ALFRED ADLER

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4346, 4 January 1938, Page 7

ALFRED ADLER

WORK IN PSYCHOLOGY

Dr Alfred Adler collapsed and died recently in Aberdeen, says the Manchester Guardian.’ He was in Britain on a lecture tour and had been delivering a series of lectures on psychopathology at Aberdeen University during the week and was to have concluded the series the night ho died. For the past two years he had been Professor of Medical Psychology in the Long Island College of Medicine, New York.

Dr Adler, who was 67 years of age, was born in Vienna of middle-class parents. He took his medical degree in Vienna University in 1895 and worked in Vienna General Hospital and Poly-clinic from 1895 to 1897. He then practised as a general doctor until 1927 in which year he went to lecturer in Columbia University. He had written many books and had lectured in every university of importance in Europe and the United States.

Alfred Adler like so many visitors to this country whose new ideas have disturbed our complacent habits of thinking, came from Vienna, wrote Professor T. H. Pear, of Manchester University, in appraisal of Adler’s work. He was born there in 1870. graduated in medicine in its university, and joined a discussion group of young medical men. Their centre was Sigmund Freud. For this reason it seems just—and perhaps at the moment it is inevitable to think of Adler’s contribution to psychology in relation to those of Freud, though Adler broke away from Freud’s influence, consciously at least, in 1912. Adler’s deviations from Freud are partly matters of degree. Examples are the attribution of less importance to sexual factors both in neurotic disorders and in life generally, the regarding of the distinction between conscious and unconscious as unimportant (a point of view never easy to reconcile with his interest in dreams), and perhaps the lighter stress laid upon the function of repression. In contrast to these may be mentioned his chief deviation of opinion. He continually emphasised, with a wealth of example, his belief that the will to power, not the god of love, is the chief driving force in human conduct. This will to power, he believed, usually arose from the awareness of some organic or mental defect or inadequacy. This led in many people to an unconscious striving to overcome this defect by compensation. Where this attempt was successful society acclaimed a Demosthenes, a Beethoven; where it failed the parish laughed at or pitied a swaggering neurotic; and perhaps, where it partially succeeded the world was presented, as to-day, with those grown-up neglected problem children—rulers lusting for mere conquest. For such cogent reasons Adler urged the importance of child-guidance clinics. it was, however, by the extension of this doctrine to ordinary social life, a step which produced the famous “ signature ” phrase “ inferiority complex,” that Adler attracted chief interest. For in a society which assumes fierce competition between individuals :o be natural, healthy, and decent, and the struggle for social superiority to be a proper, even a moral, aim, there must be few who do not find some aspect of their “style of life” not only explained but illuminated by this teaching. Vet younger psychologists already regard both Freud and Adler, neither of them fortunate enough to have been trained in ethnology, as taking for granted the permanence of culture patterns, which may seem natural to them because they have known no other What if there are societies in which the average individual does not feel inferior, in which gentleness and affection, and not the struggle to dominate, are normal? Until the work of Rivers, Malinowski, Benedict, and Mead has been properly appraised it is difficult to be dogmatic on this point. The many readers and hearers of Adler have been impressed, and rightly, by the stress which ho laid upon the family circle, upon the special problems of the only child, the eldest, and the youngest child, and upon education. His suggestion that the directive fiction ” of the ego must be understood by educators, and that to those who have this understanding teaching of the individual concerned is easy, is illustrated by his assertion that “every movement of training a soldier becomes a dexterity which has for its purpose the transformation of a primary feeling of weakness into a feeling of superiority.” Adler valuably emphasised many neglected aspects of psychology, especially those of self-as-sertion and aggression. Thereby ho helped n.s to understand better many of the sorrows of the cripple, the stammerer, the despised, and rejected. This will be always remembered with gratitnre. Vet it would seem that many psychologists have found difficulty in discovering the place in Adler’s philosophy for love and tender emotion. Love was expressed in what Adler the doctor did and not in what ho wrote. “ A cheerless view of life,” Adler’s has been called, but he expressed it with great cheerfulness. There have been more penetrating psychologists, but not all penetrating scientists achieve the wisdom of Alfred Adler.