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ROWLAND
HAZARD
Part 1 of 2
NOTE BY GLENN C.
(South Bend, Indiana) -- What has now become the definitive account
of Rowland Hazard's life and role in the founding of A.A. is
contained in a recent book by Richard M. Dubiel, Professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, entitled *The Road to
Fellowship: The Role of the Emmanuel Movement and the Jacoby Club in
the Development of Alcoholics Anonymous,* Hindsfoot Foundation
Series on the History of Alcoholism Treatment (New York: iUniverse,
2004).
For more details
about the book see the Hindsfoot website at: http://hindsfoot.org
In my own view,
it is a book which should be read and studied in detail by anyone,
from this point on, who wishes to write about early A.A. history. It
gives us an incredible insight into the actual thought currents of
the period in American history during which A.A. was coming into
being -- it puts A.A. into historical context, in ways that we have
to understand in order to determine what was important to the
founders, and what the problems were which they were trying to solve
-- and which they in fact DID solve so well.
What follows is
an excerpt from Chapter 4 of that book, though without the copious
and detailed endnotes. Anyone wishing to do serious research on
Hazard needs to get a copy of the book and check through all of
those carefully.
Some of the more
important findings are that Rowland Hazard (who was a very busy
businessman in the United States) had no opportunity to see the
famous psychiatrist Carl Jung, who lived and worked in Switzerland,
except for a two month period (at most) in 1931, when Rowland and
other members of the Hazard family traveled around Europe for part
of the summer He did not join the Oxford Group and get sober
immediately after seeing Jung -- there is in fact no record of him
being involved with the Oxford Group until almost three years later.
He was hospitalized for his alcoholism in February and March of
1932, and totally incapable of carrying on business activities from
January 1933 until October 1934. He had recovered enough however to
come to Ebby Thatcher's rescue in August 1934 (along with two other
Oxford Groupers) when Thatcher was threatened with commitment to the
Brattleboro Asylum. After his rescue, Thatcher took to the program
of the Oxford Group with a good deal of enthusiasm. Three months
afterwards, Ebby then passed the message on to Bill W. in the
latter's kitchen in November 1934.
What is even
more important is that Rowland was under the care of the Emmanuel
Movement therapist Courtenay Baylor in 1933 and 1934. Although Carl
Jung might have planted a valuable seed a few years earlier, the
therapist who really got Rowland sober was Baylor.
The reason for
paying careful attention to Courtenay Baylor's role, is that the
only three groups in the United States during the first half of the
twentieth century which had any notable success in getting
alcoholics sober and keeping them sober, were the Emmanuel Movement
(where Baylor was a key leader), the closely associated Jacoby Club,
and Alcoholics Anonymous.
In spite of the
importance of the Oxford Group to A.A. beginnings, and the way it
shaped some of the phrasing of the Twelve Steps, and so on, the
Oxford Group all by itself had had no great success at all in
sobering up alcoholics. As long as Bill W. had only the Oxford
Group, he was still miserable and desperate a good deal of the time,
and hanging onto sobriety only by the skin of his teeth. Richmond
Walker, the author of *Twenty-Four Hours a Day,* managed to
stay sober in the Oxford Group for two and a half years (1939-1941),
but then went back to drinking again. It was only joining the Jacoby
Club-linked Alcoholics Anonymous group in Boston in May 1942 that
got Rich permanently sober. Dr. Bob was never able to stop drinking
at all, as long as the only thing he had was the Oxford Group.
Rowland Hazard
was able to get sober when he had both the Oxford Group people AND
the Emmanuel Movement therapist Courtenay Baylor working with him.
But he then stopped going to Baylor for counseling, and by 1936 was
back drinking once again.
The Oxford Group
clearly had PART of the vital answer to how alcoholics could stop
drinking, but one must also look at A.A. after the gradual split
from the O.G. started occurring, and at the Emmanuel Movement and
the Jacoby Club -- and what these latter three groups all had in
common -- in order to see what else in addition was necessary in
order to produce high success rates in treating alcoholism.
Prof. Dubiel's
book gives us an excellent account of the Emmanuel Movement (which
was linked strongly to the Episcopal Church and its spiritual
tradition), and is the only detailed research ever published on the
Jacoby Club, which was spiritually oriented but run by lay people,
and was even closer to A.A. in the way that it was organized and the
way it worked with suffering alcoholics.
But let me now
start excerpting from Prof. Dubiel's book, which explains things
much better than I can:
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CHAPTER
4
Rowland
Hazard and the Beginnings of A.A.
Rowland Hazard
III was a wealthy Rhode Island businessman who had become an
alcoholic, requiring hospitalization on more than one occasion. He
is well-known to the A.A. tradition as one of the Oxford Group
circle who rescued Ebby Thatcher and got him sober when Ebby was
threatened with commitment to the Brattleboro Asylum in August 1934.
Three months later, in November 1934, Ebby visited Bill Wilson, the
co-founder of A.A., and they sat in Bill's kitchen talking for hours
in the famous scene which is reported in the first chapter of *Alcoholics
Anonymous*. Ebby was the messenger to Bill W. of victory over
the alcoholic compulsion through a new spiritual way of life.
