SAYS BRIDGE DEVOTEES HAVE INFERIORITY BIAS
Dr. Adler Asserts Suicides, on the Other Hand, Suffer From Superiority Complexes.
Bridge players are usually sufferers from an inferiority complex who find in the game an easy way to satisfy their striving for superiority, Dr. Alfred Adler, Viennese psychologist, told an audience at Columbia University yesterday in a lecture in the McMillin Academic Theatre.
Dr. Adler gave his views on bridge following a formal talk in which he held that most forms of unhealthy behavior are attempts to acquire superiority with the least effort. A member of the audience, evidently a bridge devotee, asked him to give his opinion of a person who spends most of his spare time at the game.
"Most people play cards to waste time," Dr. Adler answered. "Time, if a man is not courageous, is his greatest enemy. Bridge is a great invention. A little of it is relaxation. But a lot becomes a mental habit, an attempt to satisfy a striving for superiority. It offers an opportunity to conquer others.
"If you see a bridge player who has won, you will notice a nice expression of superiority on his face."
Nobody can bear to appear weak or inferior, and the person who is more interested in himself than in others usually develops a complex, the psychologist asserted. The superiority complex, he said, is only the mask with which the consciously inferior person conceals his weakness.
"The suicide is usually satisfying the demands of a superiority complex," he concluded. "His act is an easy way to conquer the world, to get rid of all the problems and needs of life. He wants to be like God, the master of his destiny."
"The habitual drunkard, also, indulges in drink to feel superior and to overcome the world without exertion. Those who use morphine, cocaine, heroin are likewise seeking an easy way to conquests."
Dr. Adler applied the same theory to the problem child. The child who makes trouble in eating and resists attempts to put him to bed, is simply trying to attract the solicitous attention of his parents so that he may satisfy his craving for superiority, he asserted. As a remedy for such children, the psychologist suggested that parents provide them with useful occupations.
Fuente: "Says Bridge Devotees Have Inferiority Bias", The New York Times, 26 February 1930, p. 27, unsigned. Transcribed from the article clipping in TimesMachine (1930-02-26_p27_92080761), rendered at 200 dpi; the tesseract OCR was used only for orientation. The last two paragraphs, absent from the New York Times clipping, are transcribed from the unsigned reprint "Bridge Devotees Inferiority Bias", The Journal and Republican (Lowville, N. Y.), Thursday, 27 March 1930, col. 5 (fultonhistory.com, Lowville NY Journal Republican 1930 - (288)), rendered at 300 dpi and collated with the New York Times text: apart from those paragraphs, it differs only in the omission of "yesterday", the misprint "relaxion" and the headline without "Have". The whole piece is legible.