Science in Christian Perspective

PSYCHOLOGY
P. B. Marquart, M.D.

From JASA 10 (December 1958): 30.

Mrs. Faith Coxe Bailey has caught the diffused atmosphere of the alcoholic addict in a new book -Out Of the -Liquid Jungle" (Moody Press, Chicago, 1958).

The underworld slang of the drunkard appears even in the title. Each of the sixteen chapters features the case of such an alcoholic. The author reveals her understanding of the skidrow and of the alcoholic problem, in that each of her cases manifest, not mere drunkenness, but true alcoholism. the kind which ordinarily has no cure.

These true stories, however, do not leave the alcoholic in his liquid gutter. Each one is unshackled from his hopeless condition through the living Christ and each tale has a happy ending. Each one features the work of an American or Canadian rescue mission.

What does this volume have to do with psychology? Psychotherapy, as well as all the medical and physiologic helps leave the alcoholic cold. Even though recent literature credits the Alcoholics Anonymous with the most effective of all cures, most of the dry alcoholics who are now Christian, will tell you of their failure to find effective help in the A.A.'s. Regeneration, however, that divinely-bestowed change in individual human nature, brings about such a thorough going transformation in the alcoholics personality, that he seems to be a "new creature." This great transformation, which involves psychologic change, is by no means psychologically produced, coming as it does from the depths of the personality, the heart.

The need for great patience in dealing with alcoholics is shown in these accounts. Many of them had numerous backslidings back into the jungle, but the Lord finally conquered them, as well as Jacob at Penuel. Thus the case histories ring true to life. One very effective Christian of my acquaintance had thirty-five such sprees after he professed Christ.