SPOILED BABIES BECOME MISFITS

Philadelphia, Mar. 21.—(UP)—Society's failures, misfits and criminals often are the result of pampered childhood, Dr. Alfred Adler, Viennese psychiatrist and former associate of Freud, declared at Bryn Mawr College.

The psychosis, which often develops into what is known as the "inferiority complex," and which retards achievement in later years, can be traced to some organic disturbance in childhood, Dr. Adler said. The child thus emerges from this "hostile situation" with a lack of social interest.

"What we call the mistakes of life—such as the failures, criminals, degenerates and suicides—are the result of lack of co-operation, and we look on them as failures only because they did not learn to contribute, to co-operate," the psychiatrist explained.

"Your suicides are your former pampered children, who were taught to expect rather than to give. It is the first three or four years of life that our children must be trained to a higher degree of co-operation."

Dr. Adler is in the United States for five years as "Visiting Professor of Medical Psychology" at the Long Island School of Medicine. He is founder of the new science of Individual Psychology.


Fuente: "Spoiled Babies Become Misfits", The Olean Times-Herald, Olean, N. Y., Tuesday, 21 March 1933, p. 6 ("Page of Interest to Women"), col. 5; United Press dispatch, unsigned. Transcribed from the page image at fultonhistory.com (Olean NY Times Herald 1933, file .00464_1); the OCR agrees with the image. The same dispatch had appeared earlier, with the text cut off by the margin, in the Rochester Times-Union, 13 March 1933, p. 4 (fultonhistory.com); the Philadelphia dateline of 21 March is evidently the Olean paper's, the lecture being earlier. Neighbouring items on the page omitted.