But even if Ebby
was the one who actually talked with Bill, Rowland Hazard is
recognized in the A.A. tradition as "the messenger behind the
messenger," and two things about him are normally highlighted: He
was a member of the Oxford Group, and he had been a patient of the
famous psychiatrist Carl Jung in Switzerland. In the traditional A.A.
version of the latter story, it was said that Hazard had been unable
to stop returning to the bottle in spite of extensive Jungian
therapy, until finally Jung told him that with alcoholics of his
type only a spiritual conversion of some sort, which would enable
him to radically remake and remold his inner spirit, would ever give
him freedom from his overwhelming compulsion to drink.
But there was a
third factor involved in Hazard's story, one that up until now has
been omitted in A.A. accounts of his role in their history. During
both 1933 and that especially crucial year 1934, he was also a
patient of the Emmanuel Movement author Courtenay Baylor, whose
contributions and methods were discussed in the previous chapter. So
early A.A. was influenced by the Emmanuel Movement from at least two
different sources. Bill W. read Richard R. Peabody's *The Common
Sense of Drinking*, which taught a secularized and
intellectualized version of the Emmanuelite methods (as was
explained in the previous chapter), but he was also in secondhand
contact (via Ebby) with Rowland Hazard and hence the ideas of
Courtenay Baylor, who taught something much closer to the original
spiritually based Emmanuel therapy as devised in 1906 by the Rev.
Elwood Worcester in the basement meetings he conducted in the church
he pastored in downtown Boston..
The discovery
that Rowland Hazard was deeply involved with Courtenay Baylor and
the Emmanuelite tradition in addition to his Oxford Group activities
was in fact only made quite recently. The present chapter will
discuss the way this new information can be documented in the Hazard
family papers which are preserved in the Rhode Island Historical
Society,. It will also attempt to sort out some of the perplexing
issues surrounding the story of Rowland's therapy with Carl Jung in
1931, because materials contained in that same archival source make
it clear that he was only in Europe from June to September of that
year as part of a Hazard family trip, and that the dates and places
given in the family's letters from that period would have given
Rowland two months at most to spend in Switzerland with Jung. In
fact, as will be seen, even that may be pressing the matter: Rick
Stattler at the Rhode Island Historical Society, who did the primary
research, sorting through all the family papers searching for
relevant items, has stated that he believes that Rowland would have
found it very difficult to have spent more than two weeks at most
talking to Jung in any great depth during that trip to Europe.
Rowland
Hazard III
Rowland Hazard
III was born in Peace Dale, Rhode Island, on October 29, 1881. (Bill
Wilson was born in 1895 and Dr. Bob Smith in 1879, so he was closer
to Dr. Bob's age, and fourteen years older than Bill W., who likely
seemed to him but a brash young man.) Rowland ("Roy") represented
the tenth generation of his family in Rhode Island. The first
American Hazard, Thomas, was born in 1610; he came over to the New
World after the British had begun settling in Massachusetts, taking
up his residence first in Boston, then the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Roy was the eldest of five children born to woolen manufacturer
Rowland Gibson Hazard and Mary Pierrepont Bushnell. Hazard graduated
from the Taft School in Waterbury, Connecticut, and Yale University
(1903) with a B.A. degree. He sang in the Glee Club and University
Choir and was a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity as well as the
Elihu Club.
After graduation
Hazard worked at family businesses in Chicago and Syracuse briefly,
then entered the woolen textile trade in Rhode Island, where he
joined the Peace Dale Manufacturing Company, which specialized in
woolen and worsted fabrics. The firm had been founded circa 1801 by
his great-great-grandfather and his great-grand-uncle, Rowland
Hazard and Joseph Peace Hazard respectively. He began work in the
wool-sorting department and worked his way up, eventually being
elected treasurer of the firm. The firm was sold in 1918.
Hazard served in
the Rhode Island state senate between 1914 and 1916 and spent World
War I as a captain in the Chemical Warfare Service of the Army.
Shortly after the war a number of family deaths left Hazard the
eldest member of his generation. In 1919 he effected a plan
originally formulated by his father and uncle and formed the Allied
Chemical and Dye Company. By 1920 he was a director and so remained
throughout his career. By 1921 Hazard had also joined the New York
banking firm of Lee, Higginson and Company and remained there until
1927. Throughout this period he remained active in Rhode Island
politics.
In the fall of
1927, Hazard went on a hunting expedition to Africa for big game and
specimens for American museums. He contracted a tropical illness,
and on his return to the United States in 1928 settled on the West
Coast. He established a ranch in southern New Mexico, at La Luz, and
shortly organized the La Luz Clay Products Company. He had
discovered substantial deposits of high-grade clay for the
manufacture of items ranging from roofing tiles to decorative urns
and vases. Upon establishing La Luz, he returned to the East Coast
to pursue other ventures. By 1931 he had transferred his residence
from Peace Dale, Rhode Island, to a family home in Narragansett,
Rhode Island, originally built in 1884 by his great-grand-uncle,
Joseph Peace Hazard, and known as Druid's Dream. "He also kept
residences intermittently at 52nd Street and other addresses in
Manhattan; in La Luz, New Mexico; at 'Ladyhill' in Shaftsbury,
Vermont; and at 'Sugarbush' in Glastonbury, Vermont."
