--- Title: Alfred Adler Finds First 5 Years Are the Hardest on Your Neurosis Description: New York Evening Post, 24 October 1930, p. 3 (section "The Roving Reporter"). Interview by Louis Sherwin. Author: Alfred Adler URL: https://adler.school/archivo/adler/entrevistas/original/1930-10-24%20Alfred%20Adler%20Finds%20First%205%20Years%20Are%20the%20Hardest%20on%20Your%20Neurosis --- THE ROVING REPORTER # Alfred Adler Finds First 5 Years Are the Hardest on Your Neurosis *Man's Character Fixed Before Six, Says Famous Viennese, Here for Series of Lectures at Columbia* By Louis Sherwin WERE you born good or bad? Here is one of those imperishably young questions that is always good for a fight. Many the bloody sconce and black eye it has provoked. Theologians have wrangled about it. Philosophers and metaphysicians have called one another names. Sociologists have droned and criminologists experimented. "The child," says Dr. Alfred Adler, "is by nature neither good nor bad. Those who say it is bad make much mischief in the world." The famous Viennese, who has himself been the storm center of many an academic battle, arrived in New York recently for a series of lectures at Columbia University and elsewhere. This is, he announces by the way, his last visit to America. "I have too much to do in the years that may be left me," he declared. "The visits I have made in the last five years have caused me to leave undone a great deal of work. Hereafter I shall stay in Vienna and try to complete it. Anyway, there are plenty of my pupils to carry on for me here." ## Character Set at Five Of all the Freudian schismatics, Alfred Adler is usually considered the most positive and the most consistent. His system of ideas is based on a purely biological starting point. He has paid more attention than any of his confreres to infant psychology. His aphorism, as stated above, is in effect a scientific confirmation of the ancient proverb that the child is father to the man. "Do you consider a man's character is fixed at thirty?" I asked him. "At five," he replied emphatically. Adler made his first wide departure from the Freudian dogma when he developed his theory of inferiority based on organic defect. Its inevitable corollary was the compensatory defense reaction, which he called the Masculine Protest and which Nietzsche, long before either Adler or Freud, described as the Will to Power. There was a time when Adler was not so well known in America as Jung. His early writings, according to some students, made difficult reading. Within the last few years, however, he has made several trips here, delivering courses of lectures, attracting a considerable group of disciples and explaining himself in person. These contacts have contributed to a substantially greater degree of clarity. Neurologists who disagree with him now know at least what they are disagreeing with. And one of those who do not disagree with him, evidently a warm friend and disciple, declared to me that Dr. Adler was "the greatest living intellect." ## An Amiable Savant Personally he struck me as being amiable, courteous and patient. He has learned to express himself in English and to avoid the more formidable polysyllabic argot of the German classroom. In appearance he is short, round and grey. He has a grave but ready smile. His work in America he now, as he says, considers accomplished. "The child when born is related to his surroundings entirely through the mother," he says. "By observing his attitude toward his family, how he listens, how he expresses himself, you can find out his capacity for interest in others and for co-operation. This faculty of co-operation must be trained. At five years it is fixed. "If a child's opinion of life is that he has to be the center of attention, his whole style of life, thoughts, desires, actions must fit. This is what we call personality. Of course in this there are a million varieties and nuances. It is in this way that we differ from others, in the difference of the degree of our capacity for co-operation. "A child who suffers from bodily weakness and is consequently allowed to be too interested in himself becomes egotistic. The only chance of averting this is by the right method of education. "There are ways by which a child can become artificially egotistic. For instance, if he is neglected and does not experience co-operation from others. In many cases the inferiority complex can be covered by a superiority complex. Both are really expressions of the same thing. Both attitudes are rooted in egotism. "You ask whether a child is born bad or good? A child is born with abilities. These abilities are neutral, neither good nor bad. How they turn out depends entirely on how they are developed. "Psychologists and theologians who say human beings are bad by nature do a great deal of harm. From this morbid theory come suppression, terrorism, Draconian systems of punishment, all the ideas that terrify mankind." ## Crime "Not of Heredity" "Then you agree with the school of criminologists who maintain that crime is the product of environment and not of heredity?" I asked. "Certainly not of heredity," replied Dr. Adler. "All vices are social mistakes. They cannot be inherited." "But if physical deformities determine character development, cannot proper treatment, removing those infirmities, result in the elimination of the psycho-neurosis?" "Yes, if they are removed before he is five years old. But in some cases training, education can eliminate it also. "There was the case of an apparently healthy boy whose behavior was so bad that his teachers wanted to have him sent to the reform school. Then he de- *Psychologist Declares Children Born Neither Good Nor Bad, but Post-Natal Development Rules* veloped a tubercular condition of the hips and became for some time an invalid. When he was cured he turned out the best boy in the family. "The fact that had not been realized before was that he was being constantly thrust into the background in favor of his elder brother. He considered himself neglected and his bad conduct was a revolt. When he fell ill he saw that his parents were, contrary to his previous belief, really fond of him. So he abandoned his revolt. "Every case in psychology is an individual piece of art." --- *Fuente:* "Alfred Adler Finds First 5 Years Are the Hardest on Your Neurosis", *New York Evening Post*, 24 October 1930, p. 3, in the column "The Roving Reporter", by Louis Sherwin. Transcribed from the page image at fultonhistory.com (New York NY Evening Post 1930 Grayscale, 7440), enlarged at 300 dpi; the platform OCR is very poor and has been entirely corrected against the image. The article runs in two columns under a portrait captioned "Dr. Alfred Adler"; the second deck ("Psychologist Declares Children Born Neither Good Nor Bad, but Post-Natal Development Rules") heads the third column, where the text continues, and is placed here where it appears in the page. The last words of the column ends ("he de-/veloped", "fell ill", "contrary", "fond of") are cut at the right margin of the scan but certain from context.