Of Alcoholics and Psychologists

I am the only Molecular Biology and Psychology double major at my school. It is an unusual combination, and a combination that exposes me to the two forks of secularism. One is secularism’s bedrock—materialism. All of contemporary study in biology is materialistic; however, it is not so preoccupied with it (save Dr. Richard Dawkins). You can be a fruitful biologist without ever considering the philosophical underpinnings of the discipline. You can be a fruitful biologist weather or not you believe in spiritual things.

Psychology is another matter entirely. Contemporary psychology (believe it or not psychology grew out of Christian moral philosophy in the 19th century) is the enemy of any and all institutions that are epistemologically based on tradition. Psychology is the enemy of the spiritual. It seeks to explain away our humanness weather it claims to or not. This is why I am always taken aback when religious people accost me for being a molecular biology major. They hardly know that they have far more to fear from psychology. Molecular biology explains away the spritual while pyschology attacks it, and it does far more practical damage through its tenticles of feminism, sex-education and the like.

Let me give you an example. There are several methods for treating alcohol abuse and dependancy. One method, the least effective one, is to simply give an alcoholic a hard time, berate them, say they are weak and demand that they “quit.” This is a method that has been employed throughout time by many unhappy spouses (usually wives), friends and parents who were justifiably upset with the alcoholic’s behavior. Another, better, method that arose in the 1940s and 1950s to respond to the tide of alcoholic G.I.s coming back from WWII was Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). AA is the organization that stated the familiar twelve-step program.

STEP#1: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable."

The founders of AA were Christians, though they never made a big deal about it. As you will see, Christianity is intimately intertwined with the epistemology and principles of AA. This first step is analogous to the Christians admission that he is powerless over sin. The first step is to overcome denial and pride.

STEP#2: "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

This step is analogous to the Christians' belief in God and that only He can save man from sin.

STEP#3: "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."

This is analogous to handing your life over to Gods care. This is the action end of step #2.

STEP#4: "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves."

This is analogous to the examination of conscious conducted by Christians to prepare for confession.

STEP#5: "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

This is the confession of sins.

STEP#6: "Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."

This is analogous to having God’s grace come into your life.

STEP#7: "Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."

This is analogous to prayer among other things.

STEP#8: "Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all."

While this step is a bit out of order, it is analogous to penance or preparing amending your sins.

STEP#9: "Made direct amends
such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others."

Amending sins.

STEP#10: "Continued to take a personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it."

Spiritual warfare continues.

STEP#11: "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."

Piety.

STEP#12: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles."

Evangelization.

It continues to amaze me that professional psychologists complain about AA and convince their students that it is useless at best and is mostly harmful.

Their complaints are usually the following:

1. It is a religion
2. It is provincial/non-professional
3. It is sexist

The first criticism has always baffled me, and it accurately demonstrates most psychologists’ beliefs. Religion is a pejorative. No explanation of why being a religion makes AA bad is ever given. Religions are just bad. So being a religion, or religious, is bad. One of the most appealing features to me about AA is the fact that it is like a religion in that it is an institution based on traditions. When AA started, people contributed methods and techniques and approaches that worked. They compiled these into what is now known as the “Big Book,” which is sort of like a AA holy book in that people consult it, quote it and go to in when there are disputes over a matter. They do not believe it to be inspired. The root of AA is a belief in a God (or higher power) that can heal you. From there, the twelve steps developed into a full-blown quasi-sacramental system. At each step a practical action is taken and God helps you. This is effective psychologically because addictions are often not a matter of will power. People are so hopelessly addicted that the really need a higher power to overcome it, even if that higher power is nothing more than the AA group meetings. AA denies that it is a religion or religious, and AA even insists that the Higher Power can be non-spiritual, but this only arose following external criticism of the organization. It is denying its authentic roots when it does this in order to fit in or appeal to the faithless. Sadly actual religions (like various Christian churches) have done the same thing in the last fifty years.

The second criticism is hardly a criticism. It is basically myopia. Because non-professionals run all AA meetings and some are rather screwy, psychologists, who erect very dehumanizing and rigid standards for everything (think of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), get in a tizzy. You could criticize parents, friends or even the entire world for being this way. People are fallen. People screw up. Psychologists do too. Criticizing AA for being human is as silly as it sounds, and it shows most professional psychologists’ real colors. They don’t want an effective treatment method to arise that does not involve them getting paid. Psychologists’ own literature says, “AA has been one of the most successful treatment approaches for alcohol problems” (APA Task Force, 1989, p. 1096) and “is a successful adjunct to professional care” (Emrick et al., 1977, p. 120-161). What other explanation is there for their dislike of it? It works well with them and without them. They just down want competition.

If people believed that psychologists’ were really effective at what they did, they would go to them like they go to barber shops. We all have problems of psychological nature just like we all have problems with hair growing too long. Most psychologists get their money from the government either from grants or from the justice system forcing people to go to them.

I find the third criticism of AA almost funny, and it is a classic straw-man argument. Some psychologist who wants to fight the good fight against sexism gets up on a soap box and cherry picks some quotes from the Big Book like “To Wives: nagging and condemning your husband will not help. You are justifiably angry with him, but he needs your support. Do not condemn him.” This isn’t really even sexist, because it follows up the comment stating that sometimes this will apply to husbands with alcoholic wives, but when the Big Book was compiled in the 1950s, before women started acting like men (in this case, for worse) alcoholism was mainly a male problem. Essentially this is sound advice that is derided as “June Cleaver stuff.”

Professional psychologists also have effective, perhaps even more effective, methods for treating alcohol abuse and dependency. In fact a one-two punch of professional help followed by AA or similar organizations seems to be the best. But the fact remains that professionals cost money, and AA is free. Most people never get to the professional until a court forces them to go, and AA, in my opinion, “is doing the most good.”

I am disturbed by my fellow students who harbor irrational and intense animosities against AA and similar organizations like Al-Anon and Narcotics Anonymous, etc. They hate it because it cuts into their future earnings, but more importantly, they hate it because it acknowledges that there is a God, that there is a changeless human nature and that tradition can be an effective engine for human betterment. Psychologists, who get paid to write, would prefer to re-write a Big Book of their own every 25 years with all the “latest research.”

It is frightening that such people will be responsible for helping those of us most in need in the coming years. If you are a materialist, how can you love (or even want to help) the crack junkie wife/child-beater who needs to get over his addiction? There is nothing loveable about this person to a materialist. They are materially awful. But to a religions person they still have a soul and a fingerprint (it may be tiny) of God in them, and that makes them worthwhile.

Citations:

American Psychiatric Association Task Force on Treatments of Psychiatric Disorders (1989) A Task Force Report of the American Psychiatric Association. Washington, D.C., American Psychiatric Association.


Emrick C., Lassen, C. L. and Edwards, M. T. (1977) Nonprofessional Peers as
Therapeutic Agents in Effective Psychotherapy: A Handbook of Research. New York. Pergamon Press.