In his later
years, following his move to Narragansett, Hazard served as the
executive vice president of the Bristol Manufacturing Company,
Waterbury, Connecticut, manufacturers of precision instruments. He
also served as a director of the Allied Chemical and Dye Company,
the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Company, and the Interlake Iron
Company. From 1935 to 1938 he was in a general partnership with the
New York brokerage house of Taylor Robinson Company, Inc. At one
point he was director of the old Merchants' Bank in Providence.
In 1910 Hazard
married Helen Hamilton Campbell, the daughter of a Chicago banker.
The couple were divorced on February 25, 1929, and remarried on
April 27, 1931, little more than a month before the trip to Europe
during which Hazard was supposed to have had his crucial encounter
with Carl Jung. Rowland and Helen had four children, Caroline C.,
Rowland G. III, Peter Hamilton, and Charles B. Of these four, it was
Charles who lived the longest, dying in 1995.
Rowland Hazard
III remains somewhat of a mystery, cloaked in a silence that was
partly a feature of his times and his class, but a silence that was
especially impenetrable because he left behind almost no extant
letters of his own. We have to read about his life for the most part
through the letters of other family members. In addition, much of
the information concerning Hazard's relationship with early A.A. is
anecdotal, very little of it documented.
On the surface,
Hazard's life is mirrored effectively in the descriptions of some of
the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel *The Great
Gatsby*, though Hazard was more like one of the East Egg crowd,
the established wealthy class, than the upstart Jay Gatsby himself.
When Fitzgerald (in a remark to Ernest Hemingway) spoke of the very
rich as being different from you and me, he might have been speaking
of the Hazard family and Rowland. Hazard moved from place to place
with apparent ease, tried his hand in this business and adventure
and then that. His success was seemingly always assured, his
position never tangibly threatened. His alcoholism was spoken of in
hushed terms, if mentioned at all. The information about exactly
where he was and when during his trips to Europe or Africa is vague
and not well documented.
And this has
bearing on the claim that has been long accepted: that Hazard met
with Carl Jung and was in therapy with him for an extensive period
of time ("over a year" in the version frequently seen in the later
A.A. tradition). Since Rowland's own letters are no longer in
existence, the correspondence between his mother and his brother,
Thomas Pierre Hazard, provide the bulk of what we do know about
"Roy," but they do not ever mention him going to Jung for
psychiatric treatment. This may have been a matter which he did not
fully share with his mother and brother, or they may have avoided
talking about it in their letters out of embarrassment that a member
of a family so solid and distinguished as theirs would need a
psychiatrist. But these letters do provide enough information about
where Rowland was during the period from 1930 to 1934 to make it
clear that the only opportunity he would have had to see the Swiss
psychiatrist Jung in Zurich in any kind of extensive fashion was for
a couple of months in 1931.
Hazard clearly
struggled with alcoholism throughout his life, even though mentions
of it in the letters are scant. It embarrassed the family and it
made them uncomfortable to acknowledge his drinking problem even to
other family members. We do know that he eventually became
acquainted with Ebby Thatcher, a friend of Bill Wilson's from their
days as classmates at the Burr and Burton boarding school. And we
know that Hazard's connection to A.A., that is, to Bill W., came
through his meeting Ebby and helping rescue him from commitment to
an asylum in August 1934.
Hazard
and Courtenay Baylor
Whatever his
relationship to Jung -- an issue which will be discussed in more
detail later in this chapter -- Rowland Hazard had considerable
involvement with Courtenay Baylor, establishing a direct link
between the Emanuel Movement and the formation of Alcoholics
Anonymous. The documentation of Hazard's treatment by Baylor is
contained in the list of Hazard family documents prepared by Rick
Stattler.
The relationship
between Hazard and Baylor, though provable, is lacking in detail:
ample evidence at the Rhode Island Historical Society documents that
Hazard was a client or patient of Baylor during 1933 and 1934. The
Hazard family papers also show that after January 1933, Rowland went
through a long period when he was virtually incapacitated by his
personal problems. He ceased being actively involved in the ventures
he had begun in New Mexico, and his brother-in-law Wallace Campbell
had to take over all his regular business. Rowland's canceled checks
showed only routine payments (although they were still signed by
him) for many months afterward. Finally in late 1933 he completely
stopped writing any checks at all. During most or all of this
period, he seems to have been in Vermont under the care of Courtenay
Baylor, and only occasionally made trips to New York to see family
and sign checks. He was unable to return to his normal high level of
activity until October 1934.
So the period
when Hazard was Courtenay Baylor's patient corresponded to the
deepest slump in his life, the time between January 1933 and October
1934, when this normally aggressive and continuously active
businessman, industrialist, and entrepreneur seems to have been
rendered almost totally nonfunctional by his psychological and
alcohol-related problems.
Baylor may in
fact have been first called in when Hazard was hospitalized for his
alcoholism in February and March of 1932, but this would be merely
supposition. We do know that Baylor visited the family and worked in
some fashion with other family members also during 1933 and 1934.
But the lack of full detail means that though we know that their
continuing relationship existed during this period, we know little
else about it. The available documents thus do not allow us to
discover whether Hazard's enthusiasm for the Oxford Group was aided
by his work with Baylor or diminished by it. We do know that Hazard
did not remain sober throughout his life, and did drink again after
1934.
