Do you need to believe in a higher power to benefit from a 12-step program?

We trace this idea back to Carl Jung and find new research that gives solace to those with a more

secular worldview.

Welcome to the Carlyte Psychiatry Podcast, keeping psychiatry honest since 2003.

I'm Chris Aiken, the editor-in-chief of the Carlet Psychiatry Report.

And I'm Kelly Newsom, a psychiatric MP and a dedicated reader of every issue.

Last week, we rode on some fanciful ways, as we looked at the psychotic-like symptoms

and religious conflicts

that brought Carl Jung to believe in a collective unconscious that connects us all.

Freud couldn't stomach the idea, and it seems a bit far-fetch for our DSM world.

But here's how Yong used it in practice.

He believed these universal archetypes rose up to guide us through

the stressors that humans have faced for millennia. It's a collective guide for universal

struggles, things like danger, mating, war, birth and death, family conflict, and social disruption.

I suspect Jung would have been fascinated by the QAnon Shaman, who marched into the capital

riot with tattoos of Nordic gods, horns, and a bare-skin headdress. So when a patient came to

Young with one of those universal stresses, Young would help them uncover the archetypal material

that was waiting just beneath the surface, ready to guide them across the chasm. That's what Young did when

Roland Hazard came seeking help for his alcoholism in the late 1920s, lighting a spark that has

become a standard part of practice today.

Roland Hazard was born into a prominent Rhode Island family, whose various branches had played key roles in the American Revolution, the abolition of slavery, women's rights, and workers' rights.

Roland founded an industrial chemical company, but his personal life fell apart after repeated relapses into alcoholism that he could not control with medical intervention or moral conviction.

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