Guiding the Child on the Principles of Individual Psychology

By Alfred Adler and Associates

Translated from the German By Benjamin Ginzburg, Ph.D

New York Greenberg : Publisher

Contents.

The Vienna Child Guidance Clinics. By Regine Seidler and Dr. Ladislaus Zilah, 9
The Physician and Educational Guidance. By Dr. Olga Knopf and Dr. Erwin Wexberg, 28
When to Refer Children to Guidance Clinics. By Martha Holub and Dr. Arthur Zanker, 47
The Family and Educational Guidance. By Dr. Alice Friedmann, 53
The School and Educational Guidance. By Oskar Spiel and Ferdinand Birnbaum, 66
The Influence of Individual Psychology upon Parents' Associations. By Dr. Theodor Zerner, 84
Prophylactic Educational Guidance in Parents' Associations. By Dr. Olga Knopf, 89
Technique of Educational Guidance. By Dr. Alexandra Adler, 102
Errors in the Technique of Guidance Work. By Dr. Alexander Müller, 119
A Case from Guidance Practice. By Dr. Alfred Adler, 127

On Education Methods Which Are Based upon Individual Psychology (A Dialogue between an educational guidance worker for Individual Psychology and a Physician). By Martha Holub and Dr. Alexander Neuer, 148
Small Children in Guidance Clinics. By Ida Loewy, 157
Sexual Cases in Child Guidance Clinics. By Sophie Lazarfeld, 166
Rivalry Among Children of the Same Family (Two cases from the Guidance Clinic of a Teachers' Association Adviser—Dr. Alfred Adler). By Regine Seidler, 183
A Case of Deaf-Mutism. By Elly Rothwein and Dr. Arthur Holub, 193
The Only Child. By Dr. Alexandra Adler, 195
The Hated Child. By Martha Holub and Dr. Arthur Zanker, 210
Escape to Disease. By Dr. Friederike Friedmann, 231
Two Cases. By Dr. Lydia Sicher and Martha Holub, 236
A Case of Speech Disturbance. By Dr. Alexander Müller and Dr. Theodor Vértes, 241
The Educational Work of the Private Teacher. By Paul Brodsky, 247

A Case from Guidance Practice

By Dr. Alfred Adler

Fritz, twelve years old, was introduced to our child guidance clinic on the twenty-first of November, in the company of his mother. Dr. Marianne Langer gave an introductory report. The report and explanatory remarks made by the adviser are reproduced here in small type in accordance with the stenographic text:

Fritz, twelve years old, comes into the clinic suffering from enuresis.

He is a militant child, was probably pampered in his early childhood, but was thrown out of this pampered position by some event or other. He does not feel well at present and begins to make such demands on his mother that she also has to attend to him during the night. We must look here for signs of his previous pampered state: that he is slovenly as a rule, probably jealous of a younger or older sister or brother, has difficulties with eating, and wants to be in the center of things and to draw others near himself.

. . . frequently during the day . . .

When we hear that a child wets himself we can infer that it is a case of violent struggle. He is not satisfied with bothering others at night, he does it also during the day. We have also to ascertain whether we are not confronted here with a mental defect. Organic diseases occur seldom in these cases.

. . . seldom at night.

While struggling violently during the day, he seems to be in a better situation at night, when he quiets down. We shall not be surprised to learn that he carries on his struggle consciously, and that defiance is an outstanding feature of his character. Defiance is a somewhat more conscious struggle.

He never wets himself when his mother is with him or when he is at school.

This shows that we have to deal with psychic motives. When his mother is with him there is no necessity for drawing her near him. At school he probably does not feel bad either. He may not be a bad pupil at all, or perhaps he does not like the idea of being thrown out of school.

The mother is separated . . .

Matrimonial discords have a bad effect upon children. When parents quarrel, they often give vent to their ill-humor in the presence of their children. It is a striking fact that backward, delinquent, neurotic, sexually perverse, drinking children very often come from families with unhappy matrimonial relations. It is important to find out whether the child is not overburdened; overburdening is always a cause of difficulties.

