by Alfred Adler
This picture of restricted movement is given by all the symptoms of neurosis. In the speech of the stammerer we can see his hesitating attitude. His residue of social feeling drives him to make connection with his fellows, but his low opinion of himself, his fear of coming to the test, conflicts with his social feeling, and he hesitates in his speech. Children who are " backward " at school, men and women who have found no occupation by the age of thirty or more, or have shelved the problem of marriage, compulsion neurotics who must carry out the same action again and again, insomniacs who weary themselves for the tasks of the day—all of them reveal the inferiority complex which forbids them to make progress in solving the problems of life. Masturbation, premature ejaculation, impotence and perversion all show a halting style of life, consequent on a fear of inadequacy in the approach to the other sex. The concomitant goal of supremacy will suggest itself if we ask, “Why so afraid of inadequacy?” The answer can only be, “Because the individual has set for himself so high a goal of success."
We have said that inferiority feelings are not in themselves abnormal. They are the cause of all improvements in the position of mankind. Science itself, for example, can arise only when people feel their ignorance and their need to foresee the future: it is the result of the strivings of human beings to improve their whole situation, to know more of the universe and to be able to control it better. Indeed, it seems to me that all our human culture is based upon feelings of inferiority. If we can imagine a disinterested observer visiting our human planet, he would surely conclude, "These human beings, with all their associations and institutions, with all their efforts for security, with their roofs to keep off the rain, their clothes to warm them, their streets to make travel easier — obviously they feel themselves the weakest of all the inhabitants of earth." And in some ways men are the weakest of all creatures. We have not the strength of the lion or the gorilla, and many animals are better fitted to meet the difficulties of life alone. Some animals compensate for their weakness by association — they join together in herds; but human beings have need of more varied and deeper cooperation than we can find anywhere else in the world.
The human child is especially weak; it needs care and protection for many years. Since every human being has at one time been the youngest and weakest of mankind, and since mankind, without cooperation, would be completely at the mercy of its environment, we can understand how inescapably a child which has not trained itself in cooperation will be driven towards pessimism and a fixed inferiority complex. We can understand, too, that life will continue to offer problems even to the most cooperative individual. No individual will find himself in the position of having reached his final goal of superiority, of being complete master of his environment. Life is too short; our bodies are too weak; the three problems of life will always admit of richer and fuller solutions. We can always approach to a solution; we can never rest satisfied with our achievement. Striving will continue in any case; but with the cooperative individual it will be hopeful and contributory striving, directed towards a real improvement of our common situation.
Nobody will worry, I think, over the fact that we cannot finally reach the highest goal of our lives. If we could imagine a single individual, or mankind on the whole, as having reached a position where there were no further difficulties, we should think that life in those circumstances must be very dull. Everything then could be foreseen, everything calculated in advance. To-morrow would bring no unexpected opportunities; there would be nothing to look forward to in the future. Our interest in life comes mainly from our lack of certainty. If we were all sure, if we knew everything, there would no longer be discussions or discoveries. Science would have come to an end; the universe around us would be nothing but a twice -told tale. Art and religion, which cheer us with the imagination of our unattained goals, would no longer have any meaning.
It is our good fortune that life is not so easily exhausted. The strivings of men are continuous and we can always find or invent new problems, and make new opportunities for cooperation and contribution. The neurotic is blocked at the beginning; his solutions remain at a low level and his difficulties are correspondingly great. The more normal individual puts behind himself an increasingly full solution for his problems; he can advance to new difficulties and arrive at new solutions. In this way he is enabled to contribute to others: he does not lag behind and become a liability for his fellow men; he does not need or demand special consideration; but he proceeds with courage and independence to solve his problems in accordance with social feeling.
The goal of superiority, with each individual, is personal and unique. It depends upon the meaning he gives to life; and this meaning is not a matter of words. It is built up in his style of life and runs through it like a strange melody of his own creation. In his style of life he does not express his goal so that we can formulate it once for all. He expresses it vaguely, so that we must guess at it from the indications he gives. Understanding a style of life is similar to understanding the work of a poet. A poet must use words; but his meaning is more than the mere words he uses. The greatest part of his meaning must be guessed at; we must read between the lines. So, too, with that profoundest and most intricate creation, an individual style of life. The psychologist must learn to read between the lines; he must learn the art of appreciating life meanings.
