Alcoholic Archetype

the archetype of *the Alcoholic* has *autonomy over all of the psychic functions*, which is why alcoholics tend to ‘do everything alcoholically,’ and why when they have a spiritual awakening it usually revolutionizes their entire life

Peterson identifies the Alcoholic Archetype as possessing total psychic sovereignty, explaining both the totalizing destructiveness of active addiction and the equally total transformation of genuine spiritual awakening.

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the archetype of *the Alcoholic,* whose transformative power we experience *consciously* for the first time when we finally utter out-loud words that spark an immediate expansion of spiritual consciousness---‘I am an alcoholic.’

Peterson argues that conscious verbal identification with the Alcoholic Archetype — the act of self-declaration — constitutes the pivotal moment of dis-identification from its archaic aspect and the beginning of individuation.

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anytime we seek a transformative spiritual experience induced through intoxication, whether that be through using psychedelics or some other intoxicant, we are channeling the power of the archetype.

Peterson extends the Alcoholic Archetype beyond literal alcoholism to encompass all intoxicant-mediated quests for spiritual transformation, including psychedelic use in post-Jungian therapeutic circles and the work of Michael Pollan.

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Alcohol in Latin is ‘spiritus,’ and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: *spiritus contra spiritum*.

Peterson cites Jung’s letter to Wilson to establish the paradoxical double-valence of spiritus as the structural and etymological foundation of the Alcoholic Archetype’s paradoxical image of wholeness.

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the mechanism in the mind that deludes the Anonymous Alcoholic into thinking he ‘will somehow, someday, control and enjoy his drinking’ is the same one that tricks all of us into believing that our ego is steering the ship

Peterson argues that the Alcoholic Archetype is universally human in its delusional structure, making the alcoholic’s drama a concentrated mythic expression of the ego’s false claim to sovereignty over the unconscious.

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in modern times the ancient energy of the shaman most often manifests through what I call the archetype of *the Alcoholic*. If indeed Jung unconsciously identified with *the archetype of the Alcoholic* by way of his relationship with Jaime

Peterson proposes that the Alcoholic Archetype is the contemporary form of shamanic energy, and speculatively attributes Jung’s own unconscious identification with it through his relationship with the alcoholic Jaime de Angulo.

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For active alcoholics, life without spirits is inconceivable, but a truly impossible dilemma arises when they can no longer imagine life with it either---the moment of metanoia, when the opposites of the *spiritus contra spiritum* paradox are activated

Peterson describes the critical psychic crisis — metanoia — as the moment the Alcoholic Archetype’s paradoxical opposites are activated simultaneously, collapsing the ego and opening the possibility of transformation.

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the modern alcoholics’ metamorphoses are aided through the keen sense of humor they adopt regarding som… Jung said that the antidotes of the Trickster, the stories of his journey into spiritual death and rebirth, leave us ‘to wonder what happened to his evil qualities.’

Peterson aligns the recovered alcoholic’s transformative narrative with the Trickster mythologem, identifying the communal storytelling of A.A. meetings as a ritual enactment of the archetype’s redemptive aspect.

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The correspondence between Wilson and Jung has added greatly to our understanding of the psychospiritual quandary in which the alcoholic is trapped, and that it is a byproduct of the spiritu

Peterson frames the Wilson-Jung correspondence as the foundational textual evidence for understanding alcoholism as a psychospiritual crisis that the Alcoholic Archetype both generates and, ultimately, resolves.

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There is actually not a very good track record of survival for humans who overidentify with the archetypes… This inflation certainly is a potential danger for alcoholics and addicted individuals, this narcissistic specialness

Schoen warns that archetypal inflation — overidentification with any archetype, including the Alcoholic — poses a specific danger to addicted individuals whose narcissistic structure makes them especially susceptible to possession.

Schoen, David E., The War of the Gods in Addiction: C.G. Jung, Alcoholics Anonymous and Archetypal Evil, 2020supporting

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in the early stages of alcoholism, alcohol is a magic elixir that immediately transports the alcoholic into a mystical realm… intoxication sufficiently quenches their intangible spiritual thirst

Peterson maps the phenomenology of early-stage alcoholism onto a genuine, if ultimately destructive, spiritual experience, establishing the Alcoholic Archetype’s initially numinous character before its devouring aspect emerges.

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Sometimes alcoholics and drug addicts, at their worst, do look and walk around like zombies of the living dead — drained of all their blood by the vampire addiction. You don’t negotiate with a vampire.

Schoen employs the vampire as a mythological analogue for the devouring dimension of addiction, complementing Peterson’s Alcoholic Archetype by casting archetypal evil as the possessing force that drains the alcoholic of vitality.

Schoen, David E., The War of the Gods in Addiction: C.G. Jung, Alcoholics Anonymous and Archetypal Evil, 2020supporting

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The alcoholic’s initial denial of limited dependence upon spiritual reality was revealed as intrinsically and ironically perverse when it issued in an absolute dependence upon alcohol that progressively destroyed hi

Kurtz articulates the paradoxical logic of alcoholic denial — the refusal of spiritual dependence generating absolute material dependence — which Peterson would later theorize as the structural mechanism of the Alcoholic Archetype.

Kurtz, Ernest, Not God A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, 2010supporting

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alcoholics and drug-addicts… are people who, as a rule, find it unbearable to exist without a functioning and reliable set of mythological symbols with which to contain the emergent energies of the unconscious

Peterson positions alcoholics and addicts as individuals whose archetypal sensitivity — their need for myth — makes them uniquely vulnerable to possession by the Alcoholic Archetype when adequate symbolic containers are absent.

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The importance of confronting and integrating the personal shadow in the addiction recovery process cannot be overemphasized. It literally takes up over half (seven) of the Twelve Steps of A. A.

Schoen emphasizes shadow integration as the core therapeutic work of A.A.’s Twelve Steps, connecting the Wounded Healer archetype’s activation to the same confrontation with archetypal darkness that Peterson associates with the Alcoholic Archetype.

Schoen, David E., The War of the Gods in Addiction: C.G. Jung, Alcoholics Anonymous and Archetypal Evil, 2020supporting

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in the fellowship of AA, persons are said to be alcoholic in personality whether they are drinking or not, and the alcoholic personality can return at any time in the form of a ‘dry drunk.’

Flores documents the A.A. conception of an enduring alcoholic personality independent of active drinking, a clinical intuition that depth psychology would later re-theorize as ongoing archetypal identification.

Flores, Philip J, Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations An, 1997aside

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for people like Jaime, the particular path that they take is the one that Fate has determined for them, that such a path might ultimately lead to enlightenment *if* one is willing to be as courageous going within as they have been plunging into the depths of a drug or alcohol induced trance

Peterson, drawing on Jung’s view of Jaime de Angulo, frames the alcoholic’s compulsive intoxication as a fateful, potentially initiatory path that the archetype enforces upon those with insufficient mythological containers.

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