The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler Volume 1

The Neurotic Character

Fundamentals of a Comparative Individual Psychology
and Psychotherapy
By Alfred Adler
Translated by Cees Koen Edited by Henry T. Stein, Ph.D.
Based on the Fourth Edition (1927) Including Endnotes from the 1999
German Critical Edition
Classical Adlerian Translation Project
© 2002 by Henry T. Stein, Ph.D.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage
and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the editor. All inquiries
should be sent via e-mail to Henry T. Stein, Ph.D at htstein@att.net .
Published 2002 by:
The Classical Adlerian Translation Project Alfred Adler Institute of Northwestern
Washington 2565 Mayflower Lane
Bellingham, WA 98226
(360)647-5670
Web Site: http://www.Adlerian.us
First Printing 2002
Second Printing 2002, revised
Third Printing 2002
Fourth Printing 2003
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-9715645-0-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2001099770
Cover design by Donna Mendes, Berkeley, CA
Table of Contents
Prefaces and Introduction
Editor’s Preface – Henry T. Stein, Ph.D. ...................................................... iii To the
Reader (1911) ...................................................................................... v Original
Publisher’s Preface (1912) ............................................................. vi Adler’s Preface to
the First Edition (1912) ................................................ viii Adler’s Preface to the
Second Edition (1919) .............................................. ix Adler’s Preface to the Third
Edition (1922) ................................................... x Adler’s Preface to the Fourth Edition
(1927) .............................................. xii
Theoretical Part I
Introduction .................................................................................................. xv Part I-I:
The Origin and Development of the Inferiority Feeling
And its Effects ......................................................................................... 1
Part I-II:
Psychic Compensation and its Preparation ........................................... 32
Part I-III:
The Accentuated Fiction as Guiding Idea in the Neurosis .................... 41
Practical Part II
Part II-I:
Greed—Distrust—Envy—Cruelty—Derogatory Criticism of the Neurotic—Neurotic
Apperception—Neuroses of Old Age— Changes in the Form and Intensity of the
Neurosis—Organ Jargon ..... 86
Part II-II:
The Neurotic Extension of Limitations through Ascesis, Love, Travel, Mania, Crime —
Simulation and Neurosis —
Inferiority Feeling of the Female Sex — Purpose of the Ideal — Doubt as an
Expression of Psychic Hermaphroditism —
Masturbation and Neurosis —The ‘Incest-Complex’ as a Symbol of the Desire for
Power — The Nature of Delusions .......................... 126
Part II-III:
Neurotic Principles — Compassion, Coquetry, Narcissism — Psychic Hermaphroditism
— Hallucinatory Safeguarding — Virtue, Conscience, Pedantry, Fanaticism for Truth
........................... 148
i
Part II-IV:
Depreciation Tendency — Obstinacy and Wildness —
Sexual Relations of Neurotics as a Metaphor —
Symbolic Emasculation — Feeling of Depreciation —
Equality to Men as a Plan of Life — Simulation and Neurosis — Substitution of
Masculinity —
Impatience, Dissatisfaction and Reticence ...........................................167
Part II-V:
Cruelty, Conscience, Perversion and Neurosis ....................................189
Part II-VI:
Above–Beneath — Choice of Profession — Somnambulism — Antithesis in Thought
— Elevation of the Personality by
Depreciation of Others — Jealousy — Neurotic Assistance — Authority — Thinking in
Antitheses and the Masculine Protest — Dilatory Attitude and Marriage — The
Attitude Upwards as a Symbol of Life — Compulsive Masturbation —
Neurotic Striving for Knowledge ........................................................ 195
Part II-VII:
Punctuality — The Will to be First — Homosexuality and
Perversion as a Symbol — Embarrassment and Exhibitionism — Faithfulness and
Unfaithfulness — Jealousy —
The Neurosis of Conflict ........................................................................ 209
Part II-VIII:
Fear of the Partner — The Ideal in the Neurosis — Insomnia and Compulsive Sleeping
— Neurotic Comparison of Man and Woman — Forms of the Fear of Women
..................................................................219
Part II-IX:
Self-reproach, Self-torture, Repentance and Asceticism —
Flagellation — Neuroses in Children —
Suicide and Suicidal Ideas ..................................................................... 236
Part II-X:
The Neurotic’s Feeling for Family — Obstinacy and Obedience — Silence and
Loquaciousness — The Tendency for Reversal — Replacement of a Characteristic Trait
by Means of Safeguards, Expedients, Profession and Ideal
........................................................... 251
Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 257
Index .................................................................................................................. 260
Appendix
“Classical Adlerian Theory and Practice” ........................................... 290
ii
Prefaces
Editor’s Preface (2001)
The Neurotic Character is Alfred Adler’s magnum opus—complex, profound, and
brilliant in its crystallized capture of the human soul gone astray. Unfortunately, since
1926, the only available English version of the original German text has been a
wrongly-titled,a hastily conceived, frequently mistaken, and somewhat “Freudianized”
translation of the 1917 first edition. It has been reprinted often enough to mislead and
confuse several generations of students and clinicians. Only those able to read the
original German had a chance to appreciate Adler’s breathtaking exploration of mental
aberration and fewer could understand the myriad psychological and literary references
that influenced his thinking, but were not identified adequately. This completely new
translation of the 1927 fourth edition contains about 20% more text than the first
edition, all of Adler’s footnotes, and over 300 endnotes that identify and clarify
references.
More than ten years ago, Kurt Adler and Sophia de Vries, both very dissatisfied
with the earlier translation of the first edition, urged me to find the means of re-
translating what they considered to be one of Adler’s most important publications. Both
were qualified to tackle the job, but advancing years and health limitations prevented
either of them from making such a formidable commitment. The persistent
encouragement of these two senior clinicians ignited a fire that has taken several years
to reach full combustion.
Gradually, a more expansive dream was born—the Adlerian Translation Project.
So many of Adler’s original writings were either out of print, partially translated, poorly
translated, or never translated. Most of the available publications were, and still are, his
popularized writings for the general public. While beginners find these works important
and helpful, experienced clinicians need access to his deeper, more sophisticated,
clinical writings. To satisfy this necessity, and do justice to Adler’s contributions to
psychology and psychotherapy, The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler was
planned.
 Although trained as a Classical Adlerian psychotherapist, my knowledge of
German is cursory. Finding an expert translator who was also an experienced Adlerian
clinician seemed improbable--a collaboration appeared to be the best alternative. The
search for appropriate translators took many years. Eventually I found one whose
language skills were impeccable. We began with Adler’s shorter journal articles.
Fortunately, Kurt Adler offered to read and edit the translations. His suggestions,
corrections, and explanations were invaluable. For several years, he helped us refine our
understanding of his father’s ideas and style of writing. After his death, we still had a
considerable quantity of untranslated work ahead of us, but, thanks to his guidance, we
were better prepared to continue. While one translator proceeded with the German
articles, I found Cees Koen, another translator, who began work on Dutch manuscripts
of lectures by
iii Alfred Adler, Alexander Mueller, and Lydia Sicher that were given in Holland.
After completing this project, he offered to continue working on the German
manuscripts. The quality of his work was superb. Since my first translator still had at
least two more years of work ahead of him to complete Adler’s journal articles, I
offered The Neurotic Character to Cees.
Mid-way through work on the fourth edition, a lucky coincidence paved the way
for a greatly enhanced result. Karl Witte, an Adlerian therapist and scholar from
Munich, had just completed the new, German, critical edition of Uber Den Nervosen
Charakter and had sent us a copy. This monumental accomplishment included
references and commentary for all of the names and works mentioned by Adler in his
book. Witte generously offered us permission to translate and use his references and
commentaries. His remarkable, scholarly contribution helped us appreciate the
abundant influences that surrounded Adler: his scientific, medical, and psychiatric
circles; his cultural, philosophical, anthropological and literary environments. Adler’s
repeated references to Nietzsche, Vaihinger, Avenarius, Jerusalem, Kant, Janet, Bleuler,
Kretschmer, Kraepelin, and Stern suggest the impact of each on his thinking. The
organization of the book does not follow a traditional, academic, neatly divided
structure. It vividly reflects Adler’s creative style of fluidly moving back and forth
between theory, practice, and case illustration.
The translation and preliminary editing took three years of draft refinement. Our
goal was to retain Adler’s meaning, making it as readable as possible, without
disturbing the complexity of his style. Although breaking the text up into shorter
sentences might have made it easier to read, the nuances of meaning would be different.
While leaving the original complexity in tact may require a slow, careful, reading and
re-reading of many paragraphs, I believe that the effort will be rewarding. (Lydia
Sicher, one of Adler’s associates in Vienna, recalled the first time she discovered The
Neurotic Character. She found it so compelling, she stayed up the entire night to finish
it.)
After the first phase of translating and editing was completed, the manuscript was
read by three Classical Adlerian psychotherapists who were trained at the Alfred Adler
Institute of San Francisco. Jim Wolf and Martha Edwards provided extremely valuable
comments, corrections, and suggestions which have contributed greatly to the
readability of the material. My special thanks to Dyanne Pienkowski for her
extraordinarily thorough and painstaking effort to edit and refine the manuscript.
However, final responsibility for the accuracy of the translation falls jointly on the
shoulders of the translator and me.
The Neurotic Character is the first publication from The Adlerian Translation
Project. It will be followed by a series of volumes, The Collected Clinical Works of
Alfred Adler, featuring over 200 new translations of Adler’s journal articles written
between 1898 and 1936.
Readers who are unfamiliar with Adlerian constructs, or unaware of the evolution
of Adlerian practice, may wish to prepare for a study of The Neurotic Character by
reading “Classical Adlerian Theory and Practice” in the appendix.
To The Reader (1911)
