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Act nice, Bradshaw was always told; act nice. He excelled in school; Mama's prized boy eventually entered a Basilian seminary in Canada and studied for degrees in theology and philosophy from the University of Toronto. For nine celibate years there, he says, "I married the Holy Mother." He left the order a day before his class was to be ordained. By that time, he was a compulsive drinker. Back in Houston, at age 30 and ill-prepared for life -- he had $400 and did not even know how to drive a car -- he taught high school until he was fired. He began going to Alcoholics Anonymous and working as a pharmaceutical salesman. Soon he was swapping drug samples with guys from other drug companies and was "pilled to the gills, but going to A.A. meetings." That job and others ended; the drinking came back and got worse. Two weeks before Christmas 1965, he landed in the Austin state hospital with the DTs. By Christmas Day he was back in A.A. "with both feet, and it saved my life."
It also launched his career. His talks at A.A. meetings led to speaking engagements elsewhere; soon people were coming to him for advice and counseling. He got two more degrees -- in psychology and religion -- at Rice University, and he set up shop as a counselor on stress management and leadership training, working with individuals and corporations. Looking back now, he thinks he was ineffective because "I was too nice. To be good at it, you've got to be willing to confront the living hell out of people." He began lecturing in Houston churches and synagogues, became a local celebrity and, after he was featured in a 1984 PBS series on the family, won a national reputation.
All this has given Bradshaw what he calls "a nice income that I'd never dreamed of having." He is redoing the Georgian-style home in an elegant Houston neighborhood that he bought from his wife Nancy after their divorce 2 1/2 years ago, filling it with antiques, Indian artifacts and a collection of wizard figurines; his inner child, he says, is "fascinated by wizards." Shopping has become something of an obsession, and his tastes run to the opulent: his bedroom has purple wallpaper and a sleigh bed draped with a purple sari. He now has a second home: a Swiss-style chalet on a private 25- acre lake in Montana.
* Prosperity has its price: Bradshaw has critics as well as devotees. Old- guard A.A. members are appalled by the way he flouts its tradition of anonymity, using his experiences as a recovering alcoholic as a launching pad for his views. Others raise questions about how lasting and effective his brand of "quick fix" self-help can be, especially for people who may be seriously troubled by long-term emotional problems. Some psychotherapists consider Bradshaw's approach to self-improvement overly simplistic and wonder whether his emphasis on early-childhood experiences gives people a convenient excuse to avoid responsibility for their adult failures. Says Dr. Gerald Goodman, an associate professor of psychology at UCLA: "The way it sounds, if only we had got more hugs in our infancy, we'd be fine."