Life's Three Questions
By Alfred Adler
World-Famous Psychologist
(The main problems of life are here briefly discussed by one of the world's leading psychologists. Dr. Adler is now visiting America.)
The three great questions of life, no one can escape them, are the questions of society, of occupation and of love and marriage.
The question of society might be summed up by how I behave toward another person, how I stay toward him and the degree of my social feeling toward him. In this we can understand friendship, comradeship, truth, reliance, responsibility for others. In this we find interest for the nation, or all mankind.
A child in adolescence who has no friends expects a great deal. Many such children are bashful. Others stammer and blush. They have no friends. They can join only conditionarily, can join only with well acquainted people and little people, younger children, lower people. They are always looking for relief. Thus the answer of this prototype is a greater feeling of inferiority. They cannot join, they cannot approach. This is not adolescence. It is the prototype which has answered the question.
Other adolescents of this prototype boast, exaggerate, show off. At first they are always friends. But you will see how they change very often. They have varied interests, but never a deep interest in society. They are vain, always looking for their own persons, wanting to be leaders, unable to persist or finish. They are willing to receive rather than to give.
It is the aim of everyone to be appreciated, but it is necessary in our culture to discern and to be able to wait and work for appreciation. Tell these children they must be appreciated in the end, not in the beginning. These two types, extremes really, but out of the same prototype, depend too much on the opinions of others. They are looking to the faces, to hear what another person says.
A child in adolescence is expected to be more than a child, and when he is so dependent upon the opinion of others he likes to boast, to appear greater. And it seems as if adolescence is the reason. It is only that adolescence presents a more intense situation. Perhaps every child in adolescence has an inclination to make greater movements exaggerate a little, so that he cannot be expected to be only a child.
The question of occupation is important; everyone is answering it. We are always dependent upon our environment. Work is required of us. You cannot be a fellow-man unless you are occupied in a useful manner. If a child in adolescence does not really know what to do later in life, then this child is in a great danger. He does not know how to order his next steps. He does not expect anything from the future. On the other hand, we can expect that such children who do not want to go on, who are in great doubt, will not join, will not be useful. They are not stimulated to be useful.
Among criminals you can see many who did not know what to do later in life. For instance, a boy of seventeen years of age committed murder. No one knew why he became a murderer. He was brilliant and well behaved. When questioned about what he had wanted to become later in life, he said he didn't know. He wanted always to be the head. He stood in doubt. So he wanted to be the head in crime, the most clever criminal. This child had been a petted child. Very often you find petted children escaping, especially escaping occupation.
These children might be told how they can be anything they want, but that first they must accomplish the occupation of this time. Say to them, "When you are older you will not look back and believe you were not able to accomplish this work." Sometimes such children will see their cowardice, how they want to escape, only to justify it.
We are not well prepared for understanding love and marriage. We are prepared only by seeing other marrages, by reading in books, and by hearing idle conversations. What we read in the books is usually unhappy. And such an influence out of our literature makes us irritated and despairing. We see only unhappy marriages.
We are trained for occupation nearly from the first year. But for love and marriage nobody takes care of it and explains. Perhaps seventy per cent. of the questions asked me belong to love and marriage. People ask about the matters for which they do not feel prepared and need understanding. It would be good to find out institutions to explain and teach and better prepare for love and marriage. Especial attention should be paid to mistakes made in childhood.
(Copyright, 1929)
Fuente: Alfred Adler, «Life's Three Questions», Elmira Star-Gazette (Elmira, Nueva York), 13 de marzo de 1929, p. 6 (página editorial; serie sindicada por The McClure Newspaper Syndicate). Transcripción hecha sobre la imagen de la página en Old Fulton NY Post Cards (fultonhistory.com, «Elmira NY Star Gazette 1929 - 1409»), corrigiendo línea a línea el OCR de la plataforma, muy dañado en la primera columna. Se ha cotejado con la reimpresión del mismo artículo en el Sacramento Union, 21 de marzo de 1929, p. 14 (California Digital Newspaper Collection, SDU19290321.1.14), cuyo OCR solo conserva fragmentos y que confirma «older» y «escaping occupation» (palabra con la última letra dañada en Elmira). Se respetan las erratas e incorrecciones del impreso («marrages», «conditionarily», «make greater movements exaggerate a little»).