William S. Sadler

This article describes the American surgeon and psychiatrist William S. Sadler ; on the actor see William Sadler .

William S. Sadler (1914)

William Samuel Sadler (born June 24, 1875 in Spencer , Indiana , USA ; died April 26, 1969 at the age of 93 in Chicago ) was an American surgeon , self-taught psychiatrist and is the lead author of the Urantia book . The book is based on recordings of the texts of a medium through which, Sadler believed, heavenly beings spoke at night.

Life and education

Sadler was born on June 24, 1875 in Spencer, Indiana, to Samuel Cavins Sadler and Sarah Isabelle Wilson. Of English and Irish descent, he grew up in Wabash, Indiana . Samuel did not enroll his son in a public school. Despite his lack of formal education, Sadler read many books on history as a child and became a skilled public speaker from a young age. Samuel was baptized as a Seventh-day Adventist religious convert in 1888.

In 1889 William Sadler went to Battle Creek, Michigan , where he worked as a hotel servant and in the kitchen at the Battle Creek Sanitorium . At the age of 16 he attended Battle Creek College for a year. Both institutions had close Seventh-day Adventist ties, and Sadler was cared for by the local Adventist doctor and businessman, John Harvey Kellogg , whose views had a major influence on Sadler. Sadler's early publications on health were similar to John Kellogg's holistic approach. He similarly condemned the consumption of tobacco, meat and alcohol. Still, he drank later.

Sadler graduated from Battle Creek College in 1894 and then worked for John Kellogg's brother, William K. Kellogg, as a health food agent. Sadler convinced William Kellogg to use demonstrations to market his products in retail stores. In 1894 he oversaw the construction of the Life Boat Mission, a mission station that Kellogg founded on State Street in Chicago. Sadler led the mission and published Life Boat Magazine , the proceeds of which were intended for Kellogg's Chicago Medical Mission. Sadler also contributed articles to other Adventist publications, such as the Review and Herald. In about 1895 Sadler attended the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, where he was trained as an evangelist. In 1901 he was ordained as a pastor.

In 1897 Sadler married John Kellogg's niece, the nurse Lena Celestia Kellogg. Their first child, William, was born in 1899 but passed away ten months later. In 1907 their second child, William S. Sadler Jr., was born. The loss of their first child prompted the couple to pursue their medical careers. In 1901 they moved to San Francisco and attended the medical school of Cooper Medical College. In San Francisco, he served as Superintendent for Youth Services for the Church's California Conference and President of the Medical Missionary Society. In 1904 they returned to the Midwest , where they both received doctorates in medicine two years later. Sadler was an early proponent of Freudian psychoanalysis, although he did not accept many of Freud's views about sexuality or religion.

In 1910 Sadler went to Europe and studied psychiatry with Sigmund Freud for a year . Between 1906 and 1911, Sadler attempted to treat a patient with unusual sleep behavior who spoke to Sadler in his sleep and claimed to be an alien . Sadler spent years watching the sleeping man to explain the phenomenon and eventually found that the man was not mentally ill and his words were genuine. The man's identity was never revealed, but speculation has centered on Sadler's brother-in-law, Wilfred Kellogg. For several years, Sadler and his assistants visited the man while he was sleeping, talking to him about spirituality, history and cosmology and asking him questions. A large number of interested people met in Sadler's house, discussed the man's answers and suggested further questions. The man's statements were eventually published in the Urantia Book and the Urantia Foundation was established to help Sadler spread the book's message. It is not known who wrote and edited the book, but various commentators have speculated that Sadler played a leading role in its publication. Although it never became the basis of an organized religion, the book caught the attention of followers who devoted themselves to studying it and who continued the movement after Sadler's death.

Career

In 1912, Sadler and his wife, now both doctors, ran a group practice in Chicago that had pediatric and gynecological departments. Initially, Sadler and his wife focused on surgery. He expanded in 1930 and became a consultative psychiatrist at Columbus Hospital. As a psychiatrist advocated an eclectic mix of techniques using the theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung , Alfred Adler , and Adolf Meyer . Sadler believed that religiosity was beneficial to mental health and specifically encouraged prayer, which he believed to be the most effective in relation to the Christian faith. However, he thought that religious beliefs were harmful when based on fear.

Sadler and his wife moved to Diversey Parkway in Chicago in 1912, where the couple also ran their medical practice. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and medical associations including the American Medical Association , the American Psychiatric Association , the American Pathological Society, and the American College of Surgeons . Sadler was also a faculty member at McCormick Theological Seminary, teaching pastoral psychology . He argued that pastors should be trained in basic psychiatry so that they can recognize symptoms of mental illness. His students later remembered him as a committed, humorous speaker.