The initiative for the foundation of the ‘Verein für freie psychoanalytische
Forschung,’ in June 1911, came from some members of the ‘Wiener psychoanalytische
Vereinigung,’ led by Professor Sigmund Freud; they believed that it was the intention of
the older organization to commit its members scientifically to Freud’s doctrines and
theories. This seemed to them not only difficult to combine with the general
fundamental principles of scientific research, but also, in a science as young as
psychology, to contain a specific danger. In their opinion, the value of what had been
achieved so far would be called into question if one would commit oneself too hastily to
certain formulas and abandon all alternatives in researching new solutions. Their
conviction that psychoanalytical methods and the definition of its subjects were of
decisive importance made it seem to them a scientific duty to create a safe haven to
assure that independent psychoanalytical research might be conducted.
In October 1911 the ‘Wiener psychoanalytische Vereinigung’ declared that
membership of both associations was inadmissible, after which a number of members
left the old association. At this moment, therefore, there is no relation whatsoever
between the ‘Verein für freie psychoanalytische Forschung’ and the organizations that
are united in the ‘Internationale psychoanalytische Vereinigung.’ It seems an obligation
for us to state this here explicitly, because we would consider it an injustice when
scientific criticism would saddle the responsibility of our work on men with whom we
disagree on the fundamental preconditions of free scientific work. Similarly, we would
like to claim that we be judged only on the basis of our own work.
The Directors of the ‘Verein für freie psychoanalytische Forschung.’
v
Original Publisher’s Preface (1912)
The aim of the publications of the ‘Verein für freie psychoanalytische Forschung’
is to apply the empirically obtained results of the psychology of neuroses, as far as these
have proved to be suitable, to the further study of philosophic, psychological and
pedagogical questions. In doing this we are guided by the idea that it is possible, in the
search for the ‘sense’ or ‘meaning’ of a psychic phenomenon, to discern not only its
causes, but also its direction and goal, elements and correlations as they are developing.
By saying this, we mean that in our psychological analyses we dedicate a certain
room for the representation of the goal that guides us in our research of a problem or a
personality. However, in our observations, whenever we make them, any individual, or
any phenomenon, is a picture of a series of developments, a microcosm, a symbol of the
whole. Insofar as we are looking for points of comparison in the genesis of a
phenomenon, the direction of our search is comparative and extends to the whole
individual. Since we gather our understanding of the personality from its past as well as
from its future, we take into account all factors that contributed to its development. In
the dynamics of the human psyche we can see how direction is provided by an
unconsciously set and constantly active goal. From it derives the individual’s formation,
the direction of his thought and will and the special character of his personality. The
inexhaustible force of human demands and desires then wells up from the sanctity of the
guiding idea. Coming to an understanding of its traces, whether they be expressed as a
world view, art, science or religion, is the challenge we pose to our work. And this
reveals yet another characteristic of our conception, that of the planned observation of
the psychic phenomenon as it takes place under the guidance of an unconsciously active
idea.
In a similar sense, the physical characteristics of individuals are a symbol that
betrays its origin, its present and its destination. The marks of its inner value are the
shape and performance of the physical organs, and these provide a picture of the
position of their carrier in the world. The comparative inferiority of his physical organs
is mirrored in the psyche of the child, bringing about a fundamental feeling about the
insecurity of life. The child, in his dark awareness, uses this insufficient self-evaluation
to create his plan of life. And the stronger his inferiority feeling is pushing for
compensation, the tighter he will hang on to this plan. The plan of life is the most
extreme, directing limit for his will and it is what he seeks to fulfill in the unrest, in the
chaos of a reality that calls for action. The theory of organ inferiority, of psychic
compensations and security tendencies harks back to ancient popular wisdom and
introduces the genius of earlier authors’b utopias into the mainstream of science.
Thus the theory of people’s forms of expression blends into the other demands of
our science. We can find its traces in the life and play of children as well as adults, in
their psychic disturbances, in their behavior and in phenomena of mental disorders.
Simultaneously, our work strives to come to an understanding between the guiding lines
of morality and ethics, to acquire a better insight into the popular psyche, into the
artistic psyche, the psyche of the normal person as well as the one affected by mental
disease.
The ‘Verein’ under whose name I publish these writings is intended to be the
nursery of our science in the future. Those studies destined to be published have
matured there as a result of collective labor. They will demonstrate that we do not argue
with the validity of other viewpoints in psychology and other directions. We do,
however, reserve the right to cut ourselves loose from all dogma and to follow our own
way. All are invited to cooperate who realize the importance of our direction of
research. We expect that our readers will be unhampered by the prejudice that so often
accompanies new work and findings.
Vienna, on the 25th of March, 1912
Dr. Alfred Adler
The following publicationsc are in preparation:
Alfred Adler: Masturbation und Neurose.
Felix Asnaourow: Sadismus und Masochismus in der Erziehung.
Robert Freschl: Das Griselda-Problem.
Hermann Frischauf: Zur Psychologie des jüngeren Bruders.
Gustav Grüner: Die Mutterleibsphantasie. (Mit einer teilweisen Psychoanalyse von
Shakespeares ‘Hamlet’).
Otto Kaus: Der Fall Gogol.
Paul Loewy: Das Unlustprinzip in der Neurosenpsychologie.
Paul Schrecker: Bergsons Philosophie der Persönlichkeit und das Persönlichkeitsideal.
Leopold Erwin Wexberg: Erotik und Übertagung.
vii
Adler’s Preface to the First Edition (1912)
After I attempted, in the Studie über Minderwertigkeit von Organen (1907), to
observe and consider the structure and tectonics of organs in relation with their genetic
basis, their actual performance and their later development, I set about – supported
equally by existing evidence as by my own experiences – to introduce an identical
method of observation into the field of psychopathology. The present work contains the
most important results of my comparative individual psychological studies of neuroses.
Similar to the theory of organ inferiority, comparative individual psychology also
uses an empirical basis to formulate a fictional, normative standard, with which the
extent of the deviation may then be measured and compared. In both fields of science,
comparative research takes the origin of the phenomenon into account, comparing it
with the present and attempting to deduce the trend for the future. This method of
examination leads us to view the force of evolution and pathological realization as the
result of a struggle that flares up, in the organic field, over the maintenance of balance,
performance and adaptation; in the psyche, an identical readiness to fight is led by a
fictitional idea of the personality, whose activity reaches as far as the development of
the neurotic character and neurotic symptoms. If organically then, ‘the individual
becomes a unified whole in which all parts work together toward a common goal’
(Virchowd) — if the multifarious abilities and tendencies of an organism develop
purposefully into a systematic, unified personality, then we may consider every single
phenomenon of life as if it contains traces of a higher, guiding idea that is present in its
past as well as in its present and future.
This is the path that the author of this book has followed, that is to say, that a
purposive dynamic is flowing through every feature of psychic existence, no matter
how small. Comparative individual psychology discerns in every psychic event the
imprint, or, in a manner of speaking, the symbol of a uniformly directed plan of life that
only assumes an even clearer expression in the psychology of neuroses and psychoses.
The results of such an examination of the neurotic character must give evidence of
the value and practical usefulness of our method of comparative individual psychology
concerning the problems of the psyche.
Vienna, in February of the year 1912 Dr. Alfred Adler
viii
Adler’s Preface to the Second Edition (1919)
The philosophical, all-encompassing theory of the human psyche with which I
investigated the neurotic character has developed, for myself and a large circle of
followers, into a view of the world and a knowledge of human nature in comparison
with which every other way of looking at psychic activity seems to be incorrect or
incomplete.
Between both editions of this book lies a world war with all its consequences, lies
the most terrible mass neurosis to which our neurotically diseased civilization, eroded
by its striving for power and its policy of prestige, has resorted. The gruesome course of
contemporary events confirms in a frightening way the straightforward reasoning of this
book.
A course that reveals itself as the demoniac work of the striving for power that has
been let loose everywhere, throttling or cleverly abusing the immortal community
feeling of humankind.
Our Individual Psychology has far transcended the deadlock of descriptive
psychology. To perceive and discern a human being in our sense means: to tear away
the aberrations of his injured, excited, but powerless striving to become like a God, and
turn him to the imperturbable logic of human social life, the community feeling.
The development of my theory has made a number of elucidations and additions
necessary in the present volume. For the same reason, a second volume will shortly be
published which, besides important preliminary studies, will comprise a number of
necessary additions and new papers1.
Looking back on the development of my theory of Individual Psychology will
reveal the uninterrupted expansion of psychic research on three interlocking levels:
from the infantile inferiority feeling an excited striving for power will originate, which
finds it is hemmed in by the demands of the community and the reminders of the
physiologically and socially rooted community feeling, and goes astray. This concise
explanation, easy to understand as it is, may perhaps offer a helping hand in dealing
with the often senseless drivel of freebooters and storytellers.
The serious reader will, I hope, come to share with me the viewpoint that enables
us to see through every human psyche in its consistent advance to a goal of superiority,
so that movements, characteristics and symptoms are without fail indicating points
higher than themselves. The insights that they gain, however, will burden them with a
task for life: to lead the way in demolishing the striving for personal power and in
educating the community.
Vienna, in May 1919 Dr. Alfred Adler
1 Published in the meanwhile: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie 3. Aufl.

