Proposes Marital Clinics To Cure Family Ailments
"Pampered children are responsible for 90 percent of our unhappy marriages," stated Professor Alfred Adler, noted psychologist, reputed discoverer of the "inferiority complex," and co-worker of Professor Freud, in his lecture on "Love, Marriage and Marital Relations," last night at the forum meeting of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, 667 Eastern Parkway.
He explained that marriage was a partnership between equals, and that unless there was a feeling of equality there was no chance of mutual happiness. "Pampered children are not in the habit of giving," he said. "Their whole experience has been on the taking side and therefore they expect only to take from marriage. It never is a real partnership to them—it is a one-sided relationship, which is bound to end in the divorce court as soon as the giving partner tires of his or her role or demands something in return."
Urges Marital Clinics
Dr. Adler stated that he believed institutions should be established throughout the world similar to hospitals and manned by experts in marital relationships to which couples could take their troubles and difficulties and have them treated impersonally before they developed such proportions that divorce was the only solution.
"I favor such institutions because I believe they would help us more than anything else in our ever-growing search for the solution to the happy marriage," he said. "As marriage is not a purely private affair, but in reality one of society's most difficult problems, we should do all in our power to put it on its feet and keep it there. Unhappy marital relationships reflect on both husband and wife, the community and the children of the union. Especially the children—who, seeing their parents dissatisfied, are apt to turn against marriage as an institution and get a distorted view of life in general.
He declared that the ideal institution to solve marital difficulties should be endowed so that there would be no question of expense and that it should be conducted along purely impersonal lines.
"There would be no names taken," he said, "and those seeking relief could even wear masks if they so desired, thus insuring absolute privacy."
Fuente: "Proposes Marital Clinics To Cure Family Ailments", Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Tuesday, 11 March 1930, p. 8, cols. 3-4, unsigned. Transcribed from the page image at fultonhistory.com (Brooklyn NY Daily Eagle 1930 Grayscale - 4720), rendered at 300 dpi; the platform OCR was used only for orientation. The whole piece is legible. The quotation opened in the paragraph "I favor such institutions..." is not closed in the print. Only the report is transcribed; the other articles and advertisements on the page are omitted. The front page of the same issue summarizes the lecture in its index: "pampered children cause 90 percent marital unhappiness, Psychologist Alfred Adler believes".