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William E. Swegan (“Sgt. Bill”) was the major spokesman for the psychological wing of early Alcoholics Anonymous—that group within the newborn A.A. movement of the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s which stressed the psychotherapeutic side of the twelve step program instead of the spiritual side. This book is Swegan’s major work, in which he lays out the psychiatric theories which formed the foundation of that variety of A.A. thought. He also talks about his association with Mrs. Marty Mann, Yev Gardner, E. M. Jellinek at the Yale School of Alcohol Studies, Bill Dotson (A.A. No. 3) and Searcy Whaley, in addition to recording his memories of the year he spent observing Sister Ignatia at wor...
The story of Father Ed Dowling, S.J., the Jesuit priest who served for twenty years as sponsor and spiritual guide to Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. An icy evening in December 1940 saw the first meeting of two extraordinary spiritual leaders. Father Ed said that the graces he received from meeting Bill Wilson were as great as those he had received from his ordination as a priest, and Bill in turn described encountering the Jesuit as being like a second conversion experience, where he could feel the transcendent presence of God filling the entire room with grace. The good priest taught Wilson about St. Ignatius Loyolas Spiritual Exercises, about the eternal battle betwee...
Father Ralph Pfau was one of AAs four most-published and most-formative authors (along with Bill Wilson, Richmond Walker, and Ed Webster) during the new movements earliest thirty years, during which it grew from only 100 members to almost 300,000. In the first ten years Pfau spent working to spread AA, he said I have traveled nearly 750,000 miles .... I have spoken before nearly two hundred thousand members of AA at retreats, meetings and conventions, and personally discussed problems with more than ten thousand alcoholics. He produced fourteen extremely popular books, called the Golden Books, under the pen name Father John Doe, along with other books and recordings. When he joined Alcoholic...
The stories of the first heroic black men and women who joined Alcoholics Anonymous, told wherever possible in their own words, recorded freely and frankly. The story begins with St. Louis (January 24, 1945); followed by Chicago (March 20, 1945), along with the factory and foundry towns which spread eastwards as suburbs. Later that same year (April 1945) came the story of Dr. James C. Scott, Jr., M.D., the black physician who founded the first black A.A. group in the nation¿s capital, and was the first black A.A. member to get his story in the Big Book. The book concludes with the story of Joe McQuany (March 10, 1962) of the Joe and Charlie tapes, the most famous black figure in A.A. History. The lives of thousands and thousands of alcoholics around the world were saved by listening to recordings of his careful page-by-page explanation of the message of the Big Book. The powerful spiritual messages of all these brave men and women struck the hearts of everyone who heard them speak.
An insightful, very readable book. The father of military alcoholism treatment tells about his own life and recovery from alcoholism, and describes how he set up the first officially sanctioned military treatment programs for alcoholics in the 1940s and 50s, when the Alcoholics Anonymous movement was first spreading across the United States. A survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he almost died after the war from his own out-of-control drinking. Using his own recovery as a guide, he persuaded the Air Force to appoint him full time to working with other alcoholics. The success story which he and psychiatrist Dr. Louis Jolyon West related in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1956 was di...
Victor C. Kitchen was a New York City advertising executive who wrote one of the Oxford Group's most important books. He also went to the same Oxford Group meetings as Bill Wilson, who later became the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is a book about A. A.'s roots in the Oxford Group, as seen through the pages of Kitchen's work. It explains how the key ideas, which the two movements shared, arose out of the evolution of the modern evangelical movement. The author begins with John Wesley's Aldersgate experience in 1738 and traces this understanding of the healing power of grace down to Kitchen's and Bill W's time, traversing en route the world of nineteenth century revivalism, the Kes...
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The Soul of Sponsorship explores the relationship of Bill Wilson, cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and his spiritual adviser and friend, Father Ed Dowling. Many might consider that such a remarkable individual as Bill Wilson, who was the primary author of AA literature, would be able to deal with many of life's problems on his own. Reading The Soul of Sponsorship will illuminate and answer the question of how Father Ed, an Irish Catholic Jesuit priest who was not an alcoholic, was able to be of such great help to Bill Wilson. Part of AA's Twelfth Step reminds us "to carry this message to alcoholics," and The Soul of Sponsorship illustrates how sober alcoholics still need the principles of ...