Printable Version
“The Psychic Change ala Robert Johnson”
When I entered treatment for alcoholism the second time, it was a wholly different experience than the first. I doubt very much that the treatment itself changed – the counselors and the lectures were all the same and the faces of the men in my group looked much like the others I had known before. But something was radically different now. My soul had started to make a shift. The change, that I now know was necessary for recovery to begin, was going on inside me. It had begun, as it nearly always begins: with an increase in pain brought about by my own post-treatment, destructive drinking and ensuing failures. This second time, it proved a pain of sufficient force to crack open the hardened shell that encases a self-centered soul like mine and constitutes the spiritual core of addiction. My façade had been broken and my psychic crumbling had begun. It made all the counselors around me very happy but I felt like hell.
Back then, I didn’t understand the process that was happening in my soul - and even today, after 35 years sober, I’m just beginning to realize what the “psychic-change” is all about. Our souls elude scientific observation. They can’t be weighed and measured and so scientists who limit themselves to observations recorded in a laboratory have all but given up trying to study them. Even priests and theologians, for fear of being branded “unenlightened” in our post-modern age, are reluctant to wade very deeply into the murky and mystical waters that surround the human soul. Today, much of that field has been left to the alcohol and drug counselors who are not afraid to venture in since they know that is the realm wherein their patients must experience the change that comes from “ego deflation at depth.” It’s the treatment tradition we inherited from a very brave soul named Carl Jung.
Back in the early 1930’s Carl Jung told one of his alcoholic patients Rowland Hazard that he could do no more to help him recover. He said he needed to go experience a “psychic change” or he would likely die from his condition. Now “psyche” is the Greek word for “soul” and Jung properly diagnosed Rowland’s “… craving for alcohol (as) the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God.”
Jung believed there was indeed: Hope for the hopeless addict! But Rowland would have to undergo a soul-change of the deepest order if he was to find it. Fortunately, both for him and for us, Rowland followed his analyst’s advice. He found the “psychic change” through the Oxford Group – the spiritual program of personal transformation that was the forerunner of A.A. Incidentally, the early OG members referred to themselves as “soul- surgeons!” Their program changed his soul just as surely as it has changed the souls of millions of addicts. As a matter of fact, rarely has a soul failed that has thoroughly followed his path!
So what exactly is the nature of this mysterious “psychic change” and how does an alcoholic or addict go about finding it. It’s all laid out in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous; but perhaps we’ve read those words so often, they’ve lost some of the power to shock and awaken our souls from their sleep. Now enter Robert Johnson. Johnson was a brilliant student of Jung’s and as I read his books I’m convinced they come about as close to describing the elusive soul-changing process as any I’ve ever found. He perhaps describes the process best in his work Transformation.
First, Johnson lists some of the men who dared venture inward and dive sufficiently deep into their psyches to find what the Big Book calls: “The Great Reality” within. For each, the journey was a painful and terrifying process but it is one that Johnson says each and every one of us is called to make. He writes, “Medieval Christianity called it the dark night of the soul; Dante called the journey through hell and purgatory; it was forty days and forty nights in the desert for Jesus; it was the journey in the belly of the fish for many a hero.”
Then he continues, “For modern man it is midlife crisis or, worse, a nervous breakdown; or still worse, physical suicide. The process can be summed up in one sentence (now listen closely to this): it is the relocating of the center of the personality from the ego to a center greater than one’s self.” There’s the shift! The words are almost verbatim from A. A.’s Step Two and for anyone in recovery the required direction the journey must take is unmistakable. The hopelessness that is our addiction must be felt and experienced by the alcoholic or addict in Step One – so that the shift in the soul can occur as the soul turns and journeys toward its only source of hope – a power greater than one’s self.
This shift is the soul’s movement from its position of self-centeredness to God-centeredness. This is wholly new territory for us addicts and arriving there in the awakening of Step 12 is what real recovery is all about. It is nothing short of a psychic or soul-change registered at the deepest level of our consciousness. But to any human ego undergoing this change, the journey feels like certain death. Johnson has the courage to name it exactly that. “The ego loses its supremacy and goes through a short time of violent suffering. And death it is.” Then, half-jokingly yet in all seriousness he writes: “When someone threatens suicide at this time, I caution him that he must do it without harming his body. The relocating of the center of the personality is a form of suicide, and it’s best done by the ego.”
When I entered treatment that second time I was assigned a counselor who understood recovery and the spiritual death and rebirth the journey demands. My first day in group, he introduced himself to me saying, “Hello, my name is Ted, I’m your counselor … and I’m going to kill you!” A counselor today would likely lose his license for saying this; but I gotta tell you, my soul jumped for joy at hearing his words! Maybe that was the shift I first felt 35 years ago. Finally, someone was going to help me kill the me that was killing me.
If you understood that last line you’ve traveled a long way on your own spiritual journey!