PSYCHIATRIC ASPECTS REGARDING INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
ALFRED ADLER
ABSTRACT
All personal disorganization is a sign of lack of preparedness in social interest. Individual psychology has shown the individual as a whole, expressing his special "style of life" as a unit related to the problems of social contact, occupation, and love and marriage. Human life expresses itself in movement and direction toward a successful solution of outer and inner confrontations. The "style of life" of an individual is wholly accomplished in the child at an early age. Failures never deteriorate in their style; the degree of social interest, ability, and co-operation and contribution are never diminished. There are two ways of decreasing failures among individuals: one is by diminishing the burden and the confrontations put upon the individual and the masses; the other is by creating a new institution for increasing the social interest during the time of childhood. Our aim should be to make the schools the center of social progress.
It is probably the wisest thing to find out the view or the philosophy of life among all the different schools of thought. It may be perhaps the view of a fighter, of a friendly fellow-man, of a disappointed getting type, of a deep and strong religious feeling, of a moralistic opinion, or of a scientific judgment of the inescapable evolution of mankind.
Individual Psychology prefers the last standpoint in its critical views. Knowing this special fact and its exclusive tendencies, Individual Psychology is therefore able to justify all its conclusions.
Reducing all the failures to short well-known classifications which are well known because common sense has simplified the grouping, we may mention problem children, neurotics and psychotics, suicides, criminals, sexual perverts, drunkards, drug addicts, and prostitutes. We judge them failures because they do not meet the expectations of socially interested people. Their deviations appear when they meet any problem of life which demands more social interest for its solution than they have acquired. Not prepared, they believe or are sure that they are blocked. But life with its inherent and vulnerable structure of striving for a successful achievement does not permit a standstill. Either the shock results prevail or a certain degree of continuing activity gives rise to an antisocial solution.
The dangerous corners in the way of persons whose social interest has been frustrated are the following three: social contact, occupation, and love and marriage.
The way to behave toward others is the problem of individuals living in association with others. Notwithstanding many varieties, the right solution is dependent upon a sufficient degree of social interest. This degree of social interest is the main characteristic of each person and is involved in all his actions.
Since we live on a poor earth crust, the relation between man and cosmos means work in the division of labor. In the view of the salvation of mankind it means how to be useful. Deviations of persons not socially interested are delinquency, laziness, lack of preparedness. This problem, like the first one, can be made so difficult that the average person could not endure it.
The problem of love and marriage can be rightly solved only by two persons on a basis of equality in a mutual devotion and in a final decision. If they are not prepared in social interest they fail. Failures are in a secret or open resistance, making this task for two persons a matter for one. Perversions are signs of a continued persistence in the primary phase of the sexual function; deficiencies are signs of an incomplete secondary phase. Every love affair or marriage mirrors the welfare of the future generation. Among failures this interest is always missed.
ALL PERSONAL DISORGANIZATION IS SIGN OF A LACK OF PREPAREDNESS IN SOCIAL INTEREST
Individual psychology has shown the individual as a whole, expressing his special "style of life" as a unit related with the outside problems mentioned above. Analyzing this unit means disrupting the whole into parts and giving these parts man-made names. These parts are considered like a textbook definition and perceived in the special view of the observer. So it happens with all inner contents, such as perception, sensation, feeling, emotion, instincts, drives, consciousness and unconsciousness, and reflexes. The same questionable facts can be seen in dealing with inherited abilities and environmental influences. Statistics can give only a certain probability without taking notice of the multifold varieties. The special observed individual cannot be judged with the measure of probability. Stated experiences of the observed are not looked at in their ambiguity but are taken rather in the interpretation of the observer. This deplorable fact misleads the individual and the observer, both interpreting in the language of common sense, which is not always at the base of the importance of experiences and their consequences. The style of life seems to be the great power which makes experiences and their consequences, giving them their value, and is surely more fundamental in the building-up of a personality than inheritance and environment. Even in such illnesses as psychoses and endocrine disturbances the "style of life" prevails.
All human abilities are inherited, and it is only a justified guess to insist in different degrees. From this assertion must be excluded feeble-minded, sick persons who are deficient in a high degree of the tools of the brain and of the endocrine glands. All inherited possibilities and all influences of the body, all environmental influences, including educational application, are perceived, assimilated, digested, and answered by a living and striving being, striving for a successful achievement in his own view. The subjectiveness of the individual, his special "style of life," and his conception of life mold and shape all these influences. The individual life collects all these influences and uses them as provocative bricks in building a totality which aims toward a successful goal in relating itself to outside problems. This provocation, as also the child's meaning of life and his meaning of himself, are creations of the mostly forgotten child, independent of the facts in the light of common sense and independent of the interpretation of common sense.
