COPIES AND AFTER THE OTHER PERSON PASSED AWAY I ACQUIRED HIS COPIES..) . ....W/BEST REGARDS....PETE