. . . he lives with his grandparents . . .

Here we must remember that grandparents generally pamper children. To be sure, not always: if the mother does the pampering, then she is blamed by the grandmother; if the mother does not pamper, then the grandmother does the pampering.

The child used to sleep in the parents' bedroom.

This shows either that the pampered child himself made efforts to be with his parents or that the parents always wanted to keep him near themselves.

At present he sleeps alone.

This circumstance cannot be indifferent to us, it plays a part in the enuresis. If the child slept in the mother's bed, he would not wet himself.

The child is tremendously attached to his mother . . .

This confirms our supposition that the bond between the mother and the child is a very intimate one. He tries to gain the mother for himself and to use her as a prop.

He is especially pampered by his grandmother.

We see then that we did not go far astray in our suppositions.

Four years ago he was laid up for seven weeks in the hospital with osteomyelitis of the hip and thigh.

This is an ailment which is extraordinarily favorable to pampering. After such an ailment children feel the need of pampering more intensely.

It looked at that time as if the leg would have to be amputated, but it was healed through ancylotic treatment.

In other words we have to deal with a bodily defect—a circumstance that largely contributes to developing a feeling of inferiority in the child. The mere fact that children are pampered is sufficient to generate in them a feeling of inferiority and to deprive them of self-confidence. The treatment by ancylosis tends to intensify this feeling of inferiority and makes the patient rely a great deal upon the support of others.

On account of this disease he did not attend school from the age of seven to ten.

It is obvious that he was always in the company of his mother.

At the age of ten he was put in the third class of the school for backward children and he is at present in the fourth class of this school.

To attend a school for backward children means an intensification of the feeling of inferiority if the child is not an imbecile or an idiot. If the child is feeble-minded, he is naturally not aware of the fact that he is exclusively among backward children. A normal child, on the other hand, feels that he is being degraded if he is sent to such a school. Such a child has many reasons to think that he is inferior and degraded.

He gets ahead in school quite well.

If he is normal it is not surprising to see him get ahead. There is no advantage in this for him. To see with one eye among the totally blind is no triumph.

He has some difficulties with arithmetic.

If he is only shown properly how to do the thing, he will certainly be able to calculate just as well as the others.

When one of the pupils is asked a question in school he always butts in with his answers.

This suggests that he is an intelligent boy. This pampered child would like to stand in the foreground. His wetting of the bed is also a means to this end. He plays quite a good role at school, he is probably not entirely dissatisfied, but he would like to be prominent, and this is why he butts in with his answers.

In playing, also, he must always play the first fiddle.

He has his style-of-life—a thing not to be found among feeble-minded children. We can say that the school for backward childen is not a place for him. We know that he is not prepared for a normal class as a result of his diseases, and that he could not make much progress there without preparation. It would be necessary to establish a special preparatory school for such children.

He has a brother who is four years older than he and who also has been greatly pampered by his father.

We can infer from this that he has no younger brothers or sisters. He probably goes around with the idea that his elder brother is, in comparison with him, quite favored by fortune. The latter is preferred by the father and he does not have to go to the school for backward children.

The elder brother is very handsome, was left back once, but he is quite a good pupil now. He is very serious and grown-up.

If the elder brother is well-developed and is not to be beaten, then the younger one becomes the chief problem. If the younger one makes good progress, keeps up with his brother and threatens his supremacy, then the elder one becomes a problem. This experience is confirmed in the present case. The elder brother probably does not lose an opportunity to point out that the younger one is in a school for backward children.

The younger gladly plays the clown.

This happens frequently in the case of children who have a feeling of inferiority and who try to push themselves to the foreground. We find in this child three co-ordinated facts: enuresis, the tendency to butt in with his answers when others are questioned, and to play the clown. These are nothing but forms of expression chosen by ambitious weaklings. Anyone with a feeling of self-confidence would not act in this way.

