Here's part 1 of my interview with best-selling author, Thomas Moore, where we discuss alcohol, Carl Jung, dreams and spirituality.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Patricia Halligan:
Bill Wilson, the founder of AA wrote to Carl Jung in 1961 and said, "Thank you so very much, you helped me emphasize this need for a spiritual awakening among people with an alcohol problem." And I guess this is an interesting thing because Carl Jung identified this man's drinking as a yearning to be fulfilled, a search for emotional meaning, a search to feel alive, a search to feel connected. So it was less self-medicating than being a seeker of something spiritual in this alcoholic man, right?
Thomas Moore:
Yes. I could mention a dream of a client of mine from many years ago that I've written about. This woman was having trouble with alcohol and she presented a dream in which she was in a church — at the front of a church, where in some Christian churches there's a baptistry where babies get baptized, usually babies. And while she was standing there, an angel appeared. It kind of floated down from the sky and placed a martini on the baptistry on the baptismal fund.
And I thought that was a very key dream for this person that did exactly what you're talking about. It showed that what she is looking for in the alcohol is a spiritual alcohol. Whereas Jung might also say alchemical alcohol. That means not literal, a poetic kind of alcohol. But it's not the drink that you have, but that stands for, or poetically represents, something spiritual. So even though it would seem really contradictory for an angel to do this, it isn't when you look at it closely. It's that this is what alcohol is about. It is a spiritual matter. And if you're going to deal with it, you have to think of it more broadly.
Thomas Moore Bio:
Thomas Moore is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Care of the Soul. He has written 25 other books about bringing soul to personal life and culture, deepening spirituality, humanizing medicine, finding meaningful work, imagining sexuality with soul and doing religion in a fresh way.
In his youth he was a Catholic monk and studied music composition. He has a PhD in religious studies from Syracuse university and was a university professor for a number of years. Thomas is also a psychotherapist influenced mainly by Carl Jung and James Hilman.
In recent years, he has returned to his role as a non-aligned theologian, publishing his translation of the New Testament gospels, Writing in the Sand, Jesus' Spirituality and the Soul of Gospels and the Soul of Christmas.
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