by Alfred Adler
The realm of sexuality and love gives a similar testimony. The feelings belonging to sex always appear when an individual desires to approach his sexual goal. By concentration, he tends to exclude conflicting tasks and incompatible interests; and thus he evokes the appropriate feelings and functions. The lack of these feelings and functions — as in impotence, premature ejaculation, Perversion and frigidity — is established by refusing to exclude inappropriate tasks and interests. Such abnormalities are always induced by a mistaken goal of superiority and a mistaken style- of life. We always find in such cases a tendency to expect consideration rather than to give it, a lack of social feeling, and a failure in courage and optimistic activity.
A patient of mine, a second child, suffered very profoundly from inescapable feelings of guilt. Both his father and his elder brother laid great emphasis on honesty. When the boy was seven years old he told his teacher in school that he had done a piece of homework by himself, although, as a matter of fact, his brother had done it for him. The boy concealed his guilty feelings for three years. At last he went to see the teacher and confessed his awful lie. The teacher merely laughed at him. Next he went to his father in tears and confessed a second time. This time he was more successful. The father was proud of his boy's love of truth; he praised and consoled him. In spite of the fact that his father had absolved him, the boy continued to be depressed. We can hardly avoid the conclusion that this boy was occupied in proving his great integrity and scrupulousness by accusing himself so bitterly for such a trifle. The high moral atmosphere of his home gave him the impulse to excel in integrity. He felt inferior to his elder brother in school work and social attractiveness; and he tried to achieve superiority by a sideline of his own.
Later in life he suffered from other self-reproaches. He masturbated and was never completely free from cheating in his studies. His feelings of guilt always increased before he took an examination. As he went on he collected difficulties of this sort. By means of his sensitive conscience he was much more burdened than his brother; and thus he had an excuse prepared for all failures to equal him. When he left the university, he planned to do technical work; but his compulsory feelings of guilt grew so poignant that he prayed through the whole day that God would forgive him. He was thus left without time for working.
By now his condition was so bad that he was sent to an asylum, and there he was considered as incurable. After a time, however, he improved and left the asylum, but asked permission to be readmitted if he should suffer a relapse. He changed his occupation and studied the history of art. The time came around for his examinations. He went to church on a public holiday. He threw himself down before the great crowd and cried out, “I am the greatest sinner of all men." In this way again he succeeded in drawing attention to his sensitive conscience.
After another period in the asylum he returned home. One day he came down to lunch naked. He was a well-built man and on this point he could compete well with his brother and with other people.
His feelings of guilt were means to make him appear more honest than others and in this way he was struggling to achieve superiority. His struggles, however, were directed towards the useless side of life. His escape from examinations and occupational work gives a sign of cowardice and a heightened feeling of inadequacy; and his whole neurosis was a purposive exclusion of every activity in which he feared a defeat.
The same striving for superiority by shabby means is evident in his prostration in church and his sensational entrance into the dining room. His style of life demanded them and the feelings he induced were entirely appropriate.
It is, as we have already seen, in the first four or five years of life that the individual is establishing the unity of his mind and constructing the relations between mind and body. He is taking his hereditary material and the impressions he receives from the environment and is adapting them to his pursuit of superiority. By the end of the fifth year his personality has crystallized. The meaning he gives to life, the goal he pursues, his style of approach, and his emotional disposition are all fixed. They can be changed later; but they can be changed only if he becomes free from the mistake involved in his childhood crystallization. Just as all his previous expressions were coherent with his interpretation of life, so now, if he is able to correct the mistake, his new expressions will be coherent with his new interpretation.
It is by means of his organs that an individual comes into touch with his environment and receives impressions from it. We can see, therefore, from the way he is training his body, the kind of impression he is prepared to receive from his environment and the use he is trying to make of his experience. If we notice the way he looks and listens and what it is that attracts his attention, we have learned much about him.
This is the reason why postures have such an importance; they show us the training of the organs and the use which is being made of them to select impressions. Postures are always conditioned by meanings. Now we can add to our definition of psychology. Psychology is the understanding of an individual's attitude towards the impressions of his body. We can also begin to see how the great differences between human minds come to arise. A body which is ill-suited to the environment and has difficulty in fulfilling the demands of the environment will usually be felt by the mind as a burden. For this reason children who have suffered from imperfect organs meet with greater hindrances than usual for their mental development. It is harder for their minds to influence, move and govern their bodies towards a position of superiority. A greater effort of mind is needed, and mental concentration must be higher than with others if they are to secure the same object. So the mind becomes overburdened and they become self-centered and egoistic. When a child is always occupied with the imperfection of its organs and the difficulties of movement, it has no attention to spare for what is outside itself. It finds neither the time nor the freedom to interest itself in others, and in consequence grows up with a lesser degree of social feeling and ability to cooperate.