These bricks cannot be considered as static and cannot be separated from life. They do not exist as entities, but life in its different qualities is experienced by the observer as if there were such different parts of life, which are made entities artificially by giving them more or less adequate names. In analyzing them they are perceived unfortunately by a common-sense standard, or, worse than this, in the biased and presupposed view of the observer. These bricks in the current of life have meaning and direction, but these qualities are given to them only by the "style of life," which must be found as the moving unit. Otherwise, left to bricks without distinct quality, direction, or aim, life would be an insoluble task. All scientists more or less have felt this and have brought to life these man-made notions by animating them with their own breath, making them egos, daimons, unconsciousness, or even spirits. So they seem sometimes to be rational, sometimes irrational, but very rarely complete parts of the whole, formed and molded by it. I, myself, as the inventor of the "inferiority complex" have never thought of it as of a spirit, knowing that it has never been in the consciousness or unconsciousness of the patient but only in my own consciousness, and have used it rather for illumination so that the patient could see his attitude in the right coherence.
I do not know more about human life than others, but I can see that it expresses itself in movement and direction toward a successful solution of outer and inner confrontations. The direction in using all human qualities is characterized by the subjectively expected goal of a perfect achievement and by the degree of social interest. As in physics we cannot measure any movement without relating it toward another space, so in Individual Psychology this other space is the social organization of mankind and its supposedly eternal demands. Different degrees and varieties of activity are also inherent in the structure of this striving individual life.
The crucial point now is that the direction toward a successful achievement is the creation of the child at an early age. We are able to find out after the third or fourth year of age of a child how he has used the bricks in creating his "style of life"; and the question arises: What is the best direction for a successful achievement? What is really success? We cannot expect a child at this age in his relation to the narrow circle of his family to answer sufficiently; or at least not often. Examining the chosen direction of individuals we find thousands of different answers. Whatever the chosen direction, behind it is the conception of life and the style of living, the creation of the forgotten child, his independent creation forgotten so long as the bricks only are considered. Whoever considers the inside contents as valid enough and qualified for understanding a personality overlooks the nearly limitless possibilities of the creative power of the child and inclines toward pseudo-problems, such as ambivalence, disintegration, and so forth.
As I pointed out before, all the problems of life have a strong social value. The individual has to be prepared for a right, normal, worth-while, and successful solution. It means that he has to possess a sufficient degree of social interest. Therefore, the brick which we call "inherited possibility of social interest" must be made living and working. Such a state of mind and attitude give him more than a feeling of social interest; he behaves as a part of the whole of mankind, he feels at home in a conception as near as possible to the real world, he has courage and common sense, which are social functions, frustrated among all failures. He is ready to accept advantages of our social life and is a good loser whenever disadvantages cross his way. He is and wants to be the master of his fate with an effective regard for the welfare of others.
The "style of life" of an individual is wholly accomplished in the first childhood and is not changed so long as the individual does not understand the unavoidable discrepancies in regard to the inescapable demands of the social problems. I do not doubt that some persons through experience bring their mistaken style nearer to a social adaptation, but always only if their common sense (a social function) is working for improvement. Otherwise the failures we observe have not changed in the least degree.
An interesting fact which can be found is that failures never deteriorate in their style, that the degree of social interest, the ability of co-operation and contribution are never diminished. I know that this assertion will be accepted with great astonishment, but, if we have understood that the "exogenic fact" brings out the appearance of the constant lack of social interest and that in a favorable situation the individual is not tested, we find clearly that we continually forget the "potential failure," who is always endangered in a confronting situation of becoming an accomplished failure.
There are two ways of decreasing failures among individuals in their lifetime. The first way is more apparent and seems to be more apt regarding the state of mind of our generation. That is to diminish the burden and the confrontations put upon the individual and the masses. This seems to be much more convincing because the complicated, overstrained life of our time attacks immediately and is rightly felt often too hard and unjust. Unemployment, the threat of war, insecurity of old age, of the future of the children, etc., continually produce problems of progress or of regression according to the wishes and hopes of relief in the mind of the individual and of the masses. Too great social pressure regarding social relations, occupation, or love problems will always be fought by the individual and by masses like an epidemic and rattlesnakes. But the degree of the pressure which is felt and resisted is contrasted by the degree of readiness and preparedness to cope with difficulties. The more the individual is socially adjusted, therefore equipped with courage, the greater his efforts to co-operate and to contribute for the benefit of the community in developing himself for doing his best. The worth and value of a mass movement are also determined by the social preparedness of the people and can be measured only by its contribution to the welfare of mankind. If the life and evolution of mankind in their final outcome really mean co-operation and contribution, then in the lapse of time all personal efforts and all mass movements are doomed, if not directed, toward the welfare of mankind.