The first
mention of Baylor in the surviving family documents occurs in a list
of acquaintances compiled by Hazard on April 13, 1933. Hazard was
attempting to sell maple syrup from his farm in Vermont and a "C.
Baylor" is listed. According to Stattler's notes, Baylor responded
but did not order syrup. The next reference to Baylor occurs on July
24, 1933, when his mother writes to Thomas Hazard from
Vermont: "Mr. Baylor just arrived. Am to have a talk with him today,
Roy goes to N.Y. and Baylor will go to Burlington tonight and come
back here tomorrow." The first therapeutic contact, as mentioned
previously, may of course have arisen much earlier, and may have
been related to Hazard's hospitalization for alcoholism in February
and March 1932. Perhaps the severity of that episode triggered a
serious recovery effort on Rowland's part, or caused his family to
call in Baylor for an intervention. But this must be conjecture. And
it is also possible that Baylor may not have become involved in
trying to help until after Rowland's further breakdown in January
1933.
Of the fourteen
letters in the RIHS material pertaining to Baylor, most concern
bills from him paid by Thomas Hazard. As Stattler summarizes, "It
collectively indicates that Hazard hired Baylor from at least
December 15, 1933 to October 16, 1934 for unspecified services"
There is also reference to the fact that Baylor worked with the
entire family, not simply on a personal basis with Hazard alone. In
one letter (November 20, 1934), Thomas Hazard wrote: "Inasmuch as
throughout 1933 and 1934 you were working with Helen, Carol and
Rowley as well as Roy, it seemed to me that it would be proper to
estimate that one-third of your remuneration could be considered as
a gift to my brother."
Baylor seemed to
have become rather a part of the family in some ways. While brother
Thomas was signing checks, he was also a potential business partner,
or so it seemed in Baylor's eyes. On Feb. 2, 1934, Baylor sent
Thomas Hazard a long letter detailing the opportunity to buy into a
Nevada gold and silver mine. Baylor referred to the deal as one
which he believed to be as "clean a proposition as could be found in
mining." Thomas checked this out with business friends who advised
him against the deal. On February 13, Thomas's secretary curtly
informed Baylor that "Mr. T. P. Hazard has directed me to advise you
that all the individuals have been heard from, in connection with
your letter, and are not in favor of going into the venture." The
letter concludes with a reference to an Internal Revenue tax matter
covering payments to Baylor by Hazard's mother.
The RIHS packet
of Hazard-Baylor letters concludes with a rare document of Emmanuel
Movement history. In 1949 a letter was written to Thomas Hazard at
Peace Dale, the family home, by the Courtenay Baylor Memorial
Committee, so indicated by the letterhead. The letter is a request
for donations for a memorial to Baylor, consisting of lighting
fixtures at the entrance of the Parish House of the Emmanuel Church.
They were to be wrought-iron lanterns, "one to be fixed to the
outside of the Parish House entrance, and the other to be placed
inside the entrance porch. A dedicatory inscription will be carved
into the stone wall of the porch." The author of the letter preceded
this description with the comment that "the idea [of the lighting]
is a particularly happy one as it is symbolic of the light shed by
him on the paths of so many people."
The bills from
Baylor to Hazard document the continued existence of the Emmanuel
Movement, renamed the Craigie Foundation, as manifested in Baylor's
work. The full nature of the foundation's activities during this
time are not easy to document. The bills do not explicitly specify
that Baylor was paid this money for treating Hazard for his
alcoholism, but it is difficult to see anything else Baylor could
have provided them for which payments of this sort would be due.
Baylor knew that
a person had to rethink and reformulate himself, that is, "remake
himself," if he were to escape from alcoholism. Attempting to bring
this message to a person of Rowland Hazard's stature and
accomplishments could only have been a vexing task.
Just how Baylor
related to the rest of the Hazard family raises questions the
surviving documents cannot answer. Baylor believed "every alcoholic
came from what might be called an alcoholic or neurotic atmosphere"
and that "we can hardly expect a patient to become or stay cured if
he must remain in an environment which has in all probability
contributed to his own abnormal nervous condition. This environment
must in its turn be 'cured.'" So in terms of Baylor's normal
methodological assumptions, it would make sense if, in the process
of attempting to treat Rowland for his alcoholism, he also made some
efforts to change the way the other members of his family interacted
with one another. Nevertheless, given the accomplishments and
self-confidence of the Hazard family as evidenced by their letters
to one another, it is difficult to believe that Baylor would have
remained a popular guest if he had pushed too hard on the other
members of the family to change their ways also. Hazard's mother in
particular does not appear to be the type of person who would take
kindly to the suggestion that she too needed to be cured.
Hazard was also
participating in the Oxford Group during this same period. The
earliest reference in the Rhode Island Historical Society collection
is a letter from Thomas P. Hazard to his mother in February of 1934
which refers to Rowland as being a member of the Oxford Group, but
he could in fact have joined them much earlier.
Whether from his
therapy with Courtenay Baylor or his participation in the Oxford
Group (or both combined), Rowland Hazard was ultimately apparently
able to achieve at least significant periods of continuous sobriety;
whether he achieved real serenity and happiness we cannot know.