He often cries out at night.

Here again, he looks for attention. That he cries out, that he plays the clown, shows that he is intelligent, that he proceeds in the right way, that he does things in the same way as we would do, if I may say so, if we were in the same position.

With eating he has no difficulties.

A sign that no great errors have been committed by the family in this regard is the fact that the importance of eating is not unduly stressed. The child has started off wrong in his development, and we should really expect him to have difficulties with eating. We must not be surprised at the fact that we fail to observe in the structure of a style-of-life, things which we might reasonably expect on the basis of our experience with the general run of such cases.

He washes and dresses by himself.

In this respect, too, the family has evidently proceeded in the right way.

The parents and the paternal grandparents are blood-relations.

This would properly speaking be of no significance, for the facts observed in this case can also be found in other children. The difficulties cannot be reduced here to heredity. But I should like to point out that I always find marriages between blood-relations among discouraged persons; such persons look for a sort of security in the selection of their life mates, and they find this in persons whom they have known since their childhood. This also bears testimony to a poorly developed social sentiment, because all society is confined for these people to the family. It must not be denied that the offspring of blood-relations may often display organ inferiorities (defects of ears or eyes). But as far as I have been able to establish this is only true in cases where both partners happen to possess parallel inferiorities. We very often see quite healthy children in families with no parallel inferiorities. We are opposed to marriages between blood-relations simply because the proper development of the social sentiment requires the widest blood-mixture possible. People who discriminate so greatly between persons of their own family and those of others do not possess much of this sentiment.

The child had whooping-cough and bladder trouble.

These ailments offer another occasion for great pampering. We may observe that there are a number of diseases, such as scarlet fever, whooping-cough, and encephalitis, which inevitably entail pampering. Numerous subsequent difficulties can be reduced to these diseases. Sometimes we may notice that a difficult child improves after a serious disease. It would, however, be hardly true to maintain that scarlet fever may have a favorable effect upon anyone.

He began to walk at the age of sixteen months.

If we were to believe the mother, the disease of rickets was perhaps partly responsible for the trouble. It is evident that he was under the care of his mother more than was necessary.

He did not learn to speak until he was three.

This shows that he had no great need of speaking. Had he had such a need, he would have spoken earlier. All his wishes were fulfilled, everything was done for him so that there was no necessity for him to speak. This also happens in the case of the deaf-mute. Such children are generally pampered to an extraordinary extent and they thus have no necessity for speaking. Mothers often remark with pride that they always know what the child wants. Such children always wish to be understood without speaking and to be constantly attended to. If such a child does not speak and if the pampering person satisfies all his whims, we can naturally expect to have on our hands a deaf-mute. We also know that children can form and regulate all their functions in accordance with their environment.

I once heard of a child of a deaf-mute couple. This child was quite normal, he was able to hear and speak. Whenever he hurt himself he used to cry out loud. Tears ran down his cheeks and he made a sad face, but did not cry out loud; he knew that it would have been useless. The functions grow in accordance with the environment—they cannot grow otherwise. Here we can call upon the psychology of instincts. The development of instincts is a function of the environment. The child in this case was spared the necessity of speaking; his speech, therefore, had no chance to develop at the proper time.

Even now he speaks somewhat nasally. He was operated on four years ago for tonsils and adenoids. He has soon to undergo another operation for adenoids. He is somewhat of a mongoloid type.

It is somewhat stunning to hear that he is of a mongoloid type, for this involves a suspicion that he belongs to the class of feeble-minded children. I should not, however, be inclined to make such a deduction from the mere fact that he is mongoloid.

The upper part of his nose is wide, his ears stand out, the lower lip protrudes; otherwise internal nerve conditions are normal. Intelligence normal. His right leg is stiff. He takes great delight in athletic sports, and although this was at first forbidden him, he managed, as far as his leg permitted, to participate in them.