1927, J. F. Bergmann, München, and Menschenkenntnis 1926, S. Hirtzel, Leipzig.

Adler’s Preface to the Third Edition (1922)
It is perhaps not superfluous to point out that our Individual Psychological
opinions, which were explained for the first time in this book, refuse to acknowledge a
compulsory connection to an organic substratum.
Our conclusions rather make it possible to perceive that the psychic development
of an individual with all his failures and mistakes, as well as neuroses and psychoses,
originate in his attitude toward the absolute logic of human coexistence. The degree of
his failure — his lack of understanding of and cohesion with cosmic and social
demands — is the basis of all psychic disturbances and determines the extent of their
development. The neurotic lives and toils for a world that is not ours. His resistance
against the absolute truth is larger than ours.
 He arrives at this resistance neither because of the cellular structure of his brain
nor because of humoral influences, but because of an inferiority feeling acquired in a
difficult situation in childhood. From that time on, a greater inclination for the mistakes
that are everywhere ready at hand will permanently exert an influence on the
development of the psyche. We deny that there is an organic disposition for neurosis,
but clearer than any other author we have pointed out the contribution of organ
inferiority to the creation of a psychic position, as well as the aiding and abetting role
of physical weakness in the establishment of a feeling of inferiority.
Our Individual Psychology teaches us to understand the psychic life of man as an
attempt to establish a position with regard to the demands of social existence. In
neuroses and psychoses, the establishment of this position has gone seriously astray. For
the assumption that a special form of inborn sexual libido constitutes a coercive or even
unique factor we fail to find confirmation anywhere, and the ‘conservation of psychic
energy’e strikes us as wishful thinking on the part of its authors, to which we gladly
subscribe.
The critical opposition to the positions taken by Freud and Kretschmerf, which
finds more pronounced expression in this edition, may be explained by the great
significance of these authors for the development of the psychology of neuroses. As far
as I could, I have also tried to take into account all other authors who produced
independent work.
My obligation to be frank puts me in a difficult position on the occasion of the
third edition of this book, and most distressingly so. It is for that reason that I want to
make a confession here that will without any doubt rob me permanently of my readers’
affection. After the thoroughly negative judgment of this book by Privy Councilor Mr.
Wagner-Jaureggg, my application to be appointed as a lecturer at the University of
Vienna has been refused by the college of professors.
Because of this decision of the committee I have so far been prevented from giving
public lectures for students and physicians. Those who know about
x these things will understand how difficult the dissemination of my ideas,
successful though it has been until today, has become. Perhaps the following
circumstance has been of some assistance:
The viewpoints of our Individual Psychology demand the unconditional
dismantling of the striving for power and the development of the community feeling.
The solution it proposes is the ‘fellow-man,’ the adoption of an attitude of fellowship
among human beings towards the immanent demands of society.
There may be more venerable theories based on older scientific teachings. There
may be more recent ones based on cleverer reasoning. Certainly there are none that
have been more useful to the common good.
Vienna, in March 1922 Dr. Alfred Adler
Adler’s Preface to the Fourth Edition (1927)
In this edition I want to sow the seeds of new developments in psychology. The
specialist will not fail to discern them. Others will have to be prepared for the
achievements of Individual Psychology that may be found elsewhere.
A fact which, among others, gives us, Individual Psychologists, our certainty in the
theoretical development of our ideas as well as in our practice, is one that is rarely
noticed: namely, that every step forward has proved to be the logical result from our
fundamental observations. Until now it has been unnecessary to change our edifice
anywhere, or to support it with observations of a different sort.
Vienna, in December 1927 Dr. Alfred Adler
xii
Endnotes for the Prefaces
a wrongly-titled

