by Alfred Adler
The child then enters the room and the psychologist speaks to him, not about his own mistakes, but about the problems before him. He looks for the opinions and judgments which prevented the child from developing well, for his belief that he is slighted and other children preferred, and so on. He does not reproach the child, but carries on a friendly conversation with him which will give him another point of view. If he mentions the actual mistake, he puts it as a hypothetical case and invites the child's opinion. To anyone who is not experienced in this work, it is surprising to see how well the child understands and how quickly his whole attitude can change.
All the teachers whom I have trained in this work are happy in it and would not give it up on any consideration. It makes their whole contact with their school work more interesting and increases the success of all their efforts. None of them feels it as an added burden; for often, in half an hour or less, they can get rid of a difficulty which would have pursued them and worried them for years. The spirit of cooperation in the whole school is heightened and, after a short time, there are no more grave problems and only small mistakes need to be handled. The teachers themselves are really psychologists. They learn to understand the unity of personality and the coherence of all its expressions. And if any problem comes up in the course of the day, they can settle it themselves. Indeed, it would be our hope, if all the teachers could be trained, that psychologists would become unnecessary.
So, for example, if the teacher has a lazy child in the class, he will propose to the children that they have a discussion of laziness. He leads the discussion by asking, “What does laziness come from?" "What is its purpose?" "Why doesn't a lazy child change?" "What is it that should be changed?" The children will speak and reach a conclusion. The lazy child himself does not know that he is the origin of the discussion, but the problem is his own, he is interested in it, and he learns a great deal from the discussion. If he is attacked, he will learn nothing; but if he can overhear, he will consider and perhaps change his opinion.
No one can know the minds of children so well as a teacher who lives with them, and works with them. He sees so many types of children and, if he is skillful, establishes a connection with each one of them. It rests with him whether the mistakes a child has made in family life shall continue or be corrected. Like the mother, he is the guardian of the future of mankind, and the service he can render is incalculable.
VIII. ADOLESCENCE
There are whole libraries of books on adolescence; and almost all of them deal with the subject as if it were a dangerous crisis at which the whole character of an individual could change There are many dangers in adolescence, but it is not true that it can change character. It provides the growing child with new situations and new tests. He feels that he is nearing the front of life. Mistakes in his style of life may reveal themselves that were hitherto unobserved. They were present, however, and a practiced eye could always have seen them. Now they develop importance and cannot be overlooked.
For almost every child, adolescence means one thing above all else: he must prove that he is no longer a child. We might, perhaps, persuade him that he can take it for granted; and, if we could do it, a great deal of tension would be drawn from the situation. But if he feels he must prove it, naturally enough he will overstress his point. Very many of the expressions of adolescence are the outcome of the desire to show independence, equality with adults, and manhood or womanhood. The direction of these expressions will depend on the meaning which the child has attributed to being "grown-up." If to be "grown-up" has meant to be free from control, the child will fight against restrictions.
Many children at this time begin to smoke, to swear and to stay out late at night. Some of them reveal an unexpected Opposition to their parents; and their parents are puzzled to know how such an obedient child could suddenly grow so disobedient. It is not really a change of attitude. The apparently obedient child was always in Opposition to his parents; but it is only now, when he has more freedom and strength, that he feels able to declare his enmity. One boy, who had always been bullied by his father and had been to all appearance a quiet and submissive child, was only awaiting an occasion for revenge. As soon as he felt himself strong enough, he challenged his father to a fight, thrashed him and left home. For the most part a child is given more freedom and independence during his adolescence. The parents no longer feel that they have a right to watch over him and guard him all the time. If the parents try to continue their supervision, however, the child will make still stronger efforts to avoid control. The more his parents try to prove that he is still a child, the more he will fight to prove the opposite. Out of this struggle an antagonistic attitude develops; and we are Chen provided with the typical picture of "adolescent negativism."
We cannot place strict limits on the period of adolescence. It runs generally from about fourteen years of age to about twenty years; but sometimes children are already adolescent at ten or eleven years of age. All the organs of the body are growing and developing at this time and sometimes the coordination of the functions is not easily accomplished. Children grow taller, their hands and feet grow larger; perhaps they are less active and skillful. They need to train this coordination; but if, in the process, they are laughed at and criticized, they will come to believe that they are clumsy. If a child's movements are laughed at, he will become clumsy. The endocrine glands are also contributing to the child's development. They increase their functions. It is not a complete change; the endocrine glands were active even in the prenatal period; but now their secretions are greater and the secondary characteristics of sex are more apparent. A boy's beard will begin to grow and his voice to break. A girl's figure swells and is more evidently feminine. These are also facts which an adolescent can misunderstand.
