Discovered Inferiority Complex
Dr. Alfred Adler, Viennese Psychiatrist, an International Authority on Human Behavior, Calls New York a "Ruffled Ocean"
By Beatrice Oppenheim
A HALF century ago, the neurotic was a practically unknown species. Hhis suffering was quite unpitied and his deeds almost entirely unsung. Since those barbaric days, however, the public eye has turned its gaze upon him and he has received an amount of attenton never before awarded to any sort of infirmity.
The individual who formerly suffered merely from "nerves" or who was carelessly designated by his neighbors, as "not all there," has now become psychothenic, neurathenic, psychopathic, manic-depressive and dozens of other things fully as interesting and high sounding.
Psychologists, pathologists, psychiatrics, psycho-analysts and mental hygienists are becoming the great men of our time. Neuresthenia is the rage, a current fad more popular than bridge, cross-word puzzles, ask-me-another, or any other less sophisticated amusement.
Towering above the whole brood of petty psychologists, mediocre psychologists and even great psychologists, however, is Dr. Alfred Adler of Vienna. Dr. Adler is one of the fathers of psychiatry, the discoverer of the complicated manifestations of the inferiority complex and an international authority on the devious modes of human behavior. It is due to his writings that even the layman has learned to talk glibly of inferiority complexes, superiority complexes, social feeling, compensation, sublimation and all the rest of the scientific lingo.
Despite his great importance in the field of psychology, Dr. Adler is the most unassuming of men. He is a short, rather stoutish gentleman with the best humored face in the world. His manners are cordial, simple and most charming.
Seated in his New York apartment, overlooking Gramercy Park, he told us some things concerning himself and his psychology. He spoke slowly and thoughtfully, his speech pleasantly characterized by a faint Viennese accent.
"I was," he told us, "born a very long time ago, in 1870, in Vienna. Ours was the last house on the outskirts of the city, and I spent my childhood running around through the surrounding meadows and forest with the children of the neighborhood. It was there that I founded my ideas of science. I had plenty of social contacts but absolute freedom. We had no leader and my parents did not hinder me in any way.
"Of course," he went on, "it is easier to allow a child plenty of freedom in Vienna than it is in New York. There is no traffic, no kidnapers, nor any of the other menaces of larger places. Most of the Viennese, especially the lower classes, are good minded and good hearted.
"I was a very sick child and I had to struggle hard to come into balance. It was probably the running about out doors all day that did me a great deal of good, trained and hardened me. I had great social interest and the impulse and tendency to struggle hard and be patient. The contemplative fear in Vienna, at that time, also influenced me."
Adler's own illness early gave him an interest in medicine, and it was because of this that he decided to become a physician. He was, however, also interested in the same degree in literature, and later in philosophy and psychology. He therefore applied himself to these courses at the University of Vienna. After receiving a thorough training in medicine, especially pathology and diagnosis, he decided to become a neurologist and psychiatrist.
"I had never been a scholar in the strict sense of the word," he explained, "but I had always been thoughtful, and I had been taught in many ways by the scientists of the present and past. In psychiatry I had met very pessimistic views, and when I had become acquainted with the books and art of Charcot and Janet, I tried to find out a more optimistic way."
It was at about this time that Freud invited Adler to come and discuss with him and his analyzed pupils the problems of neuroses. Never agreeing with Freud's ideas of sex libido, yet, Adler told us, he esteemed the man because he had been looking more for the coherence and unity of the mind than any of the others.
Scientific antagonism between the two psychologists became more marked when Freud began to organize Freudian clubs, limited to his followers. Adler then began to study with some of his own pupils and followers, and in 1910 he made public the results of his studies under the name of "Individual Psychology."
"This science and art for understanding mind and psyche in their whole coherence is correlated with bodily influences," he explained. "It is apt for understanding and treatment of mistaken patterns and styles of life, such as problem children, neurotic and psychotic persons, delinquents, drunkards, perverted persons and so on.
"Individual psychology insists, or at least claims," he corrected himself, "that all the movements of mind and psyche, that we can find out, are involved with a certain degree of social adjustment and striving for completion. Training in measuring this degree is sufficient to understand the individual.
"And so, for instance, we found that the style of life of an individual is fixed after four or five years of childhood and cannot be changed by experience, except by understanding the mistakes in it. We also discovered that the mistakes in mental attitudes are always rooted in a lack of social interest. In this way individual psychology is also social psychology and must be used not only to understand the social behavior of an individual but also of a mass."
Wrong social attitudes, according to Dr. Adler, arise from a feeling of inferiority due to some mental or physical defect in the individual. The so-called inferiority complex arises from an inability to solve present social problems because of this defect. The so-called superiority complex arises from the desire to hide this inferiority in a mean imitation of superiority or heroism.