I have often noticed that children with defective arms or legs take part with great zeal in athletic sports and sometimes become very successful. Here we find another confirmation for one of the fundamental views of Individual Psychology. The best accomplishments are made possible by a special interest entailed by an organ inferiority.

Within the short time given to us we cannot achieve everything we could and should like to achieve. If some one could be put at the disposal of the mother and child, our work would yield richer results. Our immediate task is to make the child courageous and independent, to offer him special tutoring so as to enable him to go back to his normal school. He is to be provided with an end in view, which will show him how to achieve something splendid on the useful side of life; and in proportion as he succeeds, his bad qualities will lose all value for him. To wet himself is his last refuge. We shall show him a better way.

We must also win the favor of the mother. For if we make such a proposal to the child and the mother works against us, the child will become involved in difficulties. I shall now show the mother the true nature of the child and shall try to influence her accordingly.

(The mother is called in.)

Adler (to the mother): I wish to speak about your Fritz. Is he not one of the best pupils of his class?

Mother: I could not say that.

Adler: Is he not one of the best pupils in the school for backward children?

Mother: Everything is all right except arithmetic. Other children are ahead of him. The teacher says that when he reads quietly he does well. He tries to go too fast.

Adler: What would he like to become?

Mother: A cabinet-maker.

Adler: What does his father do?

Mother (with pride): He is a dental mechanic. The grandfather has a furniture business. My father says he would like Fritz to learn the trade in order that he may understand the furniture business.

Adler: He means that he should become a cabinet-maker. Does he have any friends?

Mother: Yes, but younger children exclusively.

Adler: Has he any inclination to be with other children?

Mother: He wants to play with smaller children only.

Adler: Has he ever been sent to a guidance clinic?

Mother: He was with the "Friends of Children." The children once had a quarrel, and the teacher gave them a sound thrashing.

Adler: Does he tell the truth?

Mother: He sometimes makes up stories, but he does not lie.

Adler: Does he know how to go about with money?

Mother: Yes, he knows how to go about with money.

Adler: Is he reliable?

Mother: Yes, he is very reliable. He makes himself useful in the business. He knows very well what he is doing, takes care of the telephone and attends to matters quite well. Only he is too childish.

Adler: How does he feel at school?

Mother: He feels quite well at school. We had sent him, for a time, to a private school; we hoped that it would be easier for him there. But not much attention was paid to him there and he was allowed to be left back. A nerve specialist, a friend of ours, found the child to be normal and advised us to send him to the school for backward children.

Adler: How are the children in the school for backward children?

Mother: The children are terrible, but this does not worry him. There are horrible children there who are very backward. If I knew positively that I can expect him to forge ahead. . . .

Adler: But you have never doubted that?

Mother: The teachers always consoled me with the thought that he will be a good business man. He is interested in all kinds of things, has an opinion of his own about many matters and gives the impression of a good deal of independence. If only it were not for his childishness. . . .

Adler: Does he often wet himself?

Mother: I also went to see his teacher and asked her how things are with him at school. She complains that he wets himself in school, too. She says it must be a weakness. Of late things have again become worse.

Adler: Has he gotten worse at school?

Mother: He gets ahead. Formerly he was unable to do his school work by himself, but at present he does it quite independently.

Adler: Has he not been scolded? What about his arithmetic?

Mother: In arithmetic other children are ahead of him.

Adler: It would be well if he could get ahead in arithmetic also. Would you like to send him to our guidance clinic? Can he travel by himself?

Mother: He travels entirely by himself. He also travels to school by himself.

Adler: It will be brought home to him at the clinic that he can attain everything and that he can go back to the regular school.

Mother: When he was with the "Friends of Children" he made beautiful things. Once he constructed a pretty theatre. To believe his teacher, he has something in him that no child has,—he is very conscientious.

Adler: It would be much better for the boy to go back to the regular school. How is the other boy?

Mother: A splendid lad.

Adler: What is his attitude towards the younger brother?

