ADLER TRACES COMPLEXES TO CHILD'S MOTHER
Laziness Only Inferiority, He Tells Junior League Members in Biltmore Address
Mothers who are not socially adjusted may cause their children to have inferiority complexes.
No less an authority than Dr. Alfred Adler, eminent Vienna psychologist, who discovered the inferiority complex, made this statement yesterday in a short talk on psychology before 200 members of the Junior League in the Biltmore.
"It will be readily understood," Dr. Adler said, "that the most important influence on a child is the mother. He learns from her how to eat, drink, talk, and perform all the other primary functions of life. In other words it is the mother who must teach him how to adjust himself to life. Consequently unless she is herself free of an inferiority or superiority complex, is it not likely that she will cause the child to have such a complex?"
Laziness in children, Dr. Adler held, is an evidence of the development of an inferiority complex.
"It is often said of lazy children," he pointed out, "that they could be successful except for the fact that they are just plain lazy. Soon the child himself believes that if he was not lazy he would be successful and makes no effort to overcome his laziness. As a matter of fact he accepts laziness as the easiest way of meeting the problems of life and that is nothing more or less than an inferiority complex."
Mabel Seeley, president of the League, presided.
Fuente: "Adler Traces Complexes to Child's Mother", Los Angeles Examiner, Thursday, 14 February 1929, section I, p. 9, col. 1, unsigned. Transcribed from the page image of the California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC, LAE19290214.1.9); the platform OCR (headline read as "IDLER TRICES COMPLEXES TO", the president's name as "Peeley") was used only for orientation. The whole piece is legible; the last two paragraphs are faint but readable. Only the report is transcribed; the other articles and advertisements on the page are omitted.