Are Americans Neurotic?
by ALFRED ADLER
What is a neurotic person? It would not be easy for a layman to say more than that he is irritable, not manageable. If we should accept such a definition, then nearly the whole world — and in an equal degree all nations — might be called neurotic, especially if it is remembered that certain strange fears, entirely outside the realm of common sense, are listed among the symptoms of neurotic persons. This would not change my belief that so-called neurotic persons are distributed pretty evenly all over the world. A Japanese visitor, when asked what he believed the most common characteristic of the white peoples, answered: "Fear." But fear is probably the common scourge of all the races of the earth.
From the viewpoint of a layman it is practically impossible to answer the question, "Are Americans more neurotic than other nationalities?" And even the use of scientific definitions, differing according to the many different schools of psychology and psychiatry, do not make the task any easier. Experienced observers comparing Europe and the United States in this respect would disagree in the measure that their diagnoses of a neurosis differed. Repressed wishes, the fight between the so-called unconscious and the conscious, disturbed conditioned reflexes, suggestibility, deficiencies of the endocrine glands, whatever is accepted as a definition would not enable us to answer the question posed above. In fact we have not yet found a satisfactory definition of a neurosis.
The number of patients registered in clinics, in sanitariums, or in private practice is not a reliable clue. The understanding of psychic factors exerting neurotic symptoms is perhaps greater in the United States than in any other part of the world — greater among both laymen and physicians. The neurotic American is more inclined to look for psychiatric help, either from qualified sources or from quacks, than his European brother. Even in hard times the American patient and his doctor generally manage to reach an agreement for lower compensation or for no compensation at all.
The number of patients could not be cited as a proof of difference in various countries. Even counting neurotic children in schools — perhaps more evident than all other enumerations — is dangerous because it depends so largely upon the attitude and conception of the teacher. Inquiry among teachers has shown that actually there is only a small number of children — bashful, self-conscious, irritable, hypersensitive — who could rightly be termed nervous. Of course this does not mean that others may not develop symptoms of nervousness later on or that all the children listed actually fall within that category.
The Neurotic Person
Here I must attempt to explain what a neurosis really is and the circumstances that are apt to cause it.
The outbreak of a neurosis, expressed by seemingly perplexing fears, phobias, compulsion ideas, melancholia, schizophrenia, and similar symptoms, invariably results from a situation which the individual in question finds intolerable. This is the experience of Individual Psychology, which is also able to show that nothing in the training of the afflicted individual had prepared him to cope with this particular situation. His lack of preparation is characterized by a lack of social interest, an absence of courage and concentration, and a complete inability to co-operate with others. Having built up during his childhood what I have termed the pampered attitude toward life (and this does not always mean that the individual has actually been pampered), he has grown to expect only easy tasks, to depend on others to find favorable solutions of his problems — or on favorable circumstances. A distinct lack of activity — a mental and physical laziness — is always characteristic of the neurotic person.
When he encounters a difficult problem involving his social life, his work, or his affections he suffers from an intense emotional shock. If left to his own resources he feels lost, as though dying. These emotions disturb the delicate balances of mind and body, and instead of boldly meeting his problems he withdraws more and more into himself in an effort to escape reality. This gives him temporary relief, for which, however, he pays the dire costs.
This discussion is important because it gives us a firm foundation on which to base our inquiry of whether in the United States there is more than the average number of individuals who adopt a neurotic attitude toward their problems. There is only one way of finding out, and that is by studying the educational tradition of the majority of the people and how the children react to life.
We cannot be very precise about the latter but we can assume that children are very much influenced by the general traditions and habits of thought of their elders.
The Land of Efficiency
All visitors to this country are impressed by her extraordinary efficiency — "American efficiency." Her citizens have built up the richest and strongest country in the world and are still building it up more and more, forced to do so by the demands of a rapidly growing population. These demands cannot fail to give the people of the country a very deep impression of the importance of efficiency. As a natural outcome of this efficiency we find extraordinary achievements in the fields of science and invention, striking endeavors in architecture and art, the finest laboratories in the world, the greatest industrial development, the highest level of agriculture, the widest scope of sports.
Compared to other countries the United States should have the smallest number of neurotic cases, because her efficiency has created better opportunities for useful activity among her citizens. We could expect a greater number of active failures but a smaller number of more passive ones. Reasoning along these lines we may also conclude that there are more active failures to be found in the United States than in many other countries.
The lack of social interest in different countries cannot be measured exactly. My impression is that there is not less social interest in the United States than in other countries, perhaps a little more.
The greater efficiency of this country may be accounted for by the fact that among the immigrants to the United States have been the cream of active adventurous individuals — settlers, pioneers, people for whom the homeland had grown too narrow, too limited. So the tradition of efficiency became a sort of ideal in the United States and in itself a protection against any increase in neuroses.
Fuente: Alfred Adler, «Are Americans Neurotic?», The Forum and Century (New York), vol. 95, no. 1, January 1936, pp. 44-45. Transcripción a partir del OCR del volumen digitalizado en Internet Archive (vol. XCV, enero-junio de 1936), cotejada con las imágenes de las dos páginas. Las versalitas de las iniciales de párrafo («What is», «Here I must», «All visitors») se dan en redonda; los ladillos van como subtítulos.