Sometimes a child, badly prepared for adult life, feels himself in a panic at the approach of the problems of occupation, social life and society, love and marriage. He loses all hope of ability to meet them. With regard to society, he is bashful and reserved, he isolates himself and stays at home. With regard to occupation, he can find no work that attracts him and is sure that he would be a failure in everything. With regard to love and marriage, he is embarrassed with the other sex and scared at meeting them. If he is spoken to, he blushes; he cannot find words to reply. Every day he is in deeper and deeper despair. At last he is completely blocked towards all the problems of life and no one can understand him any longer. He does not look at others, speak to them, or listen to them. He does not work or study. He is always engaged in fantasy. Only a shabby remainder of sex activity is left. This is insanity, dementia praecox; but the whole insanity is a mistake. If it is possible to encourage such a child, to prove that he is not on the right path and to point out to him a better one, he can be cured. It is not easy, for the whole life and the whole life's training must be corrected. The meaning of past, present and future must be seen in a scientific light, not in the light of private intelligence.
All the dangers of adolescence come from a lack of proper training and equipment before the three problems of life. If the children are afraid of the future, it is natural enough that they should try to meet it by the methods which call for least effort. These easy ways, however, are the useless 'ways. The more such a child is ordered about, exhorted and criticized, the stronger becomes his impression that he is standing before an abyss. The more we push him, the more he tries to draw back. Unless we can encourage him, every effort to help him will be a mistake and will damage him still further. While he is so pessimistic and so frightened, we cannot expect that he should feel he can afford additional efforts.
A few children at this time wish to remain children; they even speak in baby talk, play with children younger than themselves, and pretend that they can remain infantile forever. By far the great majority make some sort of attempt to behave in an adult fashion. If they are not really courageous, they offer a sort of caricature of the adult: they imitate the gestures of men, like to spend mon
ey freely, begin flirtations and have love affairs. In more difficult cases, where a boy does not see his way to meet the problems of life yet keeps a certain degree of activity, he begins to embark on a criminal career. This is especially likely if he has already committed delinquencies without being found out and thinks that he can be clever enough to avoid detection again. Crime is one of the easy escapes before the problems of life, and especially before the problem of economics and livelihood. So it happens that between the ages of fourteen and twenty there is a great increase in the number of delinquents. Here again, we are not facing a new development; but greater pressure has revealed the flaws already present in the childhood pattern.
If the degree of activity is smaller, the easy way of escape is neurosis; and it is between these ages, also, that many children begin to suffer from functional diseases and nervous disorders. Every neurotic Symptom is designed to provide a justification for a refusal to solve the problems of life, without lowering the sense of personal superiority.
Neurotic symptoms appear when an individual is confronted by social problems which he is not prepared to meet in a social way. The difficulty provides a great tension. During adolescence the physical condition is especially responsive to such tensions, and all the organs can be irritated, the whole nervous system affected. This irritation of the organs can again be used as an excuse for hesitation and failure. An individual in such a case now begins to regard himself, privately and before others, as free from responsibility because of his suffering; and the structure of a neurosis is complete. Every neurotic professes the best of intentions. He is quite convinced of the necessity for social feeling and for meeting the problems of life. Only in his case is there an exception to this universal demand. What excuses him is the neurosis itself. His whole attitude says, “I am anxious to solve all my problems, but unfortunately I am prevented." In this he differs from the criminal, whose professions of bad intentions are often quite open and whose social feeling is concealed and suppressed. It is difficult to decide which offers the greater injury to human welfare, the neurotic whose motives are so good, but whose actions apart from these good motives would seem spiteful, egotistic and designed to hold up the cooperation of his fellows; or the criminal, whose hostility is so much more open and who takes pains to subdue the relics of his social feeling.
A great number of failures in adolescence come from the pampered children; and it is easy to see that the approach of adult responsibilities is an especial strain to the children who have been accustomed to have everything done for them by their parents. They still wish to be pampered, but as they grow older they find that they are no longer the center of attention. They reproach life for having deceived and failed them; they have been brought up in an artificially warm atmosphere and the air outside feels bitterly cold. At this time we find apparent reversals of progress. The children of whom most was expected begin to fail in their studies and their work; and children who had previously seemed less gifted begin to overtake them and to reveal unsuspected abilities. It is no contradiction to the previous history.
Perhaps a child who was very promising now begin to feel afraid of disappointing the expectations with which he has been burdened. So long as he was helped and appreciated he could go forward; but when the time comes to make independent efforts his courage fails and he retreats. Others are stimulated by their new freedom. They see the road towards the fulfillment of their ambitions clear before them. They are full of new ideas and new projects. Their creative life is intensified and their interest in all the aspects of our human process becomes more vivid and eager. These are the children who have kept their courage, and to whom independence means, not difficulty and the risk of defeat, but wider opportunity to make achievements and contributions.