Imperfect organs offer many handicaps but these handicaps are by no means an inescapable fate. If the mind is active on its own part and trains hard to overcome the difficulties, the individual may very well succeed in being as successful as those who were originally less burdened. Indeed, children with imperfect organs very often accomplish, in spite of their obstacles, more than children who start with more normal instruments. The handicap was a stimulus to go further ahead. A boy, for example, may suffer unusual stress through the imperfection of his eyes. He is more occupied in trying to see; he gives more attention to the visible world; he is more interested in distinguishing colors and forms. In the end, he comes to have a much greater experience of the visible world than children who never needed to struggle or to pay attention to small distinctions. Thus an imperfect organ can turn out to be the source of great advantages; but only if the mind has found the right technique for overcoming difficulties. Among painters and poets a great proportion are known to have suffered from imperfections of sight.
These imperfections have been governed by well-trained minds; and finally their possessors could use their eyes to more purpose than others who were more nearly normal. The same kind of compensation can be seen, perhaps more easily, among left-handed children who have not been recognized as left-handed. At home, or in the beginning of their school-days, they were trained to use their imperfect right hands. Thus they were really not so well equipped for writing, drawing or handicraft.
We might expect, if the mind can be used to overcome such difficulties, that often this imperfect right hand would develop a high degree of artistry. This is precisely what happens. In many instances left-handed children learn to have better handwriting than others, more talent for drawing and painting, or more skill in craftsmanship. By finding the right technique, by interest, training and exercise, they have turned disadvantage into advantage.
Only a child who desires to contribute to the whole, whose interest is not centered in himself, can train successfully
to compensate for defects. If children desire only to rid themselves of difficulties, they will continue backward. They can keep up their courage only if they have a purpose in view for their efforts and if the achievement of this purpose is more important -to them than the obstacles which stand in the way. It is a question of where their interest and attention is directed. If they are striving towards an object external to themselves, they will quite naturally train and equip themselves to achieve it. Difficulties will represent no more than positions which are to be conquered on their way to success. If, on the other hand, their interest lies in stressing their own drawbacks or in fighting these drawbacks with no purpose except to be free from them, they will be able to make no real progress. A clumsy right hand cannot be trained into a skillful right hand by taking thought, by wishing that it were less clumsy, or even by avoiding clumsiness. It can become skillful only by exercise in practical achievements; and the incentive to the achievement must be more deeply felt than the discouragement at the hitherto existent clumsiness. If a child is to draw together his powers and overcome his difficulties, there must be a goal for his movements outside of himself; a goal based on interest in reality, interest in others, and interest in cooperation.
A good example of hereditary capital and the use to which it may be turned was given me by my investigations into families which suffered from inferiority of the kidney tract. Very often children in these families suffered from enuresis. The organ inferiority is real; it can be shown in the kidney or the bladder or in the existence of a spina bifida; and often a corresponding imperfection of the lumbar segment can be suspected from a nevus or birth mole on the skin in that area. The organ inferiority, however, by no means accounts sufficiently for the enuresis.
The child is not under the compulsion of his organs; and he uses them in his own way. Some children, for example, will wet the bed at night and never wet themselves during the day. Sometimes the habit will disappear suddenly, upon a change in the environment or in the attitude of the parents. Enuresis can be overcome, except among feeble-minded children, if the child ceases to use the imperfection of his organs for a mistaken purpose. Mainly, however, children who suffer from enuresis are being stimulated not to overcome it but to continue it. A skillful mother can give the right training; but if the mother is not skillful an unnecessary weakness persists. Often in families which suffer from kidney troubles or bladder troubles everything to do with urinating is overstressed. Mothers will then mistakenly try very hard to stop the enuresis. If the child notices how much value is placed on this point, he will very probably resist. It will give him a very good opportunity to assert his Opposition to this kind of education. If a child resists the treatment which his parents give him, he will always find his way to attack them at their point of greatest weakness.
A very well-known sociologist in Germany has discovered that a surprising proportion of criminals spring from families which are occupied in the suppression of crime; from the families of judges, policemen, or prison warders. Often the children of teachers are obstinately backward. In my own experience I have often found this true; and I have found also a surprising number of neurotic children among the children of doctors and of delinquent children among the children of ministers of religion. In a similar way, the children whose parents over-stress urination have a very clear way open for them to show that they have wills of their own.
Enuresis can also provide us with a good example of how dreams are used to stir up emotions appropriate to the actions we intend. Often children who wet the bed dream that they have got out of bed and gone to the toilet. In this way they have excused themselves; now they are perfectly right to wet the bed. The purpose which enuresis serves is generally to attract notice, to subordinate others, to occupy their attention in the nighttime as well as the day. Sometimes it is to antagonize them; the habit is a declaration of enmity. From every angle, we can see that enuresis is really a creative expression; the child is speaking with his bladder instead of his mouth. The organic imperfection does no more than offer him the means for the expression of his opinion.
