Adler Asserts Success Lies in Cooperation
Famed Viennese Psychologist, Here to Speak, Expounds Pet Theory
STRESSES EDUCATION
Essential to Peace, as to Individual Life, Expert Declares
The New Deal? Peace? Individual success?
No matter what the question, there is but one answer to all of them and that is—cooperation.
The authority is none other than the famed psychologist, Dr. Alfred Adler of Vienna, who was in Binghamton today as the guest of the Civic club.
Cooperation, said Dr. Adler, in an interview this morning at the Arlington hotel, is the background of the New Deal, and that background will become a fundamental basis for the entire structure of social life. Gradually, other countries will adopt it.
Peace, there will be none until the peoples of the world learn to cooperate. And that is possible only through education.
Cooperation and contribution are the biggest words in the language for this little rotund man whose advice and counsel are sought by educators and physicians everywhere.
Waving a half-smoked cigar in an amber holder, his small dark eyes warmly alive behind shell-rimmed glasses, Dr. Adler offered a solution for making better the future life of mankind:
"I would like a law which would provide that no child be allowed to leave school until it is obvious that he is socially adjusted, until he has given proof that he is ready and willing to cooperate and contribute. This would benefit not only the coming generation but the present one. Parents would become interested and would recognize how important are cooperation and contribution."
The New Deal, as Dr. Adler interprets it, means "not to desert the people, not to leave them alone in their distress, but to cooperate and contribute." This is the main point also in the teaching of individual psychology, and it will be accepted more and more, he said.
Cooperation, as he defines it, is to develop one's self in such a way that he is able to contribute—not to take, but to give.
As for the success of the New Deal, there is "remarkable and important proof."
"If it is right, it must be right for eternity and it must be right for the welfare of the whole human family. H'm? Is that not so? There is no other right," he said.
The psychology behind the recent overwhelming victory of the Nazis in the Saar, that section so near his homeland?
The chief reason the people of the Saar voted to go back to Germany, in Dr. Adler's opinion, was fear that to do otherwise would earn them the label of "traitor."
"They thought," he said, "that to leave their fellow countrymen alone in their distress and suffering would be the job of a traitor."
Turning again to his favorite topic, cooperation through education, Dr. Adler expressed the belief that even the feeble-minded can be educated and trained to cooperate.
"If we can tame lions, why shouldn't we be able to educate even the feeble-minded? It has been proposed to sterilize feeble-minded children—that is a problem of poverty. People feel they are too poor to do the necessary things to care for those poor innocent creatures. They want to extinguish them. But—the dog was once a wild animal, and we have tamed him until now, he, too, contributes."
The question of heredity has done much harm, Dr. Adler declared.
"When educators are not successful," he said, "they like to shift the responsibility to heredity. But if more attention were given to the creative power of the child, the question of heredity and environment would not be of such importance. Teachers have the power to do much toward eliminating crime and drunkenness and other vices."
Even religion, in Dr. Adler's opinion, has much of psychology in it—and, of course, cooperation.
"Religion," he said, "always has been a great struggle to make people interested in life, a struggle for cooperation."
Dr. Adler was to be the speaker at the Civic club's annual luncheon this afternoon in the Arlington hotel. More than 500 reservations had been received for the event and hundreds of others were turned away.
This morning, he addressed the doctors and nurses at Binghamton State hospital and this afternoon, following the Civic club luncheon, he met with local groups interested in child training and pre-school clinics. Tonight he is to address a dinner meeting of the Torch club before returning to New York city.
Fuente: «Adler Asserts Success Lies in Cooperation», The Binghamton Press, Binghamton (N.Y.), 16 de enero de 1935 (edición de tarde), p. 2, sin firma. Transcripción hecha sobre la imagen de la página en Fulton History (Binghamton NY Press Grayscale 1935 - 1445), cotejada con el texto OCR de la plataforma. «Shell-rimmed» y el segundo «feeble-minded» van partidos a final de línea en el impreso y se dan como compuestos con guion (el primer «feeble-minded» va sin partir).