A linked chain
did however exist, starting with the Rev. Elwood Worcester at
Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Boston, and linking him to Courtenay
Baylor, who in turn worked with Rowland Hazard during the years 1933
and 1934. Hazard in turn was linked, through Ebby Thatcher, to Bill
Wilson at the decisive moment at the beginning of the A.A. movement.
Hazard also knew the people at Calvary Church in New York, where
Bill W. started going in 1934 for further spiritual help with his
alcoholism. So he definitely moved in the same orbits as the early
members of A.A. and was present during the time period when Bill W.
was first getting sober.
How and to
what degree Hazard influenced events must remain more conjectural,
beyond a few bare bones facts such as his major role in helping to
rescue Ebby Thatcher and get him sober in August 1934. Nevertheless
A.A. historians must take seriously not only his continual and
important presence behind the scenes during that key period, but
also the possible ways that he could have been of major influence.
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NOTE BY GLENN C. (South Bend, Indiana) -- Excerpted from Richard M. Dubiel,
*The Road to Fellowship: The Role of the Emmanuel Movement and the
Jacoby Club in the Development of Alcoholics Anonymous,* Hindsfoot
Foundation Series on the History of Alcoholism Treatment (New York:
iUniverse, 2004), Chapter 4, "Rowland Hazard and the Beginnings of A.A."
See
http://hindsfoot.org for more
details.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hazard and
Jung
Ernest Kurtz's definitive history of A.A. regards Hazard as instrumental
in one of the four founding moments of Alcoholics Anonymous, the point
where Bill W. learned from Ebby Thatcher about what Carl Jung was supposed
to have told Hazard, that is, that alcoholics could not recover without
some sort of spiritual conversion. Bill W. interpreted this kind of
conversion experience as necessarily involving a major ego deflation.
"One-half of the core idea -- the necessity of spiritual conversion -- had
passed from Dr. Carl Jung to Rowland. Clothed in Oxford Group practice it
had given rise to its yet separate other half -- the simultaneous
transmission of deflation and hope by "one alcoholic talking to another"
-- in the first meeting between Bill and Ebby."
Kurtz quotes Bill W.'s own words on this issue (where the "Oxford Group
friend" is of course Rowland Hazard):
"Deflation
at depth, yes that was it. Exactly that had happened to me. Dr.
Carl Jung had told an Oxford Group friend of Ebby's how hopeless his
alcoholism was and Dr. Silkworth had passed the same sentence upon me.
Then Ebby [Thatcher], also an alcoholic, had handed me the identical
dose."
Carl Jung (along with the American psychologist William James) was
frequently cited by Bill W. and the early A.A.s as a way of legitimizing
their emphasis on the spiritual dimension of recovery. For James, religion
embodied a perfectly valid kind of experience, one that could be studied
and said to have its own objective reality. It could be demonstrated that
certain kinds of religious experiences could produce extraordinary life
changes. For Jung, religion was a way of expressing in symbolic fashion
certain key components within the human psyche, using archetypal images
which were part of the makeup of all human minds at the unconscious level.
This material had to become integrated at the conscious level, he stated,
to produce full mental health.
Conventional psychiatry by itself could not bring freedom from the
alcoholic compulsion to a certain type of chronic alcoholic, as Bill W.
had heard the story of what Jung told Hazard. So as Bill interpreted what
he believed to be Jung's opinion, he saw this at first as a decree of
hopelessness just as severe as the one imposed on him by his own American
psychiatrist William D. Silkworth. The psychiatrists, even the best in the
world, could not help a certain kind of chronic alcoholic by conventional
psychiatry. But Jung had said to Hazard, according to the story Bill had
been told, that a real spiritual conversion could provide the power to
stop drinking.
So
conversion then became the only hope. This necessity of conversion became
a key ingredient in the formation of A.A. For the history of A.A., the
connection with the ideas of Carl Jung was extremely important in this
way, and in a variety of other ways also. Kurtz goes into considerable
depth on this matter, including long discussions of the way Bill W.
regarded Jung (and William James too) and appropriated their material.
All
these observations remain valid. Carl Jung stated in a letter to Bill W.
many years later that the A.A. understanding of his theory of alcoholism
was in fact correct, and those who have studied Jungian psychiatry can
easily see how that understanding fits smoothly into his overall
theoretical structure. Jung praised the A.A. movement in that letter and
indicated that he wholeheartedly approved of their approach. But the fact
is that there was at the very least a considerable exaggeration of the
length and depth of Rowland Hazard's contact with Carl Jung in
Switzerland. Part of the Hazard-Jung story, as recounted in later A.A.
sources, was clearly more legend than historical reality.
The
Traditional Account of Hazard's Therapy with Carl Jung and Its Influence
on A.A.
The
official story regarding Hazard goes something like this, as stated by
Bill's early biographer Thomsen and quoted by later A.A. historians. The
story begins with the assertion that Hazard "wound up in Zurich, a patient
of Carl Jung," and that he worked with him in therapy of some sort for
"over a year." This was supposed to have happened in 1931. Hazard
apparently thought that he had seen the depths of his unconscious and
understood himself to the extent that he could rest easily in a sober
life. According to the basic Bill W. biography, Hazard then left Zurich
but soon found himself drunk once again. He returned to Zurich and once
more sought the counsel of Jung. At this time the psychologist told Hazard
that he was hopeless in his alcoholism, insofar as conventional psychiatry
was concerned, and that religious conversion seemed the one hope for such
cases.