According to F.G. Crookshank, in ‘The Neurotic Character.’ (Individual

Psychology Medical Pamphlets, No. 18, December, 1937, London), Adler was very
annoyed when the translation of his book was given the mistaken title of The Neurotic
Constitution.
b earlier authors

In his earlier publications, Adler mentions the following in connection with organ
inferiority, psychic compensation and the safeguarding tendency (Studie über
Minderwertigkeit von Organen [1907] 1977, 51, 92, 94, 110; Heilen und Bilden [1922]
1973, 49,51f.): Darwin, Demosthenes, Grimm, Hegel, Jean Paul, Moses, Shakespeare.
In addition, artists and composers: Beethoven, Bruckner, Piero della Francesca, Manet,
Mozart, Schumann, Smetana. The list may be enlarged by those mentioned in the
‘Neurotic Character’: Avenarius, Charcot, Féré, Goethe, Janet, Lombroso, Milton,
Nietzsche, Seneca, Vaihinger. Dostoyevski certainly should be in the list as well (Praxis
und Theorie der Individualpsychologie [1920] 1974, 286, 290). In Adler’s other
writings the following are also mentioned: Horace, Herder, Hippocrates, William
James, Kant, Lavater, Lichtenberg, Nelson, Novalis, Hans Sachs, Schiller,
Schopenhauer, Socrates, Sophokles (Œdipus), Wagner, Wilhelm Wundt (cooperation
Rüedi).
c publications

Under the name ‘Schriften des Vereins für freie psychoanalytischen Forschung’,
named ‘Schriften des Vereins für Individualpsychologie’ from 1914 on, the following
were published by the Reinhardt Verlag in Munich:
Nº 1 1912: Carl Furtmüller: Psychoanalyse und Ethik.
Nº 2 1912: Otto Kaus: Der Fall Gogol.
Nº 3 1912: Paul Schrecker: Henri Bergsons Philosophie der Persönlichkeit. Nº 4 1913:
Felix Asnaourow: Sadismus und Masochismus in Kultur und Erziehung.
Nº 5 1914: Vera Strasser-Eppelbaum: Zur Psychologie des Alkoholismus. Nº 6 1914:
Hedwig Schulhof: Individualpsychologie und Frauenfrage. Nº 7 1917: Alfred Adler:
Das Problem der Homosexualität.
d Virchow, Rudolf

(1821 Schivelbein/Pommern – 1902 Berlin): Professor of pathology in Berlin

(Charité) and Würzburg. Virchow took part in the democratic movement of physicians
during the Vormärz and the civil revolution in 1848. He was widely active as a
physician,
politician and anthropologist and left his mark on the medical science of his day.
Medical
science, for Virchow, was a ‘social science’, dealing with the whole of human life. In
1849 and 1852 Virchow came to the fore with two socio-medical publications in Upper
Silesia and the Spessart. From 1858 on he developed his ‘cellular pathology’. He
regarded cells as individuals in which there was unity and community: ‘The idea that
there is a unity in the life of everything alive finds physical expression in the cell’
(1862,
45). For his understanding of medical science (see his socio-medical publications:
xiii
Gesundheitsbuch für das Schneidergewerbe 1898, Eine Lehrkanzel für Soziale
Medizin 1902, Stadt und Land 1902, Staatshilfe oder Selbsthilfe 1903, and explicitly
Das Eindringen sozialer Triebkräfte in die Medizin 1902) as well as the individual (as a
goaldirected unity) Adler could completely rely on Virchow.
e conservation of psychic energy

The adaptation of the law of the conservation of energy from physics to

psychology by G. Th. Fechner (1801–1887) was transformed by Breuer/Freud into a
basis for the theory of hysteria in 1895 and as an economic principle in psychoanalysis.
It implies that 1. there exists a given amount of psychic energy which remains constant
within a closed system; and that 2. the psychic apparatus is striving to maintain
constant, low level of psychic energy (constancy principle, connected with the pleasure-
displeasure principle [Lust-Unlust-Prinzip]: “the nerve system strives to maintain
constant a part of its functional interrelations that we might call the sum total of
excitement” (Freud, Entwurf zu den Studien über Hysterie, 1892, Gesammelte Werke
17, 12f.).
f Kretschmer, Ernst

(1888 Wüstenrot – 1964 Tübingen): Professor of psychiatry in Tübingen; known

mainly for his theory of the constitution, in which he concluded that there are certain
correlations between types of physical build (leptosome, pycnic, ahtletic, and others)
and
peculiarities of character (schizothymia, cyclothymia, and others). This initial
conclusion
would lead him to constitutional physiology, research of psychomotorics,
constitutiontypical tonus-directing and psychosomatics; he also researched the disease
picture of
‘sensitive relation mania’ [sensitiver Beziehungswahn] and was active in the field of
medical psychology and psychotherapeutic methods. Kretschmer was co-founder
(1926)
and chairman (since 1929) of the General Physicians’ Association for Psychotherapy.
He
retired in 1933.
g Wagner von Jauregg, Julius