It could not be otherwise. The meaning of life is arrived at in those first four or five years of life; and it is not arrived at by a mathematical process, but by dark gropings, by feelings not wholly understood, by catching at hints and fumbling for explanations. The goal of superiority, in a similar way, is fixed by groping and guesswork; it is a life-striving, a dynamic tendency, not a charted and geographically determined point. Nobody knows his own goal of superiority so that he can describe it in full. Perhaps he knows his professional aims, but these give no more than a small part of his strivings. Even where the goal has been made concrete, there can be a thousand varieties of striving towards this goal. One man, for example, will want to be a physician; but to be a physician may mean many different things. Not only may he wish to be a specialist in internal medicine or a specialist in pathology; he will show in his activities his own peculiar degree of interest in himself and interest in others. We shall see how far he trains himself to be of help to his fellows and how far he limits his helpfulness. He has made this his aim as a compensation for a specific feeling of inferiority; and we must be able to guess, from his expressions in his profession and else-where, the specific feeling for which he is compensating.
We very frequently find, for example, that physicians in their childhood made early acquaintance with the fact of death; and death was the aspect of human insecurity which made the greatest impression on them. Perhaps a brother or a parent died; and their later training developed towards finding a way, for themselves and others, to be more secure against death. Another man may make it his concrete goal to be a teacher; but we know very well how different teachers may be. If a teacher has a low degree of social feeling, his goal of superiority in being a teacher may be to rule among his inferiors; he may feel secure only with those who are weaker and less experienced than himself. A teacher with a high degree of social feeling will treat his pupils as his equals; he will really wish to contribute to the welfare of mankind. We need not do more than mention here how different the capacities and interests of teachers may be, and how significant of their goal all these expressions will be found. When a goal is made concrete, the individual's potentialities must be curtailed and limited to fit this goal; but the complete goal, the prototype, will always push and pull at these limits and find a way, under any conditions, to express the meaning given to life and the final ideal striving for superiority.
With every individual, therefore, we must look below the surface. An individual may change the way in which he makes his goal concrete, just as he may change one expression of his concrete goal, his occupation. We must still look for the underlying coherence,
for the unity of the personality. This unity is fixed in all its expressions. If we take an irregular triangle and place it in different positions, each position will seem to give us quite a different triangle; but if we look hard we shall discover that the triangle is always the same. So, too, with the prototype: its content is never exhausted by any single expression, but we can recognize it in all its expressions. We can never say to a man, “Your striving for superiority would be satisfied if you did this or that . . ." The striving for superiority remains flexible; and, indeed, the nearer to health and normality an individual is, the more he can find new openings for his strivings when they are blocked in one particular direction. It is only the neurotic 'who feels, of the concrete expressions of his goal, “I must have this or nothing."
We should not attempt to formulate too easily any particular superiority striving; but we can find in all goals one common factor — a striving to be godlike. Sometimes we find children who express themselves quite openly in this way, and remark, "I should like to be God." Many philosophers have had the same idea; and there are educators who would wish to train and educate children to be like God. In old religious disciplines the same objective is visible; disciples should educate themselves in such a way that they become godlike. This ideal of god -likeness appears in a more modest way in the idea of "superman," and it is revealing — I shall not say more — that Nietzsche when he became insane signed himself in a letter to Strindberg, "The Crucified." Often insane people express their goal of superiority in an undisguised form: they will assert, "I am Napoleon," or "I am the Emperor of China."
They wish to be the center of attention through the whole world, to be looked on from all sides, to be connected with the whole world by wireless and overhear all conversations, to predict the future, to be the bearers of supernatural power. In a more reason able way, perhaps, the same goal of god-likeness comes out in the desire to know everything, to possess universal wisdom, or in the wish to perpetuate our life. Whether it is our earthly life we desire to perpetuate, or we imagine ourselves as coming to earth again and again through many incarnations, or we foresee an immortality in another world, these prospects are all based upon the desire to be like God. In religious teachings it is God who is the immortal being, who survives through all time and eternity. I am not here discussing whether these ideas are right or wrong: they are interpretations of life, they are meanings; and to some degree we are all caught up in this meaning,— God and god-likeness. Even the atheist wishes to conquer God, to be higher than God; and we can see that this is a peculiarly strong goal of superiority.
Once the goal of superiority has been made concrete, there are no mistakes made in the style of life. The habits and symptoms of the individual are precisely right for attaining his concrete goal; they are beyond all criticism. Every problem child, every neurotic, every drunkard, criminal or sexual pervert is making the proper movements to achieve what he takes to be the position of superiority. It is impossible to attack his symptoms by themselves; they are exactly the symptoms he ought to have for such a goal. A boy at one school, the laziest boy in the class, was asked by his teacher, "Why do you get on so badly with your work?" He answered, "If I am the laziest boy here, you will always be occupied with me. You never pay any attention to good boys, who never disturb the class and do all their work properly." So long as it was his aim to attract notice and rule over his teacher, he had found the best way to do it. It would be of no use to try to get rid of his laziness; he needed it for his goal. He was perfectly in the right and if he changed his behavior he would be a fool. Another boy was very obedient at home but he seemed to be stupid; he was backward at school and not at all quick witted at home. He had a brother two years older than he, and his brother was quite different in his style of life. He was intelligent and active but he was always getting into _trouble because of his impudence. The younger brother was one day overheard saying to the older brother, "I'd rather be as stupid as I am than as impudent as you are." His stupidity was really quite intelligent if we grant him the goal of escaping trouble. Because of his stupidity less was demanded of him, and if he committed errors he was not blamed for them. Granted his goal, he would have been a fool not to be stupid.
