DR. ADLER IN LIVERPOOL
Crowded Audience
PSYCHOLOGY AND THE CHILD
The First Four Years
From our Special Correspondent
LIVERPOOL, FRIDAY.
Dr. Alfred Adler, the eminent Vienna pyschologist, whose phrase “inferiority complex” has passed into common speech, is this week-end visiting Liverpool.
His visit is arranged by the Liverpool Council of Social Service and the Liverpool and District Home and School Council, who have arranged a conference of teachers, social workers, and others interested which Dr. Adler will address, to be held at the Liverpool University to-morrow. Dr. Adler will give three addresses; one, at the morning session, on “The relation of parent and child,” when Dr. W. M. Frazer, the Medical Officer of Health of Liverpool, will preside; the second, in the afternoon, on “Social misfits,” and the third, in the evening, on “Delinquency,” when the Archbishop of Liverpool (Dr. Downey) will be the chairman.
To-night Dr. Adler spoke at a large meeting in the Picton Hall, under the chairmanship of the Vice-Chancellor of the University (Sir Hector Hetherington), on “Understanding children.”
The Vital First Four Years
Dr. Adler, who is Professor of Medical Psychology in Long Island College of Medicine, New York, and at the head of a children’s clinic in New York, said that in grown-up people the child was always found, because the totality of a personality was built up in the first three or four years. This time of plastic age was wholly sufficient to give the child a chance to train his outlook towards life.
Dr. Adler spoke of the creative power of the child related to its social interest, and said that children often failed to develop the right degree of social interest where parents had done their best; and sometimes one found socially adjusted children where the parents had failed. Dr. Adler mentioned the “moral” child whom everybody liked, who was so charming and did all that was asked of him, but who was always exploiting his mother. It was understandable that this child did not want to leave this—for him—favourable situation. He found it successful. (Laughter.)
But as he developed, and had to leave his favourable situation, to go to school, he would resist the new situation for which he was not prepared, and, later in life especially, he would be found lacking in ability to solve the social problem. It was as though there was a certain enmity in him growing up towards other people. He felt a stranger in a hostile country. This child was the potentially neurotic child.
A Source of Unhappy Marriages
The limits children gave to themselves were of the greatest importance. He was afraid the great majority of children limited themselves, and this was reflected in the children when grown-up. They could accomplish much more than they did, but they were afraid of being defeated and were not prepared.
In the matter of love and marriage a preparation of social interest was necessary, because if a child did not develop enough social interest in the first four years he did not develop it later. He stuck to his degree of it. He limited his social interest, and because love and marriage were a problem of two persons who had to be interested in each other it could be understood that in love and marriage such children were failures later, “and,” said Dr. Adler, “we can predict it.” So far as the great majority of mankind were concerned, he said, they could understand from early in childhood which child was in danger.
Dr. Adler spoke of children with imperfect physical organs, and said that if a child developed a mistaken direction because of his defect his development was because of his opinion and not because of facts.
So much public interest was shown in Dr. Adler’s visit that the Picton Hall, which holds upwards of 1,200 people, was crowded, and many people had to be content with seats on the gangway steps. Even then many were unable to gain admittance, and it was necessary to close the doors from time to time until seats had been found for those already admitted.
Sir Hector Hetherington, in introducing Dr. Adler, said that psychology was one of the most difficult, baffling, complex, and dangerous sciences. It was very far from the stage, perhaps healthily so, when there was a great deal of agreement amongst those who were its leaders, but even as it was it could offer a good deal of practical enlightenment on problems of immense importance and interest in individual and in social life.
Fuente: «Dr. Adler in Liverpool. Crowded Audience. Psychology and the Child. The First Four Years», The Manchester Guardian, Manchester, 16 de mayo de 1936 (n.º 27977), «From our Special Correspondent», fechada en Liverpool el viernes [15 de mayo]. Transcripción hecha sobre la imagen del recorte conservado en el Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv (Pressemappe 20. Jahrhundert, ZBW, carpeta de persona Alfred Adler, pe000141, hoja 00003), que es enteramente legible, cotejada con un OCR propio (Tesseract); el recorte no da la página. Se respeta «pyschologist», tal como se imprimió. Las palabras partidas a final de línea se unen.