(1857 Wels/Oberösterreich – 1940 Vienna): Professor of psychiatry in Vienna

from 1893; a defender of organic psychiatry, he came forward with histological,
experimental, clinical-psychiatric work, particularly in the fight against cretinism by
administering iodine and curing paralysis by means of a malaria therapy. In 1927 he
was
awarded the Nobel prize. He had a tense, almost dismissive attitude toward
psychoanalysis, even though his clinic counted a number of psychoanalysists among its
collaborators, such as Paul Schilder, Heinz Hartmann, Annie Reich, Edward Bibring
and
also Alexandra Adler, Adler’s daughter. In his explanation why he refused Adler’s
doctorate thesis (for which he submitted the ‘Neurotic Character’) in 1915 he
mentioned
arguments such as ‘speculation’, ‘intuition’, ‘disciple of the psychoanalytic school’.
Theoretical Part - Introduction
Introduction
‘Omnia ex opinione suspensa sunt; non ambitio tantum ad illam respicit et luxuria et
avaritia. Ad opinionem dolemus. Tam miser est quisque, quam credidit!’a
Seneca, Epistulæ 78, 13.
The study of the neurotic character is an essential part of the psychology of
neuroses. As all phenomena in connection with the psyche it can only be understood
within the whole of psychic existence. Even a superficial knowledge of the theory of
neuroses will be sufficient to find out how extraordinary this is. And all authors who
have investigated the problem of neuroses have concentrated their special interest on
particular characteristics. The general opinion was that the neurotic shows a number of
sharply distinguished characteristics that are beyond what is normal. Great sensitivity,
susceptibility, susceptible weakness, suggestibility, egoism, a tendency towards the
fantastic, alienation from reality, and also more particular traits, such as a desire to
dominate, maliciousness, self-sacrificing kindness, a flirtatious nature, cowardice and
timidity and absent-mindedness all play their role in the previous histories of most
patients, and to endorse the careful and thorough work of many authors one would
really have to name them all. Among the more recent of these mention should be made
in particular of Janet,b who is carrying on the traditions of the famous French school
and has brought forward a number of notable, penetrating analyses. His emphasis on the
‘sentiment d’incomplétude’ of the neurotic in particular agrees with the results that I
have brought forward to such a degree that I may consider my own work as an
expansion of this most important basic fact from the psychic life of the neurotic. In
addition to this, my conclusions about the unity of the personality constitute a lasting
psychological step forward, in that they have solved the enigma of the ‘double vie,’c of
the polarity,d of ambivalencee (Bleuler)f.
No matter where one begins the analysis of psychogenic disorders, one and the
same phenomenon will press itself forward even after the most cursory of observations:
that the entire picture of neurosis, as well as all its symptoms, are influenced, indeed,
are designed by a fictional final goal. This final goal also possesses formative, directive
and organizing power. One may come to understand this goal from the direction and the
‘sense’ of the pathological phenomena, and if one attempts to do without this
assumption, nothing will remain but the confusing mass of impulses, impulses,
components, weaknesses and anomalies that has made the darkness of the neurosis so
repelling for some, while others have stepped into it on bold journeys of discovery.
However, if one keeps in mind that the final goal that is active behind all these
phenomena constitutes a causal finality (W. Stern),g then this otherwise dark psychic
mechanism will become clear and one may read it as an open book.
xv
There is no doubt that Pierre Janeth came very close to this interpretation, as is
clearly shown by some of his classical descriptions of the mental condition of hysterics
(In: Gesiteszustand der Hysterischen 18941i). However, he dismissed a truly thorough
description. He expressly maintains: ‘I have described, until now, only general and
simple characteristics that can, by combining among each other and under influence of
certain external circumstances, produce all kinds of peculiar attitudes and behavior. It is
inadmissible to go into their description here, since it would prove to resemble a novel
of manners rather than a clinical study.’ In taking this position, to which he remained
true until his last works, Pierre Janet, despite his keen understanding of the relationship
between the psychology of neuroses and moral philosophy, missed the road to their
synthesis.
It was Josef Breuer,j with his thorough knowledge of German philosophy, who
‘found the glimmering stone lying in the road.’ He drew attention to the ‘sense’ of the
symptom and wanted to ascertain both its origin and purpose by questioning the only
person who could possibly provide answers, the patient. In doing this, he founded a
method that attempts to explain individual psychological phenomena historically and
developmentally, with the help of a preliminary presupposition, namely that of the
determinism of psychic manifestations. The manner in which this method has been
expanded and developed further by Sigmund Freud, with its innumerable problems and
attempted and abandoned solutions, is part of contemporary history and has met with
recognition as well as contradiction. In order to make my own position clear rather than
to follow any critical inclination, I would like to take the liberty to separate from
Freud’s fruitful and valuable contributions three of his fundamental views as erroneous,
since they threaten to block any progress in the understanding of neurosis. The first
objection is concerned with the view that the libido is the driving force behind what
happens in the neurosis. On the contrary, it is the neurosis that shows more clearly than
normal psychic behavior how, by the setting of a neurotic goal, the feeling of pleasure,
its gradation and its strength are forced in the direction of this goal, so that the neurotic
can really only follow the enticement of acquiring pleasure with his, let us say, healthy
psychic force, while only ‘higher’ goals are valid for the neurotic part of this force. If,
however, one translates ‘libido’ with the ambiguous notion that is ‘love,’ it becomes
possible, by correctly applying and adapting these words, not to explain, but at least to
describe all cosmic events. This description will give many people the impression that
all human behavior is teeming with ‘libido,’ whereas in reality the happy finder only
brings out what he has previously put in. The most recent interpretations seem to
indicate that the Freudian theory of the libido is moving with furious speed towards our
own point of view of community feeling and the striving for a personality ideal (‘ego-
ideal’), which in the interest of increasing understanding should be welcomed very
much indeed.
This establishment of the neurotic goal proved to be the elevation of the feeling of
self-worth, the simplest form of which may be recognized in the exaggerated
‘masculine protest.’k The formula: ‘I want to be a complete man!’ is the guiding fiction,
the ‘fundamental apperception’ (Jerusalem),l so to speak, in any neurosis, for which it
claims values of reality in a higher degree even than for the normal psyche. And libido,
sexual drive and perverse inclinations, wherever these may have their origins, will
arrange themselves according to this guiding idea as well. Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’
and ‘will to seem’m are largely congruent with our view, which in its turn touches on the
opinions of Férén and previous authors,o according to whom the feeling of pleasure is
rooted in a feeling of power, and the feeling of pain in one of powerlessness. A second
objection concerns Freud’s fundamental view of the sexual etiology of neuroses, a view
to which Pierre Janetp came rather dubiously close when he raised the question (l.c.)
‘Are we to suppose, then, that the experience of sexuality is the center around which the
other psychological syntheses are constructed?’ The applicability of the sexual
metaphor deceives many, and in particular the neurotic, in their identity. Among
mystics, such as Baaderq for instance, one may often find such misleading
representations. Language, too, with its tendency for plasticity, sets hazardous traps for
the innocent investigator. The psychologist should not let himself be taken in by it. The
sexual content of neurotic phenomena largely originates in the imaginary antithesis
‘masculine — feminine’ and has developed by a change of form from the masculine
protest. The sexual impulse in the fantasy and in the real life of the neurotic acts
according to the establishment of the masculine goal and is really not a drive but a
compulsion. The overall picture of the sexual neurosis is a parable reflecting the
patient’s distance from his fictional masculine final goal, and his efforts to conquer or to
perpetuate2 this distance. It is curious that Freud, a distinguished specialist in life’s
symbolism, was unable to resolve the symbolism in the sexual apperception, to
recognize the sexual as jargon, as a modus dicendi. However, we will understand this
when we take the third fundamental error into consideration, his assumption that the
neurotic is under the influence of infantile desires, especially the desire for incest, that
are revived every night (theory of dreams) and on certain occasions actually occur. In
reality all infantile desires are themselves already under the compulsion of the fictional
final goal, usually having themselves the character of a guiding but properly arranged
idea and particularly suitable for use as symbols of calculation for reasons of the
economy of thought. A disturbed girl, who from a feeling of particular insecurity,
sought support with her father throughout her childhood, and in doing so wants to be
superior to her mother, might occasionally fit this psychic constellation into the ‘incest
metaphor’ as if she wanted to be her father’s wife. In doing this, the final goal is already
provided and active: her insecurity can only be banished when she is with her father.
Her growing psychomotor intelligence, her unconsciously active memory answers to
any experience of insecurity with an identical aggression: with the preparatory attitude
to flee to the father as if she were his wife. There she can find that elevated feeling of
self-worth that she has made her goal, derived from the masculine ideal from her
childhood, the overcompensation of her inferiority feeling. She is, then, acting
symbolically when she recoils from courting or marriage, as these threaten her feeling
of self-worth with new depreciations, as she encounters greater difficulties than she
does with her father, and the arrangement of her predispositions will direct itself
purposefully against a feminine fate, will let her seek security where she has always
found it, with the father. She is using an expedient, is behaving according to an absurd
fiction that enables her, however, to reach with absolute certainty her goal of avoiding a
feminine role. The greater her feeling of insecurity, the stronger this girl will hold on to
her fiction, will indeed try to take it literally, and since human thought favors symbolic
abstraction, the patient as well as the analyst, even if it will cost the latter some effort,
will sometimes succeed in capturing the neurotic’s striving for security within the
1 German translation by Dr. Max Kahane.
2 See: ‘Problem der Distanz,’ in Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c.

