What Life Could Mean to You

by Alfred Adler

  Often they explain that boys would not be interested in them if they behaved in any other way. Where the dislike of the feminine role is still further developed, we find the appearance of homosexuality or other perversions and of prostitution. From their early life all prostitutes have had the firm conviction that nobody likes them. They believe that they were born for a lower role and that they could never win the real affection or interest of any man. We can understand in these circumstances how they are inclined to throw themselves away, to depreciate their sexual role and to regard it only as a means for making money. This dislike of the feminine role does not arise during adolescence. We could always find that the girl, from her first childhood, had disliked being a girl; but in her childhood she had not the same need or opportunities for expressing her dislike.

  It is not girls only who suffer from a " masculine protest”, but all children who overvalue the importance of being masculine see masculinity as an ideal and are dubious whether they are strong enough to achieve it. In this way, the stress put upon masculinity in our culture can be as difficult for boys as for girls; especially if they are not entirely convinced of their sexual role. Many children grow up to be quite old with the half belief that some time or other their sex can be changed; and it is important that from the age of two that children should know quite definitely whether they are boys or girls. Often a boy who has a rather girlish appearance has a particularly difficult time. Strangers will sometimes mistake his sex; and even friends of the family will say to him, “You ought really to have been a girl." Such a child is very likely to take his appearance as a sign of insufficiency and to regard the problem of love and marriage as a test too severe for him. Boys who are not sure that they can acquit themselves well in their sexual role often, during adolescence, tend to imitate girls, to become effeminate and to take on the vices of girls who have been pampered, show themselves coquettish, pose, and cultivate a temperament.

  Even the preparation for the attitude to the other sex has its roots set in the first four or five years of life. The sex drive is evident in the first weeks of babyhood; but nothing should be done which can stimulate it before it can be given an appropriate expression. If it is not stimulated its appearances will be natural and need cause us no alarm. We should not be afraid, for example, when we see in a baby's first year of life some signs of local irritation; but we should use our influence to cooperate with the child and interest it less in its own person and more in its environment. It is another case if these attempts at self-gratification cannot be stopped. Then we can be sure that the child has intentions of his own: he is not the victim of the sex drive but he is making use of it for his own purposes. Generally, the aim of little children is to gain attention. They feel that their parents are afraid and horrified and they know how to play on their feelings. If their habits no longer serve their purpose of attracting attention, they will give them up.

  I have remarked that children should not be physically stimulated. Often parents are very affectionate with their children and their children affectionate with them. To increase the affection of the children they are always hugging them and kissing them. They know that this is not the right way. They should not be so cruel. They should not stimulate the affections of the child. Nor should a child be stimulated mentally. Children have often told me, and adults in recalling their childhood have told me, of the feelings roused when they discovered some frivolous picture in their father's library or by some motion picture they have seen. It is better for them not to find such books or see such films. If we avoid stimulating children, no difficulties can occur.

  Another form of stimulation, to which we have already referred, is the insistence on giving children quite unnecessary and inappropriate sexual information. Many adults seem to have a perfect craze for imparting sexual information; and are horribly afraid of the dangers of any one's growing up in ignorance. If we look into our own pasts and into the histories of others, we shall not find such catastrophes as they expect. It is better to wait until the child himself becomes curious and wants to know something. If the parents are interested, they will understand the child's curiosity even if he does not speak. If he feels that they are comrades, he will ask and he should be answered in a manner in which he can understand and assimilate the information.

  It is good, also, that parents should avoid showing expressions of affection to each other before the children. If it is possible, the children should not sleep in the same room with the parents, let alone in the same bed; and it is also advisable that they should not sleep in the same room with a sister or brother. Parents must be attentive to their children's development and should not hoodwink themselves. If they are not acquainted with the characters and striving of their children, they will never know where they are being influenced or in what way.

  There is an almost universal superstition that adolescence is a very special and peculiar time. Generally the periods of human development are given a heightened private meaning and taken as if they were complete changes. Such, for example, is the attitude of most people to the climacteric. These phases are not changes, however; they are only a continuation of life and their phenomena have no critical importance.

  What is important is what the individual expects in such a phase, the meaning he gives it and the way he has trained to face it. People are often startled at the appearance of adolescence and act as if they had seen a ghost. If we understand that condition rightly, we shall see that children are not affected at all by the facts of adolescence, except in, so far as the social conditions call for a new adaptation from their style of life. Often, however, they believe that adolescence is the end of everything; all their worth and value is lost. They have no right any longer to cooperate and contribute: nobody wants them anymore. It is from such feelings that all the difficulties of adolescence develop.

  If the child has been trained to feel himself an equal member of society and to understand his task of contribution, and especially if he has been trained to regard members of the other sex as comrades and equals, adolescence will give him only an opportunity to begin his creative and independent solution of the adult problems of life. If he feels an a lower level than others, if he suffers from a mistaken view of his circumstances, in adolescence it will appear that he is not well prepared for freedom. If someone is always present to compel him to do what is necessary he can accomplish it. If he is left to himself he is timid and he fails. Such a child would be well adapted for slavery, but in freedom he is lost.

