Success, Failure of Humans Defined By Adler, Noted Writer
By TED LE BERTHON
WHEN is a human being a success? When a failure?
Dr. Alfred Adler, of the triad of Freud, Jung and Adler, sits in an armchair in a shaded room in the Ambassador Hotel ,a small, plump man who exudes a glowing calm. Ardor, energy and humor are in his eyes. He has sparse, graying hair and mustache, and smokes a cigar meditatively.
"A success," he says, in a rich Viennese accent, "is a person whose aim is to contribute something for the good of all mankind, who identifies himself with all mankind, who feels himself to be a part of the whole.
"A failure is a person who feels a gap between himself and some or all of these others, or hates them or life because he cannot get what he wants, or because he is not appreciated as he thinks he should be."
SUCCESS DEFINED
"A success," he elucidates, "is a person with social interest. My new book, to be put out soon, is 'Social Interest as a Challenge to Mankind.'"
Social interest, as the noted Dr. Adler sees it, should be developed in the early years of childhood, in an education that would emphasize the need for giving, creating, doing for others, contributing to the good of the group.
"This can only be done by a study of the psychology of each individual child," he explains. "And I am not concerned with sex libidos, drives, social unconsciousness, conditioned reflexes, inner content, perception, sensation or even heredity.
"I am interested in the whole personality, in the way the individual reacts to outside problems. What meaning does the child see in life? What values? What facts? What meaning does he give the facts? And are these conceptions of his harmful?
CHANCE PLAYS PART
"I do not think you can account for why a child develops notions that may make him, in later life, a neurotic, a psychotic, a pervert, or a suicide. Chance plays a part. You cannot blame environment. In the same family, the same home, in six or seven children, all develop individual traits, tendencies. Fine people have come from a wretched environment; bad people, from a splendid environment. I believe in the individual, in finding out why the individual child feels he is deprived or frustrated or isolated, and in instilling social interest."
Dr. Adler declared there would be successes and failures in any economic system; that persons who blame an economic system for their troubles are failures, and would be failures under any system.
"A person can be a success," he said, "if he will identify himself with all mankind, and man's needs."
QUITE DIFFERENT MATTER
It is another thing, Dr. Adler pointed out, for a person to wish to modify or improve or change an economic structure, and actually to work towards that end, "with the good of all mankind in view," and not with a hate or bias towards any particular race, class, creed or nation.
"It will be with us as it was with all our ancestors," he continued. "The things men of good will contributed for the benefit of all mankind have lasted. Those are the things we must build upon, develop, utilize, modify, improve, in our own way, our own style. The spirit of those people, races and tribes that have contributed to all mankind lives on. Those who did not contribute left no impress, and their memory has disappeared."
Monday night he is lecturing at Philharmonic Auditorium under auspices of the Modern Forum on "Love and Marriage."
Fuente: transcripción a partir de la imagen de la página en la California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC, DNLA19360829.1.3): Illustrated Daily News, Los Ángeles, 29 de agosto de 1936, p. 3. El OCR de la CDNC (con columnas desordenadas) se ha corregido íntegramente con la imagen. Los primeros párrafos van en negrita en el original; se conserva la coma mal colocada «Hotel ,a small».