ADLER DISPUTED ON 'LIFE' THEORY
Town Hall Lecture Raises Issue as to Individual Psychology.
Dr. Alfred Adler, the eminent Viennese psychiatrist who invented "inferiority complex," believes firmly in the major tenents of the "Sermon on the Mount," and he also is convinced it would be excellent if there were no sin in the world.
His technique for bringing about this blissful state, which he expounded at Town Hall at the Shoreham Hotel last night, didn't appeal very strongly to Dr. Ernest T. Hadley, Washington psychiatrist, and the devastatingly cynical Dr. Harry Stack Sullivan of New York, who sat on the panel.
Dr. Adler's system of "individual psychology," which he now is promulgating at the Long Island College of Medicine, holds that America's vast number of neurotics and growing numbers of criminals all arise from a common cause—lack of social interest with or without activity. If one has scant social interest and a lot of energy, one is likely to become a criminal, he holds. Without energy the result is a neurosis.
Corrections Required.
This lack of social interest, he holds, results from conditionings established in the first three or four years of life. They could be corrected, he believes, if all the school teachers who take charge of children just after these formative years were "individual psychologists."
No general system can be laid down, Dr. Adler said. Every case must be analyzed and dealt with according to its own peculiarities. Once the schools were set up as "individual psychology" clinics, he believes, the children would take what they had learned back to the homes and help reform criminal parents.
If crimes could be cut in half, Dr. Adler said, the United States would save $7,000,000,000 a year, although there would be the problem of finding other employment for jailers, judges, lawyers and others who now make an honest living out of it. Therefore, Dr. Adler argued, how could anybody with the good of mankind at heart oppose the expense of using schools as psychological clinics.
Dr. Sullivan wanted to know what he meant by "sin," the concept of which varies enormously in time and place, and gave a rather dreary picture of a sinless world as one in which everybody was spending all his spare time trying to convert everybody else to his own particular brand of righteousness. Besides, Dr. Sullivan didn't think it would work. He has dealt with some tough actors in his day and has not been able to find any common factor responsible for their departures from the normal.
Result Doubted by Hadley.
Dr. Hadley also was dubious of the sort of world which would result from Dr. Adler's system, even if it did work. The very attitude of avoidance of society, he pointed out, is often the atmosphere in which genius develops. Dr. Adler's reformed race might be characterized by an intolerably dreary sameness.
Dr. Adler's writings are much more convincing than his lecture, but he pleaded that he couldn't be expected to go into the fine points of his technique in half an hour. As he outlined it in brief:
The small child gets a bad bump out of its first contacts with the world.
To save itself from any more such bumps, it avoids, as far as possible, any future contacts or adopts a hostile attitude toward the world and seeks revenge.
These attitudes subconsciously color its whole personality as it grows up.
The avoider adopts all sorts of schemes to stay clear of normal associations with people. One, frequently encountered, is "laziness." The lazy man, Dr. Adler believes, is a fellow who is afraid of competitive activity and, as an excuse, makes a fetish of doing nothing. He is proud of his own inertia. It's much better to have folks say of him, "He's too lazy to work," than "He's too dumb to do this or that." The "lazy" reaction works a few times with the child and consequently becomes built into the individual's habit system.
The cry-baby attitude also often works and produces a very disagreeable, but often very successful type of individual. Folks make the way easy for him because they pity him, with the result that he often gets much further ahead in life than the far more competent persons with whom he associates.
Fuente: «Adler Disputed on 'Life' Theory. Town Hall Lecture Raises Issue as to Individual Psychology», The Evening Star, Washington (D.C.), lunes 11 de enero de 1937, p. B-7, sin firma. Transcripción hecha sobre la imagen de la página en Fulton History (Washington DC Evening Star 1937 01-11_0217), cotejada con el OCR del archivo, de buena calidad; la primera línea del titular, que el OCR no recogía, se lee en la imagen. Se conservan «tenents» y «Ernest T. Hadley» tal como se imprimieron (el psiquiatra de Washington era Ernest E. Hadley). Las palabras partidas a final de línea se unen. Se omiten los anuncios de la página.