  IX. CRIME AND ITS PREVENTION

  Through Individual Psychology we begin to understand all the various types of human beings; and, after all, human beings are not so remarkably different from one another. We find the same kind of failure exhibited in criminals as in problem children, neurotics, psychotics, suicides, drunkards and sexual perverts. They all fail in their approach to the problems of life; and, in one very definite and noticeable point, they fail in precisely the same way. Every one of them fails in social interest. They are not concerned with their fellow beings. Even here, however, we cannot distinguish them as if they were in contradiction to other people. No one can be held up as an example of perfect cooperation or perfect social feeling; and the failures of criminals are only a severer degree of common failures.

  One other point is necessary for the understanding of criminals; but in this point they are just like the rest of us. We all wish to overcome difficulties. We are all striving to reach a goal in the future by attaining which we shall feel strong, superior, complete. Professor Dewey refers to this tendency, very rightly, as the striving for security. Others call it the striving for self-preservation. But, whatever name we give it, we shall always find in human beings this great line of activity — the struggle to rise from an inferior position to a superior position, from defeat to victory, from below to above. It begins in our earliest childhood; it continues to the end of our lives. Life means to go on existing on the crust of this planet, to surmount obstacles and
overcome difficulties. We should not be surprised, therefore, when we discover exactly the same tendency among criminals. In all the criminal's actions and attitudes, he shows that he is struggling to be superior, to solve problems, to overcome difficulties. What distinguishes him is not the fact that he is striving in this fashion: it is rather the direction his striving takes. And as soon as we see that it takes this direction because he has not understood the demands of social life and is not concerned with his fellow beings, we shall find his actions quite intelligible.

  I want to stress this point very strongly, because there are people who think otherwise. They regard criminals as exceptions to the human race, not like ordinary people at all. Some scientists for example, assert that all criminals are feeble-minded. Others put great emphasis on heredity; they believe that a criminal is born wrong and cannot help committing crimes. Still others hold that crime is something unalterably fixed by the environment: once a criminal always a criminal! Now much evidence can be brought against all these opinions; and we should realize, also, that if we accepted them we should be deprived of the hope of handling the problem of crime. In our own days we want to get rid of this human disaster. We know from the whole of history that crime has always been a disaster; but now we are anxious to do something about it and we can never be content to shelve the problem by saying, “It is all heredity, and nothing much can be done."

  There is no compulsion either in environment or in heredity. Children of the same family and the same environment can develop in different ways. Sometimes a criminal springs from a family of irreproachable record. Sometimes in a family of very bad record, with frequent experiences of prisons and reformatories, we find children of good character and behavior. It happens, too, that some criminals improve in later life; and the psychologists of crime have often been puzzled to explain how a burglar, after he has reached the age of thirty, may settle down and become a good citizen. If crime is an inborn defect, or if it is unalterably built in by the environment, this fact is quite beyond understanding. From our own point of view, however, we can understand it very well. The individual is in a more favorable situation, perhaps; there are fewer demands on him, and the mistakes in his style of living are no longer brought to the surface. Or perhaps he has already gained what he wanted. Perhaps, finally, he is growing older and fatter, less suited for a criminal career: his joints are still and he can't climb so well: burglary has become too hard for him.

  Before I go any further I wish to exclude the idea that criminals are insane. There are psychotics who commit crimes, but their crimes are of quite a different kind. We cannot hold them responsible: their crimes are a result of a complete failure to understand them and a wrong method of treating them. In the same way we must exclude the feeble-minded criminal, who is really no more than a tool. The true criminals are those who plan the crime. They paint glowing pictures of the prospects, they excite the fancy or the ambitions of feeble-minded individuals; then they hide themselves and leave their victims to execute the crime and run the risk of punishment. The same thing holds, of course, when younger people are made use of by old and experienced criminals. It is the experienced criminal who plans the crime; children are deluded into being the executants.

  Now let us return to the great line of activity I have mentioned: the line by which every criminal — and every other human being—is striving to gain a victory, to reach a position of finality. There is much difference and variety in these goals; and we find that the goal of a criminal is always to be superior in a private and personal manner. What he is striving for contributes nothing to others. He is not cooperative. Society needs of its members, we all need of each other, a common usefulness, an ability to cooperate. The goal of a criminal does not include this usefulness to society; and this is the really significant aspect of every criminal career. We shall see later how this comes about. At this moment I want to make clear that the main point to find, if we want to understand a criminal, is the degree and nature of his failure in cooperation. Criminals differ in their ability to cooperate; some of them fail less seriously than others. Some, for example, confine themselves to small crimes and do not go beyond these limits. Others prefer major crimes. Some are Leaders, others followers. In order to understand the varieties in criminal careers we must examine further the individual style of life.