xvii symbolic picture of the incestuous inclination, to possess the superiority she
has when she is with her father. Freud was obliged to see in this goal-directed process a
revival of infantile desires, because he had determined that the latter were the driving
forces. We recognize in this infantile procedure, in the extensive use of safeguarding
auxiliary constructions, which is how we should regard the neurotic fiction, in this
comprehensive, motor preparation reaching far back into the past, in the strong
tendency towards abstraction and symbolization, the purposeful means of the neurotic
who wants to attain his security, the elevation of his feeling of self-worth, the masculine
protest. The neurosis shows us the execution of erroneous designs. All thought and
behavior can be traced back to childhood experiences. As far as the Freudian
‘regression’ is concerned, the mentally disturbed individual does not distinguish
himself from the healthy person. The distinction rests only on the fact that he has built
on errors that go too far, that he has taken up a mistaken attitude towards life.
‘Regression,’ however, is what is normally the case in thought and behavior.
If we attach to these critical remarks the question of how the neurotic phenomena
have come into being, why the patient wants to be a man, and is constantly trying to
furnish proof for his superiority, where his enormously powerful need for a feeling of
self-worth comes from, and why he is going to such expense to attain security, or in
short, the question of the ultimate reason for these expedients of the neurotic psyche,
then it may already be guessed what any research will reveal: the feeling of insecurity
and inferiority is looming at the start of the development of the neurosis, insistently
demanding the establishment of a guiding, safeguarding, reassuring purpose, a
concretization of the goal of superiority, to make life bearable. What we call the essence
of the neurosis consists of the increased expense of the available psychic means. Among
these, the following are particularly prominent: auxiliary constructions and
stereotypical ways of thought, behavior and desire.
It is clear that such a psyche, in its exceptional exertion in order to elevate the
personality, and apart from any unambiguous neurotic symptoms, will also attract
attention by the noticeably greater difficulty in finding a place in the community, as
well as in professional and love life. The feeling of the weak point controls the neurotic
to such an extent, that, without knowing it, he is bringing about the protective
superstructure by exerting all his force. In doing this, his sensitivity will become more
acute, he learns to pay attention to correlations that still escape others, he will
exaggerate his caution, he will attempt to anticipate every single possible consequence
of an act or an injury, he will try to hear and to see further ahead, will become fussy,
insatiable and frugal, will try to extend the limits of his influence and power further and
further through time and space — and in doing so, he will lose the openness and peace
of mind that above everything else are a guarantee for mental health and energy. His
mistrust, of himself as well as of others, will gradually increase, his envy, his
maliciousness, his aggressive and cruel inclinations, intended to provide him with
superiority over his environment, will get the upper hand, or he will attempt to get a
hold over others by increased obedience, by submission and humility, which not
infrequently degenerate into masochistic characteristics; this elevated activity and
increased passivity are both expedients introduced by the fictional goal of increased
power, of the ‘desire to be above,’ of the masculine protest. By over-emphasizing a part
of life’s problems (independence, caution, cleanliness, etc.), he will disturb life’s
internal coherence and
xviii come out on the useless side of life where we can find the ineducable, the
neurotic, the criminal, the suicides, perverts, and prostitutes.
Kretschmerr has recently described a number of psychic cases in terms of a
schizothymic system of forms, cases that are completely similar to those I have
described, so much indeed that he himself remarks at a certain point that such types
have occasionally been described as manifestations of the ‘neurotic’ character. Anyone
who is familiar with the findings as I have recorded them here myself will without
difficulty recognize something similar in his schizothymic types. We can only be
pleased with his further findings, particularly those on physiognomy. If they are
confirmed, one may see, to a large measure, the inborn organ inferiority in the patient’s
face. The pessimism of Kraepelin,s however, that is paralyzing Kretschmer just as it is
contemporary psychiatry, is preventing this author, too, from appreciating the
educability of the organically inferior.
And this brings us to those psychic phenomena whose discussion is the content of
this book, to the neurotic character. No entirely new characteristics can be found in the
neurotic, not a single one that may not also be pointed out in the normal individual.
However, the neurotic character is conspicuous and farther-reaching, in that it can only
become understandable, for the physician as well as the patient, by analysis. It is
uninterruptedly ‘sensitized,’ advanced as an outpost, and establishes contact with the
environment, with the future. Only the knowledge of these psychic predispositions,
protruding far ahead as sensitive antennæ, makes it possible to come to an
understanding of the neurotic’s struggle with his task, of his stimulated aggressive
tendency, of his unrest and impatience. For these antennæ probe every phenomenon in
the environment and incessantly examine their advantages and disadvantages with
regard to the established goal. They bring about a keener sense of measurement and
comparison, they rouse with the attention that is active in them fear, hope, doubt,
loathing, hate, love, expectation of all kind, and attempt to safeguard the psyche against
surprise and a lowering of the feeling of self-worth. They put forward the most
peripheral motor preparations, always mobile, always ready to prevent the depreciation
of the person. In them, the forces of external and internal experience are active, they are
filled with the traces of reminiscences of terrifying and consoling events and have
transformed, mechanized their memory into dexterities. As categorical imperatives of
the second rank they do not serve to bring about their own success, but the eventual
elevation of the personality. In addition, they attempt to do this by making it possible to
establish guiding lines through the unrest and insecurity of life, by furnishing and
differentiating right and left, up and down, right and wrong. The emphasized
characteristics can already be found quite easily in the neurotic disposition of the child’s
psyche, where they give cause to annoyance and to peculiarities and perversities. They
will become even more prominent when, after a fairly strong depreciation or after the
emergence of a contradiction against the individual’s own superiority, the safeguarding
tendency moves on, at the same time calling symptoms into being as new, effective
expedients. These are often construed on the basis of models and examples and their
task is to lead the struggle for the feeling of self-worth into every new situation and
emerge victorious. In its activity lies the reason for the increase in affectivity and for the
lowering of the threshold of stimulation as compared to normal individuals. It goes
without saying that the neurotic character, like the normal one, develops from originally
available material, from psychic impulses and experiences of the function of the organs.
All the psychic predispositions related to the outside world will only become neurotic
when a decision is immanent, when inner necessity elevates the safeguarding tendency
while the latter is mobilizing the characteristics and making them more effective, and
when the fictional goal of life operates more dogmatically and accentuates the
secondary guiding lines that correspond to the traits of character. At this point the
hypostasis of the character sets in, leading to its transformation from means to goal, and
consequently to its independence, and a kind of deification provides it with permanency
and eternal value. The neurotic character is incapable of adapting itself to reality, for it
is working towards an unattainable ideal; it is a product and instrument of a
precautionary, extremely distrustful psyche that is strengthening its guiding line in order
to get rid of an inferiority feeling, an attempt that must, because of its internal
contradictions or its falsehood, founder either on the limits of civilization or on the
rights of others. Just as the groping gesture, the pose when looking back, the physical
attitude in aggression and the facial expression serve as forms and means of conveying
information, so the characteristics, in particular the neurotic characteristics, serve as
psychic means and forms to prepare a relation to life, to take up a position, to acquire a
fixed point among life’s vicissitudes, to reach the safeguarding final goal, the feeling of
superiority, or at least to prevent it from going under.
Thus we have unmasked the neurotic character as the servant of a fictional
purpose, and established its dependence on a final goal. It did not shoot up out of some
biological or constitutional elementary force, but it received direction and motivation
from the compensatory superstructure in the psychic organ and its schematic guiding
line. It was whipped into action under pressure of insecurity; its tendency to personify
itself is the doubtful result of the safeguarding tendency. The line of the neurotic
character has maintained its destination by the establishment of a goal, which is to join
the line of superiority, and this is how every neurotic characteristic betrays by its
direction that it is shot through with the striving for power, which is trying to make it
into an unfailing instrument in excluding from life any permanent depreciation.
In the practical part of this book a number of cases will be used to demonstrate
how the neurotic scheme calls forth special psychopathological constellations by the
apperception of experience by means of the neurotic character, that is to say, by means
of the neurotic technique of life.
xx
Endnotes for Theoretical Part - Introduction
 a Seneca
‘Everything depends on opinion; it determines not only ambition, but also the lust for
pleasure and avarice as well. In our own opinion we suffer. Everyone is as miserable as
his
prejudice makes him.’ Seneca, Lucius Annaeus: Ad Lucilium epistolae morales 70-124
(125).
English-Latin edition in Loeb Classical Library.
b Janet, Pierre: sentiment d’incomplétude, French school