The children who have previously felt slighted and neglected now, perhaps, when they are more widely connected with their fellows, conceive the hope that they can find appreciation. Many of them are completely hypnotized by this craving for appreciation. It is dangerous enough for a boy if he is only looking for praise; but girls have often less self-confidence and see in the appreciation of others the only way of proving their worth. Such girls easily fall a prey to men who understand how to flatter them. I have often found girls who felt unappreciated at home beginning to have sex relations, not merely to prove that they are grown-up, but because they hope, by this means, to achieve at last a position in which they are appreciated and the center of attention. Let me take an instance: a girl fifteen years of age came from a very poor family. She had an older brother who, during her childhood, was always sickly. The mother was forced to devote a good deal of attention to him, and when her daughter was born the mother could not give much care to her. In addition, during her early childhood, her father was ill: and his sickness further curtailed the time that her mother could afford her.
Thus the girl was able to notice and understand what it means to be cared for; it was always her desire to achieve this position, but she could not find it in the family. A younger sister was born; and at this time the father recovered and the mother was free to devote herself to the baby. In consequence, the girl whom we are considering felt that she was the only one who had no love and affection. She continued to struggle; was good at home and the best pupil in her school. Because of her success, it was proposed that she should keep on with her studies; and she was sent to a high school where the teacher did not know her. At first, she could not understand the methods of instruction at the new school. Her work began to fall off, her teacher criticized her and she became steadily discouraged. She was too eager for quick appreciation. When she could not be appreciated either at home or at school, what was left?
She looked around for a man who would appreciate her. After a few experiences, she went away and lived with a man for fourteen days. The family was very much worried on her account and tried to find her; but we could predict what would happen. Soon she would discover that she was still not appreciated for herself alone and begin to repent of the episode. Suicide was her next thought and the girl sent a note home, “Do not worry. I have taken poison. I am quite happy." As a matter of fact, she had not taken poison and we can understand why. Her parents were really kind to her and she felt that she could attract their sympathy. In consequence, she did not commit suicide, but waited until her mother came and found her and took her home. If the girl had known what we know, that all her striving was towards appreciation, these difficulties would not have occurred. If the teacher at the high school had understood, this, too, would have prevented them. Previously, the girl's school reports had always been excellent; and if he had seen that the girl was sensitive on this point and needed a little more careful treatment, her position would not have discouraged her.
In another case, a girl was born into a family where both father and mother were weak in character. The mother had always wanted boys and was disappointed at the arrival of a girl. She undervalued the part of women and her daughter was bound to feel it. More than once she overheard her mother say to her father, “The girl is not at all attractive. No one will like her when she grows up”; or, “Whatever shall we do with her when she is older?” After she had been ten years in this poisonous atmosphere she found a letter from one of her mother's friends, consoling her for having had a daughter and saying that since she was still young she was still able to have a son.
We can imagine how the girl felt. A few months later she went to the country to visit an uncle. While she was there she met a country boy of a low degree of intelligence and became his sweetheart. He left her but she continued in the same direction. When I saw her, she had already amassed a great collection of lovers; but in none of her affairs had she felt properly appreciated. She came to me because she was now suffering from anxiety neurosis and could not go out by herself. Dissatisfied by one way of gaining appreciation, she had tried another. She began to worry the family with her pains and sufferings. No one could do anything unless she gave her permission. She wept,
threatened to commit suicide, and tyrannized over the whole house. It was hard work to make the girl see her position and to convince her that in her adolescence she had overemphasized the necessity of finding a way to escape the feeling of not being appreciated.
Both girls and boys often overvalue and exaggerate sexual relations in their adolescence. They wish to prove that they are grownup, and they go too far. If a girl, for example, is fighting with her mother and always believes that she is being suppressed, she will frequently, as a protest, have sexual relations with any man she meets. She does not care if the mother knows or not; indeed, she is completely happy if she can worry her. So I have often found that a girl, after a quarrel with her mother, and perhaps with her father too, runs out into the street and has relations with the first man she finds. These were girls that were always supposed to be good girls, well brought up, the last people of whom such conduct would be expected. We can understand that the girls are not really guilty. They are wrongly prepared; they have felt themselves in an inferior situation; and this is the only way by which they could conceive that they could achieve a stronger position.
Many girls who have been pampered find it difficult to adjust themselves to their feminine role. There it always the impression in our culture that men are superior to women; and in consequence they dislike the thought of being women. Now they reveal what I have called "the masculine protest." The masculine protest can express itself in many varieties of behavior. Sometimes we see only a dislike and avoidance of men. Sometimes they like men well enough but are embarrassed with them and cannot speak to them, do not want to join in gatherings where men are present, and feel generally ill at ease before the sexual problem. Often they insist that they are eager to marry when they are older, but they make no approach to members of the other sex and form no friendships with them. Sometimes we find a dislike of the feminine role expressed more actively in adolescence. Girls will behave more boyishly than before. They will wish to imitate boys and will find it easier to imitate them in their vices, in smoking, drinking, swearing, joining gangs and displaying their sexual freedom.