After this second meeting, Hazard is said to have discovered the Oxford
Group and to have begun to flourish in the program it provided. Hazard
then came to Ebby Thatcher's rescue in August 1934 when Thatcher was
threatened with commitment to the Brattleboro Asylum. The intervention of
Hazard, along with Cebra G. and another Oxford Group member, Shep C., was
apparently fortuitous. The three members happened to be vacationing at a
summer home near Bennington when they heard of the impending commitment.
So they decided there on the spot to make Thatcher a "project."
After his rescue, Thatcher took to the program of the Oxford Group with a
good deal of enthusiasm. Their zeal and evangelical fervor appealed to
him, granting him an extended period of sobriety. Three months after the
Oxford Group people had saved him from the insane asylum, he passed the
message on to Bill W. in the latter's kitchen in November 1934. The
standard A.A. tradition regards this as the context in which Ebby told
Bill W. the story about Rowland Hazard and Carl Jung. And then, according
to the time-honored story, the account of what Jung had told Hazard
continued to sit and ferment in Bill W.'s mind, and was one of the more
important things that Bill learned from Ebby in that meeting in his
kitchen in November 1934.
The
importance of Jung to Bill W. is not in doubt. But the detailed account
given for many years by A.A. people of Rowland Hazard's activities from
1931 to 1934 clearly contained some legendary elements. Hazard could not
conceivably have seen Jung for more than two months, perhaps less, in
1931. There is no evidence in the Hazard family papers that he joined the
Oxford Group at that point. In fact, the earliest documentary evidence of
him being a member did not appear until February 1934, six months before
he helped rescue Ebby Thatcher from the asylum. Although this does not
mean that he could not have joined the Oxford Groupers much earlier, all
our evidence so far of any deeply committed involvement on his part in
that group's activities comes from 1934. Furthermore, we have now
considerable evidence of Hazard's contact with the Emmanuel Group author
Courtenay Baylor during 1933 and 1934, presumably as Baylor's patient,
which is a key factor which was left out of the traditional A.A. legend.
So
to understand the actual role which Rowland Hazard may have played in the
development of early A.A., it will be necessary to go beyond the legend
and see what the Hazard family papers reveal of what may or may not have
actually happened.
The Problems
with the Traditional Account of the Hazard-Jung Contact
Two
scholars, Rick Stattler and William L. White, have recently investigated
Hazard's role in the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, in part by
examining materials at the Rhode Island Historical Society (RIHS) in
Providence. This author likewise examined selected Hazard material at the
RIHS, focusing largely on Hazard's connection with the Emmanuel Movement,
but also reading materials discovered by Stattler which might pertain to
the Carl Jung question. Scholars must be warned that the nature of these
papers means that many important questions still cannot be answered. They
give us evidence which is in many ways partial and sometimes frustrating.
In
recent correspondence with the author, Rhode Island Historical Society
Manuscripts Curator Rick Stattler summarized the findings of a 1998
research project which endeavored to document Hazard's whereabouts during
the period 1930-1934. Stattler's scholarship as summed up in this letter
and seen in an accompanying six-page document list (1930-1934) is thorough
and germane to the subject at hand: Hazard's involvement with Courtenay
Baylor.
Stattler himself best summarizes his main point: "I can state with
confidence that Rowland Hazard did not undergo any counseling in Zurich
for more than a couple of months between 1930 and 1934. I can also state
that the records examined, which are very suggestive on other matters, do
not so much as hint at any treatment by Dr. Jung, at least not as I have
interpreted them."
The
Stattler letter is accompanied by a document list, an annotated list of
letters from the Hazard Family Papers between 1930-1934. The letters
either place Hazard in a specific locale or refer in some way to his
alcoholism. The letters verifying his 1931 trip to Europe also
substantiate Stattler's claim that "there is no way he could have spent an
extended period in Europe between 1930 and early 1933; he was intimately
involved in several business ventures in New York and New Mexico." When he
did visit Europe from June to September of 1931 he was with his wife and
children. Stattler adds: "it seems very unlikely that he could have spent
more than a couple of weeks in Zurich." This author examined the letters
on Stattler's document list and can attest to the reasonableness of
Stattler's conclusions. The letters during the 1931 trip do in fact give
the feel of a family adventure. In one such letter Hazard's mother, Mary,
writes to his brother Thomas from Florence, Italy, wondering if Roy
(Rowland) won't bring her LaSalle automobile over when he arrives so she
can take it to England. When the itinerary is discussed in several places,
a familial feeling pervades, at least in the heart of the mother. There is
an expectation that all the family members will be in contact and will
meet at some point
Examining the family correspondence, however, still leaves a few mysteries
during the overall period that ran from 1930 to 1934. In a March 9, 1930,
letter to Thomas, the mother asserts: "I think Roy has had a spiritual
awakening which makes him ready to do anything which he feels incumbent
upon him. That is why I think those about him should try to prevent a
sacrifice which is not to the best good of all." She recognizes his
vulnerability at this point, particularly with regard to his ex-wife At
that time he would have been considering remarriage to Helen after their
divorce a year earlier. The point is that this spiritual awakening would
have been in advance of meeting Dr. Jung or being introduced to the Oxford
Group or any contact that we know of between him and Courtenay Baylor.