There is no doubt that the present generation is lacking in the right degree of social interest, which constitutes also a lack of courage and common sense. The failures in solving problems which are invariably social problems sometimes occur in an active, unsocial striving and sometimes in a more passive, unsocial retreat, and are termed failures because they surpass the limits of tolerance of the social interest of the community. The better socially adjusted individual or group is at a disadvantage in the struggle. Their feeling of being in the right lets them sleep quietly. The unsocial or antisocial individual or group is always more restless and alert in planning attacks. The lazy, slowly moving, and undecided people, wishing only to live like a worm in an apple, are an easy prey of the more active antisocial group. The inescapable progress of mankind finally re-establishes the conquest of social interest, but sometimes after a long time compared with the life-span of an individual. Socially interested individuals and groups should be aware of this continual danger to mankind and to democracy.
The second way of decreasing failures does not minimize the emergency need of relieving all kinds of unnecessarily increased burdens, but it is concerned specially with two questions: Who is able to find for himself and for others the right direction toward the welfare of the human family if not the socially adjusted individual? And, which direction would be chosen in a mass movement if the power behind it would not lead toward the evolution of mankind?
The second way aims toward a new institution in the history of mankind which would be an institution for increasing the social interest during the time of childhood. As I have explained, the degree of social interest stops after three or four years of age and persists in the same quantity and quality through the whole life so long as the individual does not understand the mistake in his conception of life. All efforts made until now appear to be insufficient. Medical care, law enforcement, education, and even religious teaching have not brought about the desired results. The reason for this lack of achievement lies in the fixed misconceptions of individuals since childhood, the misconceptions undetected by the individuals themselves, by their educators, and by their fellow-men. The treatment or cure comes after the accomplished results of failures and is applied individually. As I have tried to prove in a scientific way, all failures of individuals and of masses and all their failing accomplishments are always failures because of a lack of social interest, and their improvement can come only when their social interest increases—a statement which agrees with the findings of all socially interested psychologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists.
But the best results of scientific works are futile so long as they are not put to work, so long as a method to apply them has not been found. This method for our views is an institute for improved social interest. Of course, the first thought of people agreeing with it would be to teach the parents. This would be too long a way and would need many more experts than we could find. But in nursery schools and in all other schools we could make the children fitted for a greater social interest if they are found to be lacking in it. This work could not be accomplished without the help of teachers trained in these efforts and taught by well-selected experts. All the schools would then become the center of the social progress of the next generation, who would not only be fitted to carry on a more socially adjusted life but would be enabled to cope with confronting problems better than we are. And, searching for a way of progress, they would always find a direction toward the welfare of mankind.
It is entirely justified to raise the question what could be done now for the present generation in connection with the plan outlined above. If we consider the tremendous army of teachers who would be qualified for the education of social interest, their unavoidable influence toward the parents and families of the children, the spreading of such a new spirit in all other welfare institutions and agencies, in all the religious and political movements, we cannot doubt that our time also would greatly benefit.
I know all the contradictions which can be raised. I have examined them thoroughly and have found them easy to overcome. I believe it to be essential to make such a concentrated effort if mankind is to reach a better stage. The best solution I could find for diminishing the unnecessary evils of individuals and of mankind would be this institute with its aim to make the schools the center of social progress.
LONG ISLAND COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
Fuente: The American Journal of Sociology, vol. XLII, n.º 6 (mayo de 1937), pp. 773-780 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Transcripción a partir del OCR del ejemplar digitalizado en Internet Archive, cotejada con las imágenes del facsímil (págs. 1-8 del PDF) en los pasajes dudosos. En materiales hay dos copias idénticas del PDF con nombres distintos. El resumen (Abstract), en cuerpo menor en el original, se da en cursiva. En el número le sigue «Psychoanalysis and Social Disorganization», de Franz Alexander, que no se transcribe. Se conserva el manuscrito (1936) en la Library of Congress (Alfred Adler Papers, Box 3, Reel 3), no cotejado.