Both the inferiority complex and its resultant superiority complex are made manifest in many different ways, some trivial, some important, and some of them most amusing.
Individuals whose attitudes are either over assertive or over submissive are suffering from a feeling of inferiority. The bold, bossy person who insists on directing everything, really feels just as inferior as the shy, timid person who is afraid to express an opinion on anything.
People who are constantly suffering from some obscure and mysterious illness that doctors cannot diagnose but families and friends grow worried over, people who are constantly demanding attention, people who are habitually late, people who insist that you sit and then stand and talk down to you, all suffer from the inferiority complex, and these are their ways of placing themselves in a superior position that would otherwise be denied them.
The "genius" is perhaps the most amazing example of what a feeling of inferiority can do. In this case the individual is driven to compensate for some infirmity or deformity that he finds within himself, and in his striving he places all his energies in succeeding in his chosen metier. And so we find that some of the greatest poets, painters, musicians and even scientists suffered some particular weakness or were actually deformed. Alexander Pope, Michaelangelo, Beethoven and Steinmetz offer extraordinary examples of this theory.
A feeling of inferiority has, however, more often a harmful effect rather than a good one, since, as Dr. Adler carefully pointed out, it is usually anti-social. It is for this reason that he has been doing active work in trying to effect cures, especially among children.
He is a professor at the Pedagogical Institute of Vienna, and there he explains to the teachers of the city how to treat problem children. He has also established thirty educational stations in various parts of Vienna. Here the particular problems of the children in the schools are discussed and treated.
"In this way," Dr. Adler explained, "I also come in contact with the parents and in so far as I can try to influence them.
"As far as I can see," he went on, "the greater part of the teachers in Vienna, and many in Germany and in America, especially New York, are striving to use the ideas of individual psychology in their schools. The views of individual psychology have very much influenced psychology, psychiatry and education, and it is also trying to influence the social life of the child and the adult."
Dr. Adler's present visit to the United States is at the invitation of several universities and scientific societies that wished to exchange with him, his own experience and the experience of America. He has also, during his stay here, been lecturing at the New School for Social Research in New York and conducting seminars to discuss interesting cases of problem children.
He is fond of New York and delighted with the America striving to solve basic problems.
"But," he declared, "the difference between living in Vienna and in New York is something like the difference between living in a quiet bath tub and in a ruffled ocean. It cannot be otherwise than that there should be more neuroticism in New York than in Vienna.
"It would," he added smiling, "do most New Yorkers a great deal of good if they were to spend two quiet months a year in our 'bath tub.'"
Although Dr. Adler is returning to spend the summer in Vienna, he fully intends to come back again, some day, for another visit to the "ruffled ocean." Our haste and hurry, our subways and speedy modes of travel may be harmful to sensitive nervous systems, but Dr. Adler finds the sincerity of our striving very commendable, indeed.
He is himself, a typical Viennese, placid, slow of speech, and extraordinarily polite. He talks of his own ideas and the ideas of those who oppose him, with the same detached and unexcited air.
It is perhaps these very qualities that make him turn such an indulgent eye toward our excited and neurotic city where his own qualities, and those of his fellow Viennese are so rarely seen. Smilingly he notes that the exigencies of our highly commercialized civilization have made continental placidity highly unprofitable if not entirely impossible, and he is much too polite to mention the fact that we have substituted haste for politeness and conventionalized wit for the true humor that is found among his own countrymen.
Free from neurosis himself he is ready to forgive the neurosis of our entire civilization, and possibly that is one of the reasons why he has become so extremely popular and so really well beloved by the Americans who have found time to meet him.
Fuente: Beatrice Oppenheim, «Discovered Inferiority Complex. Dr. Alfred Adler, Viennese Psychiatrist, an International Authority on Human Behavior, Calls New York a "Ruffled Ocean"», The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, Nueva York), sección de reportajes, 1929, «Page Four». Transcripción hecha sobre la imagen de la doble página en Old Fulton NY Post Cards (fultonhistory.com, «Brooklyn NY Daily Eagle 1929 Grayscale - 5893»), corrigiendo el OCR de la plataforma. La página no conserva la fecha; por su posición en la serie digitalizada (entre el 29 de abril y el 10 de junio de 1929) y por lo que dice del regreso de Adler a Viena, es probablemente de mediados de mayo de 1929. Se respetan las erratas del impreso («Hhis», «attenton», «psychothenic, neurathenic», «psychiatrics», «Neuresthenia», «Michaelangelo»).