Children who express themselves in this way are always suffering from a tension. Generally they belong to the class of spoiled children who have lost their position of being the unique center of attention. Another child has been born, perhaps, and they find it more difficult to secure the undivided attention of their mothers. Enuresis thus represents a movement to come in loser contact with the mother, even by unpleasant means. It says, in effect, “I am not so far advanced as you think: I must still be watched." In different circumstances, or with a different organ imperfection, they would have chosen other means. They might have used sound, for example, to establish the connection, in which case they would have been restless and cried during the night.
Some children walk in their sleep, have nightmares, fall out of bed, or become thirsty and call for water. The psychological background for these expressions is similar. The choice of symptom depends in part on the organic situation and in part on the attitude of the environment. Such cases show very well the influence which the mind exerts over the body. In all probability the mind does not only affect the choice of a particular bodily Symptom; it is governing and influencing the whole building-up of the body. We have no direct proof of this hypothesis; and it is difficult to see how a proof could ever be established.
The evidence, however, seems clear enough. If a boy is timid, his timidity is reflected in his whole development. He will not care for physical achievements; or, rather, he will not think of them as possible for himself. In consequence, it will not occur to him to train his muscles in an efficient way, and he will exclude all the impressions from outside that would ordinarily be a stimulus to muscular development. Other children, who allow themselves to be influenced and interested in the training of their muscles, will go farther ahead in physical fitness; he, because his interest is blocked, will remain behind.
From such consideration we can fairly conclude that the whole form and development of the body is affected by the mind and reflects the errors or deficiencies of the mind. We can often observe bodily expressions which are plainly the end results of mental failings, where the right way to compensate for a difficulty has not been discovered. We may be sure, for example, that the endocrine glands themselves can be influenced in the first four or five years of life. Imperfect glands never have a compulsive influence on conduct; on the other hand, they are being continuously affected by the whole environment, by the direction in which the child seeks to receive impressions, and by the creative activity of its mind in this interesting situation.
Another piece of evidence would perhaps be more readily understood and accepted, since it is more familiar and leads towards a temporary expression, not towards a fixed disposition of the body. To a certain degree every emotion finds some bodily expression. The individual will show his emotion in some visible form; perhaps in his posture and attitude, perhaps in his face, perhaps in the trembling of his legs and knees. Similar changes could be found in the organs themselves.
If he flushes or turn pale, for example, the circulation of the blood is affected. In anger, anxiety, sorrow or any other emotion, the body always speaks; and each individual's body speaks in a language of its own.
When one man is in a situation in which he is afraid, he trembles; the hair of another will start on end; a third will have palpitations of the heart. Still others will sweat or Choke, speak in a hoarse voice, or shrink physically and cower away. Sometimes the tonus of the body is affected, the appetite lost, or vomiting induced. With some it is the bladder which is mainly irritated by such emotions, with others the sexual organs. Many children feel stimulated in the sexual organs when taking examinations; and it is well known that criminals will frequently go to a house of prostitution, or to their sweethearts, after they have committed a crime.
In the realm of science we find psychologists who Claim that sex and anxiety go together and psychologists who Claim that they have
not the remotest connection. Their point of view depends on their personal experience; with some there is a connection, with others not.
All of these responses belong to different types of individuals. They could probably be discovered to be to some extent hereditary, and physical expressions of this kind will often give us hints of the weaknesses and peculiarities of the family tree. Other members of the family may make a very similar bodily response. What is most interesting here, however, is to see how, by means of the emotions, the mind is able to activate the physical conditions. The emotions and their physical expressions tell us how the mind is acting and reacting in a situation which it interprets as favorable or unfavorable. In an outburst of temper, for example, the individual has wished to overcome his imperfections as quickly as possible. The best way has seemed to be to hit, accuse or attack another individual. The anger, in its turn, influences the organs: mobilizes them for action or lays an additional stress on them. Some people when they are angry have stomach trouble at the same time, or grow red in the face. Their circulation is altered to such a degree that a headache ensues. We shall generally find unadmitted rage or humiliation behind attacks of migraine, or habitual headaches; and with some people anger results in trigeminal neuralgia or fits of an epileptic nature.
The means by which the body is influenced have never been completely explored, and we shall probably never have a full account of them. A mental tension affects both the voluntary system and the vegetative nerve system. Where there is tension, there is action in the voluntary system. The individual drums on the table, plucks at his lip or tears up pieces of paper. If he is tense, he has to move in some way.
