Watch Your 'Inferiority Complex'

Watch your "inferiority complex" if you have one, for it may mean you are a potential criminal.

If you do not get into trouble because of such a complex, it should entitle you to leniency in court, because the instinct to do "bigger and better" things is what leads most normal persons to commit crime.

These are the opinions of Dr. Alfred Adler, distinguished Vienna psychologist, lately a California visitor, and whose theories are being considered in connection with the series of crime bills before the state legislature.

The inferiority complex may lead a criminal to think he has no chance to earn an honest livelihood by competing with his fellows, Dr. Adler declares. Punishment usually does nothing more than strengthen the criminal's belief that wrongdoing is right.

"The criminal doesn't know what is responsible for his actions," says the Viennese savant, "for he has never analyzed his hopes to accomplish the perfect crime."

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Fuente: "Watch Your 'Inferiority Complex'", The Napa Daily Register (catalogued as Napa Valley Register), 26 February 1929, p. 4, unsigned editorial. Transcribed from the page image of the California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC, NVR19290226.1.4), checked against its OCR.