  The style of life typical of an individual is built up very early; we can already find its main features at the age of four or five. We cannot suppose, therefore, that it is an easy matter to change it. It is a man's own personality; it can be changed only by understanding the mistakes he made in building it up. We can begin to see, therefore, how it happens that many criminals, although they have been punished many times, often humiliated and despised and deprived of every good that our social life can offer, still do not reform, but commit the same crime over and over again. It is not economic difficulty that forces them into crime.

  Truly enough, if times are hard and people are more burdened, crimes increase. Statistics show that sometimes the number of crimes increases in accordance with a rise in the price of wheat. This is no sign, however, that the economic situation causes the crime. It is much more a sign that many people are limited in their behavior. There are limits to their capacity for cooperation, and when these limits are reached they can no longer contribute. They lose the last remnant of cooperation and have recourse to crimes. From other facts, too, we discover that there are plenty of people who in favorable situations are not criminals, but, if a problem arises for which they are not prepared, it turns out that they, also, can commit crimes. It is the style of life, the method of facing problems, which is important.

  After all these experiences in Individual Psychology, we can at last make clear a very simple point. A criminal is not interested in others. He can cooperate only to a certain degree. When this degree is exhausted, he turns to crime. The exhaustion occurs when a problem is too difficult for him. It is interesting to consider the problems of life which we all of us have to face, the problems which a criminal cannot succeed in solving. It will appear, in the end, that we have no problems in our lives but social problems; and these problems can only be solved if we are interested in others.

  Individual Psychology has taught us to make three broad divisions in the problems of life. First let us take the problems of relationship to other men, the problems of comradeship. Criminals can sometimes have friends, but only among their own kind. They can form gangs and they can even show loyalty to one another. But we see here immediately how they have decreased their sphere of activity. They cannot make friends with society at large, with ordinary people. They treat themselves as a body of exiles and do not understand how to feel at home with their fellow men.

  The second group of problems includes all those which are connected with occupation. A great number of criminals, if they are questioned about these problems, reply, “You don't know the terrible conditions of labor." They find work terrible; they are not inclined, as others are, to struggle with these difficulties. A useful occupation implies an interest in other people and a contribution to their welfare; but this is exactly what we miss in the criminal personality. This lack of the spirit of cooperation appears early, and most criminals, therefore, are ill prepared to meet the problems of occupation. The great majority of criminals are untrained and unskilled workers. If you trace back their history you will find that at school and even before school there was a block here, a stoppage of interest. They never learned to cooperate. Now cooperation must be taught and trained, and these criminals were not trained in cooperation. If they fail before the problems of occupation, therefore, we cannot hold them guilty. We must look on it in nearly the same way as if we were testing a person in geography who had never learned geography. He would either give a wrong answer or no answer at all.

  The third group includes all the problems of love. A good and fruitful love life calls equally for interest in the other person and for cooperation. It is revealing to observe
that half the criminals who are sent to reformatories are suffering from venereal diseases on their entrance. This would tend to show that they wanted an easy way out for the problems of love. They regard the partner in love merely as a piece of property and very often we find them thinking that love can be bought.

  Sex life is to such people a matter of conquest and acquisition; it is something they ought to possess, not a partnership in life. "What is the use of life," many criminals say, "if I am not given everything I want?"

  We can see, now, where we should begin in our treatment of criminals. We must train them to be cooperative. Nothing much is done if we just stick them in reformatories. Leaving them free is a danger to society and under present conditions it cannot be discussed. Society must be saved from criminals — but that is by no means all. We must think also: "They are not prepared for social life; what shall we do with them?

  “This lack of cooperation in all the problems of life is no small deficiency. We need cooperation at every moment of the day; and the degree of our ability to cooperate shows itself in the way we look and speak and listen. If I am right in my observations, criminals look and speak and listen in a different way from other people. They have a different language and we can understand that the development of their intelligence is handicapped by this difference. When we speak we intend that everybody should understand us. Understanding itself is a social factor; we give words a common interpretation; we understand in the same way that anyone else might understand. With criminals it is different; they have a private logic, a private intelligence. We can observe this in the way they explain their crimes. They are not stupid or feeble-minded. For the most part they conclude quite rightly, if we grant them their goal of a fictitious personal superiority. A criminal will say, “I saw a man who had nice trousers, and I hadn't; so I had to kill him." Now if we grant him that his desires are all important, and that there is no call for him to make a living in a useful way, his conclusion is intelligent enough; but it is not common sense. There has recently been a court case in Hungary. A number of women had committed many murders by poison. When one of them was sent to prison she said, “My boy was sick and a loafer and I had to poison him." If she excludes cooperation, what is left for her to do? She is intelligent, but she has a different way of looking at things, a different scheme of apperception. We can understand, then, how criminals, if they see attractive things and want to obtain them in an easy way, conclude that they must take them from this hostile world, in which they are not at all interested. They are suffering from a wrong outlook upon the world, a wrong estimate, of their own importance and the importance of other people.