(1859 – 1947 Paris): From 1890, Janet, a neurologist and psychologist, was head of the
psychologic laboratory of the clinic of ‘La Salpêtrière’ in Paris, whose director was
Jean-Marie
Charcot (1825 – 1893). This is what the ‘French School’ refers to. After studying
philosophy,
Janet’s main research was concerned with neuroses, behavioral psychology and social
psychopathology. He produced valuable clinical descriptions of hysteria, phobias and
obsessions
(idées fixes); in the field of the research of neuroses he demonstrated that neurasthenia
was a new
type of neurosis. Adler was familiar with the German translation (1894) of Janet’s early
work
‘Geisteszustand des Hysterischen’ (see endnote ‘h’ on ‘Janet’ on page xxii) which
mentions the
‘feeling of incompleteness’ or ‘imperfection’ (175ff.). This term was coined by Janet in
order to
give a special definition of the lack of ‘psychic force’ in asthenia, or the lack of
‘psychic tension’
in the hypotonic syndrome.
c double vie

Term in 19th century French psychiatry, which was concerned with ‘alternating
personalities’ (personnalités alternantes) or ‘double life’. More exactly, the term goes
back to the theory of the ‘multiple consciousness’ and the ‘dual personality’ in Alfred
Binet (1857 – 1911). Nowadays the term ‘dédoublement de la personnalité’ (split
consciousness) is usual. Pierre Janet, in adding his understanding of the ‘narrowing of
the field of consciousness’ to Binet’s theory of hysteria, spoke of a ‘second personality’
or a ‘second consciousness’ (seconde personnalité/conscience) instead of ‘double vie’.
(collaboration Viguier)
d polarity

A concept in the Naturphilosophie of Romanticism (Schelling, Hufeland,

Winkelmann) that was introduced into the philosophy of life, the psychology of unity,
cognitive psychology and also into the dynamic psychiatry and psychoanalysis of Freud
and Jung. Polarities are pairs of antagonistic and mutually complementary forces in a
dynamic continuous exchange, such as for instance pleasure/displeasure, love/hate,
activity/passivity, extraversion/introversion, male/female.
e ambivalence (Bleuler)
 In 1910 Bleuler introduced the term ‘ambivalence’ into psychiatry: a psychic state
in which there is a negative and a positive shade. Normal ambivalence is the result of
the adaptation of two opposite feelings, while in abnormal ambivalence a paradoxal
fusion between those two feelings takes place.
f Bleuler, Eugen

(1857 – 1939 Zollikon bei Zürich): Professor of psychiatry. Succeeded his teacher
August Forel (1848 – 1931) as director of the Burghölzli in Zurich from 1898 to 1929.
Under his directorship the Burghölzli became a world-famous center for the research of
mental diseases. The ‘Swiss School of Bleuler’ opened up new roads in psychiatry: it is
concerned with psychological understanding and psychological methods of treatment in
order to bring about a cure, Bleuler coined the term ‘depth psychology’. In discussions
with Kraepelin he suggests the term ‘schizophrenia’ instead of ‘dementia praecox’, and
he also developed a new theory of schizophrenia. In this context he performed, together
with C. G. Jung, the word-association experiments in 1904-05, and from 1919
supported H. Rohrschach’s experiments concerned with the interpretation of shapes and
forms. On Jung’s initiative he made contact with Freud, participated in the congress of
psychoanalysts of 1908 in Salzburg, co-editing (with Freud) the ‘Jahrbuch für
psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen’ until C. G. Jung left the
group at the end of 1913. Between 1910-11 he briefly was a member of the association,
but as an independent scientist he was dismissive of the idea of an organization such as
the association was.
g Stern, William

(1871 Berlin – 1938 Durham/USA): He studied, and did his thesis and doctorate, with
the
experimental psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in Berlin and (from 1897) Breslau;
was
professor in Breslau and Hamburg (from 1916), in 1906 doctor honoris causa at Clark
University
(together with Freud and Jung), in 1933 he was dismissed from his position because he
was
Jewish, and he emigrated to Holland, then America. In very diverse fields of research,
Stern
entered new directions that were to be revolutionary for the development of
psychology:
differential psychology, child psychology, particularly research of children’s diaries
(together
with his wife Clara Stern), the practical use of psychology in (among others) education,
the
psychology of evidence, the psychology of intelligence and talent. From 1908 he
published,
together with Otto Lipmann, the ‘Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie’. Stern’s
‘critical
personalism’, his understanding of the individual as a teleological unity and his quest
for
‘weltanschauung’ is very closely related to Adler’s ideas. For Stern, a ‘person’ is ‘a
being which,
notwithstanding its manifold parts, forms a genuine unity, with its own character and
worth, and
as such, despite the manifold functions of its parts, succeeds in creating a unified, goal-
directed
self-activity’ (1906, 16). In his functioning (causality) the ‘indivisible’ person is goal-
directed
(causa finalis) (1918, 5ff.). Stern and Adler always appreciated one another. Stern
considered
Adler’s ‘school’ as the ‘next step’ of psychoanalysis and he followed it polemically and
critically.
h Janet, Pierre

Der Geisteszustand des Hysterischen (Die psychische Stigmata). Mit einer Vorrede von
Professor Charcot. Übersetzt von Dr. Max Kahane. Mit 7 Holzschnitten im Text.
Leipzig und
Wien: Deuticke 1894, 190. This book brings together, in five chapters, lectures about
anesthesia,
amnesia, abulia, abnormalities of movement and changes of character, which Janet held
in the
spring of 1892 in the hospital La Salpêtrière in Paris, and which is identical to the first
volume of
the French original ‘L’état mental des hystériques’ (see earlier endnote ‘b’ on Janet, on
page xxi).
i Kahane, Max

