http://oldweb.uwp.edu/academic/criminal ... cult01.htmIs Alcoholics Anonymous a Cult?
An Old Question Revisited
© L. Allen Ragels
All Rights Reserved
The ?alcoholism cult.? That?s what Sheldon Bacon, for many years the director of the Rutgers Center for Alcohol Studies, called overly avid supporters of Alcoholics Anonymous.[1]
Alcoholics Anonymous ? AA as it is generally known ? was started in the 1930s as a spinoff from the Oxford Group, a religious movement whose ideas were sometimes alleged to help chronic drinkers. With the aid and approval of key members of the power elite such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr., AA grew from an obscure idea to what many have come to regard as a national treasure: society?s premier (practically only) way of treating alcohol, drug, and related addiction problems. By now, AA certainly must have more than a million members, with groups organized in virtually every city, town, and village, along with numerous foreign countries. Moreover, AA?s core doctrine, the famous Twelve Steps, has been adopted by hundreds of parallel organizations with programs that address problems such as gambling, overeating, emotional troubles, and related family issues. Without question, AA and the Twelve Steps are among America?s most well known and revered institutions.
Nonetheless, assertions that AA may be a cult have been present from practically the beginning. Bacon?s chiding dates from the 1940s. By the 1960s, harsher evaluations had emerged. Evaluations that were absolutely meant to be taken quite seriously and literally. ?Why has AA become a cult that many men and women reverently call ?the greatest movement since the birth of Christianity??? AA critic Arthur Cain asked in 1963.[2] ?AA has become a dogmatic cult whose chapters too often turn sobriety into slavery to AA,? he alleged a year later.[3]
Cult or What?
Cain, a writer and psychologist whose skirmishes with AA were documented in national magazines such as Harper?s and the Saturday Evening Post, was perhaps the loudest, but not necessarily the first, to notice AA?s resemblance to an organized cult. ?We are struck by the sect or cult-like aspects of AA,? alcohologists Morris E. Chafetz and Harold W. Demone, Jr. observed in 1962. ?This is true in terms of its history, structure, and the charisma surrounding its leader, Bill W[ilson].?[4] Furthermore, Chafetz and Demone asserted that: ?In our opinion AA is really not interested in alcoholics in general, but only as they relate to AA itself.?[5]
Nor were Chafetz and Demone indisputably the first to take AA?s cult-like characteristics seriously. Nearly two decades earlier, in 1944, sociologist Robert Freed Bales noted ?potentially disturbing structural features of Alcoholics Anonymous.?[6] Features that, in the opinion of some, might suggest a cult mentality. Foreshadowing Chafetz and Demone, Bales found that AA had little appreciation for its individual members: ?it mattered little just who thought the thoughts, felt the sentiments, and performed the functions characteristic of the [group?s] structure,? he noted, ?as long as somebody did.?[7] The very perceptive Bales also saw how the charismatic quality of the Program would be retained beyond the inevitable passing of its founders. More than a quarter of a century before the death of Wilson, AA?s last surviving cofounder, Bales observed that, ?the ?magic? has been transferred to ?The Book,? Alcoholics Anonymous, apparently with a considerable degree of success.?[8]
In 1964, AA again faced the charge that it harbored covert cult-like attitudes when Jerome Ellison, writing for The Nation magazine, reiterated Cain?s analyses: ?Arthur H. Cain pointed out [AA?s] tendencies toward cultism and narrow orthodoxy that limited the fellowship?s therapeutic effectiveness.?[9] Ellison also quoted from letters to the editor inspired by the Cain critique: ?The fanatics who prevail in some groups seem bent on making AA into a hostile, fundamentalist religion,? one letter writer avowed.[10]
Writing in 1989, alcohologist and cult researcher Marc Galanter found that: ?From the start AA displayed characteristics of a charismatic sect: strongly felt shared belief, intense cohesiveness, experiences of altered consciousness, and a potent influence on members? behavior. . . . As in the Unification Church workshops, most of those attending AA chapter meetings are deeply involved in the group ethos, and the expression of views opposed to the group?s model of treatment is subtly or expressly discouraged.?[11]