What was this awakening? At this point we do not know.
A
second mystery surfaces in letters written on February 3, 5, and 13 of
1933, in which his mother mentions Roy's "successes" with a "patient" and
later refers to other "patients," presumably while he was in Vermont. The
"patient" could not have been Thatcher at this point, since Hazard and
Cebra did not carry out their intervention with him until August 1934. Was
Hazard attempting to be like Baylor, emulating his own doctor and trying
to take on patients himself as a lay psychotherapist? This would be
interesting in itself since the first actual documentation on any
connection between Hazard and Baylor does not occur until December 15,
1933, ten months later. But as has been noted, there is the possibility
that Baylor may have first been called in when Hazard was hospitalized for
his alcoholism in February and March of 1932, so his apparent attempts to
play lay psychotherapist in early 1933 could have occurred under Baylor's
influence. There are no other mentions of this practice in the
collections, so the references to Hazard having "patients" of his own in
early 1933 remain a mystery.
It
is important to note that these investigations do not conclude that Hazard
had no contact with Jung. It is possible that the two had a brief
encounter, and that it was of such a force that the meeting turned into a
legend which, in the retelling, was expanded into the tale of a course of
extensive psychotherapy that soon encompassed a full year or more. The
news from Jung that so impressed Bill Wilson might also have affected
Hazard in a similar manner; such is the nature of "good news." Apostles,
stricken as they are with the revelatory nature of the message, are more
interested in passing the message along than in documenting times and
dates. And so it may have been with Hazard and Jung. A cynical interpreter
would also note that alcoholics tend by their nature to exaggerate and
boast and inflate the stories which they tell. Such is the nature of the
disease.
The
Correspondence between Bill W. and Carl Jung
On
January 23, 1961, Bill Wilson wrote a letter to Carl Jung referring to the
psychiatrist's encounter with Rowland Hazard thirty years earlier, and on
January 30, 1961 Jung wrote him back [*"Pass It On" The Story of Bill
Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached the World* (New York:
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1984), 381-6]. Jung said that he
remembered working with Hazard, and that Bill's account of what he told
Rowland at that time was "adequately reported" and completely correct.
[In
recent correspondence with the author, Glenn F. Chesnut, Indiana
University South Bend, noted:] Jung's letter also gives the only perhaps
potentially deep insight we could possess into Hazard's personality and
character. The psychiatrist seemed, on the basis of his remarks in his
letter to Bill W., to have had other experience in trying to work with
alcoholics, and made the interesting observation in that letter that the
kind of spiritual conversion he was referring to when he spoke to Hazard
could take one of three forms. It could be produced by "an act of grace,"
but Hazard, the hardheaded businessman, apparently had too many mental
blocks in place to ever allow himself to have anything like the vision of
divine light, for example, which Bill W. experienced in the Charles B.
Towns Hospital not long after his meeting in the kitchen with Ebby
Thatcher, or any equivalent to that sort of spiritual experience.
Conversion could also be produced, Jung said in his letter to Bill W.,
"through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere
rationalism," but the pragmatic industrialist and banker Hazard did not
seem to have had any ability to explore the Jungian interpretation of
religious ritual and art in a way which would involve the deeper feeling
levels. Hazard's mind apparently was too prosaic for that.
But
a spiritual remaking could also be produced, Jung commented, "through a
personal and honest contact with friends," that is, through joining in a
fellowship of people who were attempting to lead the spiritual life and
then becoming totally immersed in the activities of that group. And on the
basis of what Bill W. had reported in his letter, Jung said that he
believed that Rowland had chosen that way, "which was, under the
circumstances, obviously the best one." Fellowship among recovering people
-- that vital part of both the Emmanuel Movement method and the Oxford
Group's practices -- had been the only one of these threes routes through
which a man like Rowland Hazard could be reached and freed from his
alcoholic compulsion.
The
Rhode Island Historical Society material requires us to regard part of the
later A.A. account of the meeting between Rowland Hazard and Carl Jung as
legendary expansion. Whatever specific conclusion a reader of those
documents might reach, their contents cannot be simply ignored. Yet we
also have this 1961 letter from Carl Jung affirming that he had in fact
had some sort of significant contact with Hazard thirty years earlier, and
that the A.A. account of what he had told the Rhode Island businessman at
that time was substantially correct. And it seems unquestionably the fact
that Jung came into the thinking of the A.A. founders in 1934, and exerted
a profound influence on their ideas during the years following.
Additional
Emmanuel Movement Influence on A.A.: the Emphasis on Fellowship
Hazard's later years seem to have been prosperous enough, although he
never did join Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1936 he became a member of the
Episcopal Church and remained active in several of its organizations.
Throughout the latter part of his troubled life, Hazard relied on the
fellowship of the Oxford Group (including activities such as his work with
Ebby Thatcher in 1934) to aid and comfort him in his struggle with
alcohol. It was fellowship that helped him even toward the end of his
life, when he was being returned to New York after his 1936 binge. The
comment Carl Jung made in his letter to Bill W. seems to have been
correct, that a saving encounter with the healing quality of the spiritual
life could in fact be brought about "through a personal and honest contact
with friends," and that this route had been "obviously the best one" for
someone of Rowland Hazard's personality.