Sadler wrote on many subjects. In 1909 he published his first book, an evangelical work called Self-Winning Texts, or Bible Helps for Personal Work . He worked on his books regularly every night through the 1910s, most of which dealt with personal health topics. Many of Sadler's books focused on popular self-help topics; the historian Jonathan Spiro values ​​Sadler's The Elements of Pep as a "quintessential book of the 1920s". In 1936 Sadler published Theory and Practice of Psychiatry , a 1200-page paper in which he attempted to provide an understandable outline of psychiatry.

Sadler also wrote about races and was interested in eugenics , on which he wrote several papers. In his writings, Sadler argued that some races were at a lower level of evolution - similar to the Neanderthals compared to the other races of the time - and consequently less civilized and more aggressive. Sadler argued that alcoholism and "feeble-mindedness, insanity and crime" were hereditary traits and that anyone who possessed them reproduced faster than "superior human creatures." He feared that this could endanger the "civilization that we will pass on to our descendants". He also believed that the majority of criminals were mentally ill.

In 1907, Sadler began lecturing on Chautauqua Adult Education, where traveling speakers discussed self-help and morality. Sadler often spoke about achieving physical and mental health without drugs. He promoted hydrotherapy and discussed moral issues related to men. Sadler, his wife, her sister, and a friend formed a four-person lecture firm that gave two and three day engagements and was sometimes accompanied by an orchestra. Newspapers published favorable reviews of the productions. After the First World War ended, he fought against the increased popularity of communication with the dead, as it was a source of false comfort. In the 1910s and 1920s, attempting to expose alleged clairvoyants became one of Sadler's favorite pursuits.

Urantia publication

According to the origin story of the Urantia Book , sometime between 1906 and 1911, a woman consulted Sadler about her husband's deep sleep and asked Sadler to watch him sleep. He found that the sleeping man was making unnatural movements; allegedly the man then spoke to Sadler in an unnatural voice and claimed to be a "visitor ... from another planet". Observers suspected that the man was carrying messages from other living beings. Sadler suspected that the man's utterances came from his thoughts and sought a scientific explanation for the phenomenon.

Although he gave the man a psychiatric examination, he was unable to come to a satisfactory diagnosis. Sadler and five others then visited the man regularly and spoke to him while he slept. In 1925 a large handwritten document was found in the patient's house, papers are said to have turned up in the house for years afterwards. Sadler brought the papers to his house and did not allow anyone to remove them, although some were allowed to read them on the spot. Sadler suspected that the documents were a product of automatic handwriting from the man's subconscious, but changed his mind after further analysis. Regarding their authenticity, Sadler never took a public position for years.

In 1924, Sadler began holding Sunday tea meetings at his home, which could accommodate 50 guests. Many participants worked in medical institutions and adhered to a progressive ideology. The group often held a forum to discuss and develop questions for the patient with the sleep problem. The observers kept the man's name a secret from the group, but disclosed some of his statements. The forum, which then had thirty members, closed its meetings to visitors in 1925 and demanded a declaration of confidentiality. Sadler directed members not to make public what they learned, saying that they had an incomplete picture of what was going on. He also feared exposing the patient to criticism if their identity became known. His identity was never confirmed, with Joscelyn Godwin of Colgate University and the skeptic Martin Gardner taking the position that the sleeping man Wilfred Kellogg was the husband of Lena's sister Anna.

In 1935, Sadler, citing her "authenticity and insight", came to the conclusion that the papers found in the sleeping patient's house were not forgeries, and argued that the sleeping man was not a medium for the dead, but of living beings Communication was used. Papers no longer appeared in the sleeper's house in the 1930s; Sadler then took on a clear role as leader of the discussion group. The forum suspended its discussion meetings in 1942, and the Urantia book was published in 1955. Allegedly it contained information from the heavenly beings who had spoken through the sleeping man. The Urantia book presented itself as the fifth “epochal” revelation God gave to mankind, declaring that its purpose is to help mankind evolve into a higher form of life.

Until her death in 1939, Sadler's wife Lena was a regular participant in the forum. One member later disagreed with Sadler's leadership, claiming that he was hungry for power after his wife's death. In the early 1950s, the Urantia Foundation was formed to publish the Urantia book. Hubert Wilkins, a friend of Sadler's who had a keen interest in the book, provided the initial funding for the publication costs. Rather than creating an organized religion, the foundation's leadership opted for what they called "slow growth," and early followers tried to educate people about the book's teachings rather than setting up a church organization. Sadler also denied proselytizing and advertising, although he wrote several works on the contents of the Urantia book. In 1958, Sadler published a defense of the book, citing his experience of detecting scams and maintaining that the book was free from contradictions. Since his death, several reading groups, seminaries, and churches have been organized to study the book and spread its message.

The authorship of the Urantia papers is controversial. Journalist Brad Gooch argues in his 2002 Urantia Movement Profile that Sadler is the author of the Urantia book, citing similarities between some of his passages and the content of Sadler's earlier writings. Gardner believes Sadler wrote some of the papers, but heavily edited and revised most of them. He also claims that Sadler refused to include in the book material that was made available to him and that he was copying from other works. Ken Glasziou, a supporter of the Urantia Foundation, claims that statistical evidence for the text and Sadler's other works suggests that he did not write or extensively edit the Urantia book.

