200 Women Hear Lecture By Dr. Adler
Famous Viennese Psychiatrist Champions Environment Over Heredity
Environment and training are the vital factors in the development of human life and belief in the powers of heredity is a futile one. This was the statement of Dr. Alfred Adler, eminent Viennese psychologist and psychiatrist, who spoke at the Florence Guy Seabury Psychology Conference which met yesterday at the home of Mrs. Adolph J. Lichstern of Spring Valley Road.
Mrs. Seabury presided at the meeting, which was attended by two hundred women including residents of Ossining, Rye, Greenwich, Conn.; Long Island and New Jersey.
Dr. Adler is of the school of psychology which includes such widely known men as Freud and Jung. Coming to Columbia University last year to conduct a series of lectures, he has proved tremendously popular. He is perhaps best known as the originator of the phrase, "the inferiority complex." His marriage center established at Vienna a number of years ago is an institution of interest to students of psychology throughout the world. His most recent books are "The Pattern of Life" and "Problems of the Neurosis."
Dr. Adler in his theory of individual psychology holds that what an individual brings into the world does not matter, that his accom-
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200 Women Hear Lecture By Dr. Adler
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plishments are the things that count. Only through proper training and environment, he continued, can there be an aim accomplished. Helen Keller is a striking example of the power of correct and intensive training. The composer Beethoven, the victim of a serious organic defect with which he was born, through the training of an intelligent and sympathetic father, reached the place which he holds in the history of music.
The misfits of the world—the problem child, the sex pervert, the criminal and the insane, are, in Dr. Adler's opinion, victims of wrong environment. They are in many cases orphans—individuals who rarely meet with individual training or sympathetic understanding. Often these failures are the members of lax homes, homes in which there is no cooperation and affection between parents. They are even members of wealthy families in which there is no intelligent early supervision although there is time, money and opportunity for it.
Blaming environment for the cause of insanity is not a widely accepted nor treated theory just at present. But, says Dr. Adler, trace the history of an insane person and there will be found somewhere, perhaps in a generation far removed, a problem of environment which brought about insanity which was then transferred by heredity.
Environment then, in Dr. Adler's mind, cannot be too strongly stressed if there is to be proper development and a goal reached. Training and shaping of the proper kind must be carried out with determintaion [sic]. However, and here Dr. Adler was most emphatic, this training must not be too stiff, values must not be too rigid. There must be a flexibility allowed which will enable an individual to adapt himself to the varying conditions and situations in which he will find himself.
During the afternoon tea was served by Sherry.
Fuente: "200 Women Hear Lecture By Dr. Adler", Citizen Sentinel (Ossining, N. Y.), Saturday, 5 April 1930, p. 1, col. 5, continued on p. 10, col. 5, unsigned. Transcribed from the page images at fultonhistory.com (Ossining NY Citizen Sentinel 1929 Dec - Apr 1930 - 1235 and - 1244), rendered at 300 dpi; the platform OCR was used only for orientation. The whole piece is legible. Spaced type ("o r p h a n s", "m i n d") is rendered in italics; the print has "Lichstern" for the hostess's name (Lichtstern), "bomes" for "homes" (corrected) and "determintaion". Only the report is transcribed; the other articles on both pages are omitted.