It
was fellowship between recovering people that was a vital part of the
approach which the Emmanuel Movement and its offshoot, the Jacoby Club,
began developing in 1906-1909. We do not know whether Courtenay Baylor was
one of the people who was encouraging Hazard to participate in the
activities of the Oxford Group in 1934, but since Hazard lived at a great
distance from Boston where Emmanuel Episcopal Church and the Jacoby Club
were located, the Oxford Group could have appeared to Baylor as a useful
alternative to suggest to the businessman.
Fellowship with recovering alcoholics was also one of the most important
features of the A.A. method of freeing people from the compulsion to
drink. There have been voices to the contrary: Linda Mercadante, in her
book *Victims and Sinners*, claims that the original intention of
A.A.'s founders was to have the Big Book the central point of recovery.
She insists that "meeting attendance was not seen as 'vital to sobriety.'"
In her analysis, the rise of meetings was accidental, more or less an
afterthought that later took over the very character of the movement. This
seems a very strained interpretation. While it is true that the Big Book
was seen as the central point, capable of evoking reverence both then and
now, this does not diminish that fact that fellowship, the idea of one
drunk helping another, sprang forth almost immediately as one of the key
ingredients in the movement. A person cannot get sober alone: this became
an axiomatic and vital A.A. tenet. Fellowship became indistinguishable
from the movement itself. This was a situation in which one could not tell
the dancer from the dance.
Rowland Hazard's own personal experiences made the importance of
fellowship clear to the early A.A. people who knew him. And he was a
patient of Courtenay Baylor, who came out of the fellowship-oriented
Emmanuel Movement tradition. Rowland himself was very active in 1934 in
the Oxford Group, which was a strongly fellowship-based spiritual program,
and as a result of this, seems to have recovered from his almost two-year
total breakdown and returned to his normal business activities by October
of that year.
Although Hazard did not get along with Bill Wilson and the other early
A.A.s, never joined an A.A. group, and may not have even liked its
program, the fact is that he knew from personal experience the power of
the fellowship he had seen, felt, and witnessed in other contexts. And he
must have had some sort of influence on early A.A.s who knew about him,
whether at first or second hand.
Could one imagine that some small portion of the power of the early
Emmanuel meetings, held by Elwood Worcester in the church basement in
Boston back at the beginning of the century, was somehow carried through
time and was conveyed to Hazard by Courtenay Baylor when he ministered to
and influenced him in 1933 and 1934? We cannot know. But it is clear that
behind Ebby Thatcher, the messenger who brought the word of salvation to
Bill Wilson in the kitchen of Bill's apartment in November 1934, lay the
figure of Rowland Hazard III, the mysterious messenger behind the
messenger.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTE BY GLENN C. (South Bend, Indiana) -- Prof. Dubiel backs up his
account with a set of detailed endnotes, which have been omitted from this
brief excerpt from his book, except for one of the notes, which is
important to cite.
There he talks about the actual dates of Rowland Hazard's involvement in
the Oxford Group, as nearly as we can reconstruct this: "Rowland's
membership and active participation in the Oxford Group is well-documented
in family correspondence. See the letter from Mary P. B. Hazard to Thomas
P. Hazard dated 25 February 1934 in the Thomas P. Hazard Papers; and the
letters from Thomas P. Hazard to Mary P. B. Hazard dated 14 February and
28 March 1934 in the Rowland G. Hazard II Papers, both in the Manuscripts
Collection, RIHS."
What is especially important to observe in this set of dates is that there
is no indication that Rowland Hazard joined the Oxford Group immediately
after talking with Carl Jung in 1931. Or at any rate, references to his
involvement in the Oxford Group do not appear in any documents now known
until almost three years later. The later statements by various A.A.
members purporting to show that Rowland saw the light and joined the
Oxford Group within a few days or weeks after seeing Jung and never drank
again (often accompanied by what looks like an amazing amount of detail)
seem to be on the whole totally legendary. In fact, the later A.A. oral
traditions about Rowland Hazard, for some unknown reason, seem to show
more in the way of free-floating creative imagination and pure invention
than almost any other part of early A.A. history!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SELECTED REFERENCES FROM PROF. DUBIEL'S ENDNOTES
Winfield Scott Downs, *Men of New England*, vol. 4 (New York:
American Historical Co., 1947).
"Rowland Hazard Dead in 65th Year," *Providence Journal*, 21
December 1945.
Steve Dalpe and Rick Stattler, "A Guide to the Rowland Hazard III Papers,"
Rhode Island Historical Society, 1999.
Letter from Rick Stattler (Rhode Island Historical Society Manuscripts
Curator) to Richard M. Dubiel, 8 September 2003.
Courtenay Baylor, *Remaking a Man: One Successful Method of Mental
Refitting* (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1919).
Ernest Kurtz, *Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous* (Center
City, MN: Hazelden, 1979).
*Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age*
(New York: A.A. Publishing, Inc., 1957).
R.
Thomsen, Bill W. (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).
*"Pass It On" The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached
the World*
(New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1984).
Letter from Glenn F Chesnut, Professor of History, Indiana University
(South Bend), to Richard M. Dubiel, 17 October 2003.
Linda A. Mercadante,
*Victims and Sinners: Spiritual Roots of Addiction and Recovery*
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996).