William James’s “Sick-Minded Soul” and the AA Recovery Paradigm: Time for a Reappraisal

Abstract

This article focuses on William James’s influence on Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), which arose 25 years after his death to dominate alcoholism treatment ever since as a lay organization. With its early leaders admiringly referring to James as AA’s “cofounder,” AA and the numerous 12-step programs it has spawned have generally enjoyed a favorable reputation among humanistic psychologists. However, the authors regard this reputation as reflexive and largely undeserved, rather than critically generated. For essentially AA’s originators selected and promulgated one particular paradigm in James’s multiarrayed approach to alcoholism—the “self-surrender of the sick-minded soul”—to the exclusion of all others. In this paradigm, the addicted individual descends into a state of utter despair and then experiences an epiphany leading to self-transformation. However, James never regarded this state—which Maslow later called the “nadir-experience”—as the only means to addiction recovery, but rather advocated a diversity of paths, reflecting the variability of human personality. In celebrating this centennial year James’s enduring legacy, it is time for humanistic clinicians to take the lead in moving beyond AA’s outmoded, “one-size-fits-all” approach to addiction recovery.