Till the present day, the usual treatment has been to attack the symptom. To this attitude Individual Psychology is entirely opposed, both in medicine and in education. When a child is backward in arithmetic, or has bad school reports, it is useless to concentrate our attention on these points and try to improve him in these special expressions. Perhaps he wants to bother the teacher; or even to escape school altogether by getting himself expelled. If we check him at one point, he will find a new way to reach his goal. It is just the same with the adult neurotic. Suppose he suffers, for example, from migraine.
These headaches of his can be very useful to him and they may occur at the precise moment when he has greatest need of them. Through his headaches he may escape solving the problems of society; they may come on whenever he is confronted with the necessity of meeting new people or of making a new decision. At the same time, they may aid him in tyrannizing over his office staff, or over his wife and family. Why should we expect him to give up such a well-tested device? The pain he gives himself, from his present point of view, is no more than a wise investment; it brings him in all the returns he could wish. No doubt we could frighten him out of this Symptom by giving him an explanation which shocked him, just as war neurotics were sometimes frightened out of their symptoms by electric shocks or pretended operations. Perhaps medical treatment would relieve him at this point and make it more difficult for him to continue with the particular symptom he has Chosen. But, so long as his goal remains the same, if he gives up one symptom he must find another. "Cured" of his headaches, he will develop insomnia, or some other fresh symptom. So long as his goal remains the same, he must continue to pursue it.
Neurotics exist who can drop symptoms with astonishing rapidity and take on new ones without a moment's hesitation. They become virtuosos of neurosis, continually extending their repertory. The reading of a book on psychotherapy will suggest to them only some further nervous troubles which as yet they have not had the opportunity of trying out. What we must always look for is the purpose for which the symptom is adopted and the coherence of this purpose with the general goal of superiority.
Suppose in my classroom I sent for a ladder, climbed up it, and perched on top of the blackboard. Any one seeing me would probably think, “Doctor Adler is quite crazy." They would not know what the ladder was for, why I climbed up it, or why I was sitting in such an awkward position. But if they knew, “He wants to sit on the blackboard because he feels inferior unless he is physically higher than other people; he only feels se cure if he can Look down on his class”, they would not think I was quite so crazy. I would have taken an excellent way to attain my concrete goal. The ladder would then seem a very sensible device and my efforts to climb up it would appear well planned and executed. Only on one point would I be crazy — my interpretation of superiority. If I could be convinced that my concrete goal was badly chosen, then I could change my activity. But if the goal remains, and my ladder is taken away, I shall try again with a chair; and if the chair is taken away, I shall see what I can do by jumping and clambering and pulling myself up by my muscles. It is the same with every neurotic: nothing is wrong with his choice of means — they are beyond criticism. It is only his concrete goal we can improve. With a change of goal, the mental habits and attitudes will also change. He will no longer need the old habits and attitudes, and new ones, fitted to his new goal, will take their place.
Let me give the example of a woman of thirty who came to me suffering from anxiety and inability to make friends. She could make no progress with the problem of occupation and in consequence was still a burden upon her family. She would take small jobs from time to time as a stenographer or secretary, but by a miserable fatality, her employers would always make love to her and scare her so much that she
had to leave the office. Once, however, she found a place where her employer was not so much interested in her. She felt so humiliated that she left this job also. She had been psychologically treated for many years — for eight years, I believe — but her treatment had not succeeded in making her sociable or putting her in a position where she could earn her living.
When I saw her I traced back her style of life to the first years of her childhood. No one can understand the grown-up who does not learn to understand the child. She had been the youngest in her family, very pretty, and spoiled beyond belief. Her parents were very well off at the time, and she had only to express a wish for it to be granted. "Why," I said when I heard her, "you were brought up like a princess." "That's odd," she re plied. "Everybody used to call me Princess." I asked her for her earliest recollection. "When 1 was four years old," she said, "I remember going out of the house and finding some children who were playing a game. Every so often they jumped up and called out, ‘The witch is coming.' I was very frightened and when I got back home, I asked an old woman who was staying with us whether there were really any witches. She answered, Yes, there are witches and burglars and robbers, and they will all come after you' " From this we can see that she was scared to be left alone in the house: and she ex pressed her fear in her whole style of life. She did not feel strong enough to leave home and those at home must support her and Look after her in every way. Another early recollection was as follows: I had a piano teacher, a man; and one day he tried to kiss me. I stopped playing and went and told my mother.