Late years

In 1952, Sadler's last book, Courtship and Love, was published by Macmillan Publishers. He wrote another title, a doctor is speaking to his patient, but after being refused by a publisher, he decided to stop writing. In March 1957, Sadler was appointed superintendent of Barboursville State Hospital in Barboursville, West Virginia, where he remained until July 1958.

As he got older, Sadler generally remained healthy with the exception of one condition that resulted in the removal of one eye. He died on April 26, 1969 at the age of 93. Christensen recalls that Sadler was visited by friends and family on his deathbed; he spoke to them of his confidence in a joyful life after death. He received an obituary in the Chicago Tribune reporting his success as a doctor but not his association with the Urantia book

reception

At the time of his death, Sadler was widely known for his accurate prediction of the introduction of organ transplantation decades before the practice. Members of the Urantia movement also had high opinion of Sadler and sometimes idolized him. In her Profile of the Urantia Movement, published in 2003, Lewis explains that descriptions of Sadler by members of the movement could indicate that he possessed charismatic authority and was revered as "the chosen one." Gooch holds Sadler for the "Moses of the Urantia movement" and describes him as "one of America's native religious leaders, an original after Joseph Smith". He also praised Sadler's writings on the media and describes Sadler's book The Truth About Spiritism as "one of the most powerful attacks ever written about fraudulent media and their methods".

Gooch believes there is a contradiction between Sadler's advocacy of science and reason and his support for the avant-garde theological "interplanetary" content of the Urantia book. Gardner describes Sadler's life story as "captivating" and summarizes him as an "intelligent, gifted" person who proved to be "gullible" of alleged supernatural revelations. He claims that Sadler eventually developed megalomania that was not recognized by his fellow human beings, arguing that Sadler succumbed to hubris, an extreme form of overconfidence, and began to believe that he was a prophet who was the founder and leader of one new religion was divinely chosen. Lewis denies this characterization, claiming that Sadler and those around him only sought to purify and explain the teachings of the Bible

Selected Works

• William S. Sadler: Soul winning texts: or, Bible helps for personal work . Chicago: Central Bible Supply Co., 1909, OCLC 5579892 .
• William S. Sadler: Worry and nervousness; or, The science of self-mastery. Chicago McClurg, 1915, OCLC 14780503 .
• William S. Sadler: Physiology of Faith and Fear, or, The Mind in Health and Disease . Chicago McClurg, 1915, OCLC 19675023 .
• William S. Sadler: Long heads and round heads; or, What's the matter with Germany . Chicago McClurg, 1918, OCLC 6456079 .
• William S. Sadler: Race decadence: an examination of the causes of racial degeneracy in the United States . Chicago McClurg, 1922, OCLC 373314 .
• William S. Sadler: The elements of pep; a talk on health and efficiency. Chicago American Health Book Concern, 1925, OCLC 11462621 .
• William S. Sadler: The mind at mischief; Tricks and deceptions of the subconscious and how to cope with them . New York and London, Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1929, OCLC 717887 .
• William S. Sadler: Theory and Practice of Psychiatry . St. Louis: The CV Mosby Company, York and London, 1936, OCLC 1377525 .
• William S. Sadler: Living a sane sex life . Chicago, American Publishers Corporation, 1938, OCLC 5131693 .
• William S. Sadler: Modern psychiatry . London, 1938, OCLC 488958227 .
• William S. Sadler: Courtship and love . New York, Macmillan, 1952, OCLC 1454173 .

literature

• Couple Find Lifes Reward Thru Their Joint Careers in Medicine . In: The Bee . May 26, 1926, p. 12 .
• Lorena Hickok: Tell Children Truth About Santa Claus, Warns Expert . In: Associated Press (Ed.): The Capital Times . October 16, 1929, p. 1 .
• Pastors Urged to Study Minds, Avert Disaster . In: Chicago Daily Tribune . September 11, 1931, p. 19 .
• Calls Religion Big Influence in Mental Health . In: Chicago Daily Tribune . May 9, 1936, p. 12 .
• Barboursville State Hospital Gets New Chief . In: Charleston Daily Mail . June 23, 1958, p. 12 .
• Dr. Sadler, 93, Dies; Services are scheduled . In: Chicago Tribune . April 28, 1969, p. B18 .

Books

• Saskia Praamsma, Matthew Block: The Urantia Notebook of Sir Hubert Wilkins: Fact Finder and Truth Seeker. Square Circles Publishing, 2015.
• Laura Catherine Frost: Sex Drives: Fantasies of Fascism in Literary Modernism. 2002.
• Sarah Lewis, James R. Lewis: The Invention of Sacred Tradition. 2007.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Brad Gooch: Godtalk: travels in spiritual America . 1st edition. AA Knopf, New York 2002, ISBN 0-679-44709-1 , p. 24 .