All Depends on Proper Goal In Life, Declares Dr. Adler
BERKELEY, Feb. 9.—"You must have the proper goal in life," reiterated Dr. Alfred Adler, the founder of "Individual Psychology," speaking before the Phi Beta Kappa honor society of the University of California, yesterday at luncheon. The luncheon was held in Stephens' union on the university campus. "Everything," claimed Dr. Adler, "depends on the goal."
Describing the unusual child, the prospective criminal, the neurotic child, the abnormal in one way or another, as products of a lack of social adjustment, Dr. Adler insisted on the necessity of a social control of their ambitions.
"The abnormal child," he said, "is unadjusted. He has a goal in life that seems all right to him, and so far is right. The criminal thinks that thieving is all right; as does the counterfeiter think that bad money is all right. The point is that what the individual thinks all right is not quite enough. His idealism must coincide with the necessities of social structure.
LIFE IS TWOFOLD
"Society condemns the thief," declared the famous psychologist, "for not knowing that he is wrong. Life is twofold. It is individual and it is social, and really these two apparently opposing aspects of the problem of life are the same thing. The individual is social. Everything he does is social. Laughter is a social gesture. His very sense organs are social in their functions. The great point is that the individuality of the individual must be made to see, perhaps unconsciously, but made cognizant of the fact that the individual must have aims, goals, drives that are consonant with the consonance of society."
TELLS OF CLINICS
Dr. Adler spoke at length of his work in Vienna with children in clinics, where he is, when in Vienna, busy with the problems of adjusting the lives of the thousands of children under his jurisdiction. "If the child has the wrong goal, we discover that fact and change the goal. Children are made, not by a juxtaposition of causes pushing from behind, so to say, but largely by their ambitions, by stars to which they have hitched their carts and which drag them on for good or ill."
The recognition of this fact is at the base of all educational problems, declared Dr. Adler. "The sooner teachers recognize that they must draw out the child rather than push them along, so to say, the better it will be for the world."
Fuente: "All Depends on Proper Goal In Life, Declares Dr. Adler", Oakland Tribune, Oakland, Calif., Saturday evening, 9 February 1929, p. 13, cols. 3-4, unsigned. Transcribed from the page image of the California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC, OT19290209.1.13); the CDNC OCR was used only for orientation. The whole piece is legible. Not to be confused with the longer report on p. 3 of the same issue ("Idea Held Crime Cause").