Mother: They like each other immensely. At present the situation is quite different. I live with my parents, the older boy is with the other grandmother, and the children do not see each other so often.

Adler: Does he tease the younger brother?

Mother: He sympathizes greatly with him and trembles for him.

Adler: He behaves like a father. This is very often found in the case of victorious elder brothers.

Mother: The elder one was always very well developed.

Adler: The elder one seems to be very popular.

Mother: The younger one is still more so. The elder one has a proud character.

Adler: Has he not been teased or ridiculed on account of the school for backward children?

Mother: He is not teased on account of the school, but the children tease and ridicule him on account of his leg—it is terrible!

Adler: This will stop eventually. His habit of wetting himself will also stop. I should like to advise you to encourage the child, not to criticize him, not to scold him, but to stimulate him to do everything by himself.

Mother: My family criticizes and continually finds fault with him.

Adler: Tell them in my name to hold back their scolding, criticizing, and nagging. We shall apply a new method and change him for the better.

Mother takes leave, with thanks.

Adler: That he is always provoked at home is of great importance. I don't know whether you have ever seen the tapir in the Schönbrunner zoological garden. This tapir has the habit of turning around and urinating whenever he is annoyed or irritated by someone; it is highly unpleasant, sometimes he vents his anger upon an entirely innocent victim.

(The child enters the room.)

Adler (to the child): How do you get along at school?

Fritz: Well.

Adler: You are quite a clever boy. You could be quite a proficient pupil. I believe you are cowardly, you have no confidence in yourself. You believe that this stuff, this arithmetic, is too much for you. You will manage it easily, I will see to it that you become good at figuring! . . . We could then arrange matters so as to enable you to go to a higher school. I shall help you there also. We shall take matters promptly into our own hands, and suddenly you will discover that things move ahead. I should like you to come to our center where you can play and do your school work also. You will have a good time there. . . . I was also poor in arithmetic, then someone showed me how to do it, and I became the best pupil in arithmetic. What would your teacher think if you became the best pupil in arithmetic?

Fritz: It would give her pleasure.

Adler: Would you like to give her pleasure?

Fritz: Yes!

Adler: Come again soon and don't mind if a boy tells you something silly. You know that they say these things out of sheer stupidity. And when you are criticized at home, you must not get angry at once either, and make yourself wet. You must help me! May I rely upon you? (Takes leave of the child.)

Fuente: Alfred Adler and Associates, Guiding the Child on the Principles of Individual Psychology, translated from the German by Benjamin Ginzburg, Nueva York, Greenberg, 1930, VIII + 268 págs. (edición británica: Londres, George Allen & Unwin, 1930); capítulo de Adler «A Case from Guidance Practice», págs. 127-147. Texto tomado del OCR de archive.org (ejemplar con el sello de la biblioteca del New College of California, San Francisco; identificador b29818680 según la bibliografía del archivo), corregido y cotejado línea por línea con el facsímil de las 21 páginas: «Abler» → «Adler» (firma), «Uves» → «lives», «If»/«It» → «if»/«it» (p. 130), «cholog}^» → «chology», «hke» → «like», «quahties» → «qualities», «rehable» → «reliable», «chnic» → «clinic», «mi-able» → «unable», «"What» → «What», «Yesl» → «Yes!», «Schonbrunner» → «Schönbrunner». Se conserva la errata impresa «childen» (p. 132). La distinción tipográfica del original (informe en letra pequeña, comentarios de Adler en letra normal) se reproduce con el sangrado de cita; las cursivas son las del impreso (nombres de los interlocutores, style-of-life, encourage). Se omiten la nota editorial («Prefatory Note», pp. vii-viii) y los veinte capítulos de los colaboradores, que solo se citan en el índice. El original alemán de este volumen no se ha localizado en materiales/; la traducción inglesa es aquí la versión de referencia. Los comentarios p. n del código marcan el comienzo de cada página impresa.