(1866 Jassy/Bukowina – 1923 Vienna): M.D., Vienna, founding member of the

psychoanalytical ‘Wednesday Association’ at Freud’s (with Adler, Reitler, Stekel). In
1907 he
announced his withdrawal because of overwork. He became a member of the board of
directors of
the ‘Wiener Medizinische Club’ (Vienna Medical Club) in 1895 and from 1901 he was
proprietor
and leader of the ‘Institut für physikalische Heilmethoden’ (Institute for Physical
Therapeutic
Methods, such as among others, electrotherapy). In 1907-08 he was secretary of the
‘Gesellschaft
für physikalische Medizin’ (Association for Physical Medicine). In 1923 he committed
suicide.
xxii
j Breuer, Josef

(1842 – 1925 Vienna): Well known for his important physiological research, he became
a
private teacher at Vienna University in 1894, and after 10 years founded a prominent
private
practice. In 1894 he became a member of the Vienna Acadamy of Science. In medical
circles
Breuer had a reputation for his highly cultured, acute and critical mind. He was a friend
of Freud
since the early seventies in the psysiological institute of Brücke. During the treatment of
Anna O.
(1880-1892) Breuer developed the method of the talking cure, in which the meaning of
the
symptoms was reconstructed biographically. This method of ‘cathartic hypnosis’ was
systematically taken over by Freud from 1889. The case of Anna O. was the basis for
their joint
publication on hysteria (1893, 1895) which is considered to be the starting point for
psychoanalysis. Personal and intellectual estrangement resulted from a conflict
concerning the
writing of this work.
k Masculine Protest

A term introduced by Adler in his lecture on ‘Psychic Hermaphroditism’

(Nunberg/Federn 2, 387) which he held at the psychoanalytical Wednesday session of
February 23rd, 1910; cf. the publication under the same name in that year (Heilen und
Bilden 1974, 85-93). Since then, Adler expresses the ‘inferiority feeling’ as the feeling
of being ‘feminine’, and the desire for compensation a the desire to be ‘masculine’, as a
protest against the feminine. In his criticism of Freud in his lecture of February 1st,
1911, which (together with the lecture of January 4th of the same year) was eventually
to lead to his break with Freud, the ‘masculine protest’ is given pivotal importance
(Nunberg/Federn 3, 139ff.; Heilen und Bilden 1974, 102-113). In the late Twenties this
idea somewhat loses its importance; the expression ‘masculine protest’ is largely
replaced by ‘striving for power/superiority’.
l Jerusalem, Wilhelm

(1854 – 1923 Vienna): [remark added in 1922, Jerusalem substituted for Avenarius —
see below — in 1928] Teacher at a gymnasium, later professor of philosophy at Vienna
University; very active socially, he was known for his popular scientific lectures and
publications.
He considered logic to be the theory of true thinking, which he researches
geneticallybiolologically in its judgmental function as the act of thinking. The
intellectual forms of
traditional logic (see note on Aristotle, page 29) do not correspond to the act of thinking
as it is
actually performed since the latter in its individual, specific representation sets apart a
‘power
center’, namely the object, from a certain experience, which is expressed by the subject:
‘This
manner of apperception, then, by which all events in the environment are interpreted as
expressions of the will of independent objects, we call fundamental apperception’
(1905, 81f.). In
his criticism of Avenarius, whom Jerusalem charges with ‘materialistic monism’ (ebd.
131f.), he
approaches Kant, as he also does with his psychological-genetical interpretation of the
latter’s
‘transcendental apperception’ as ‘fundamental apperception’ — also in a social-
pragmatical
sense. In 1928, Adler, by substituting Jerusalem for Avenarius, shows that he has
recognized this
change of epistemological position.
m Nietzsche, Friedrich: ‘will to power’, ‘will to seem’

(1844 Röcken bei Leipzig – 1900 Weimar): At the turn of the century, Nietzsche was
read as an irrational philosopher of life, whose theory of absolute development together
with his
biological-pragmatical principle of knowledge and a pessimistic cultural criticism, were
considered to be his most important ideas. Adler’s reading of Nietzsche complies with
this
interpretation, which was a result from the distorted edition of the ‘Will to Power’ of
1901, which
was compiled by a misguided hand. In Book 3 of this outdated edition (cf. the current
edition),
the principle of the will is said to represent a general principle concerning
understanding, nature,
xxiii
science, logic, consciousness, society, state and individual. This is what Adler
refers to when the value of reality, lust and the feeling of power serve in his work as a
‘leitmotiv’ for the construction of reality. This early reading of Nietzsche is transformed
by Vaihinger’s interpetation of Nietzsche (1911, 771ff.). The ‘will to power’ now is a
cognitive-critical view of the human will as a general, existentially necessary
interpretation of the world, whose infinite perspectives cannot be unified. Since man is
nonetheless continuously attempting to do this (and, for Adler, the neurotic particularly
so), ‘appearance’ or some kind of fictionality is immanent to his ‘will’ in order to
elevate his feeling of self-worth. Nietzsche writes, for instance, ‘One should use
‘cause’, or ‘effect’, in no other manner than as a ‘term’, that is to say, as conventional
fictions whose purpose is to provide meaning, understanding, not explanation.’ This
provides Adler’s idea of appearance/fiction with a background of the complex receptual
relations between Nietzsche and Vaihinger.
n Féré, Charles

(1852 – 1907): French psychologist and physiologist. With Alfred Binet (1857-1911) in
Paris he did research on hypnotism and psychotherapy. The F-phenomenon was named
after him:
exosomatic psychogalvanic reaction, that is, a change of the resistance of the skin under
a low
volt current when an exciting event takes place. – Once again, Adler quotes P. Janet
here, Der
Geisteszustand des Hysterischen, page 189 (see endnote ‘p’ on this page): ‘It is
precisely this
[namely, the ongoing mood swings between outbursts of melancholia and ecstasy]
which proves
that the idea which has been expressed so often by philosophers and was recently taken
up once
more by Féré, namely, “that the experience of pleasure is rooted in a feeling of power,
but the
experience of displeasure in a feeling of powerlessness”.’ From the original French
edition, P.
Janet, L’état mental des hystériques, page 184. Janet is quoting from Féré’s work
Sensation et
mouvement (Paris: Alcan 1887). Nietzsche also mentions Féré in connection with
‘psychomotor
rapport’ (induction psycho-motrice) in ‘sympathy’ and ‘altruism’.
o previous authors

This refers to the Sophists, cf. for instance Plato’s ‘Gorgias’. Cf. endnote on page 122.
p Janet, Pierre

Geisteszustand des Hysterischen (see endnote ‘b’ on page xxi), page 184; original
French edition L’état mental des hystériques, page 179. Concerning the similarity
between Freud and Janet, alleged by Adler but completely denied by Freud, cf. the
publications of the latter during the same period as those of Janet: L’Hérédité et
l’Etiologie des Névroses. Revue Neurologique 4, the same period as those of Janet:
L’Hérédité et l’Etiologie des Névroses. Revue Neurologique 4, 381. 395-397. 413-415.
432-433. 450-452. Cf. Freud for both contributions. According to this, actual neuroses
(neurasthenia, angstneurose) find their origin in the patient’s actual sexual activity
(masturbation, frustrated sexual excitement such as coitus interruptus); psycho-neuroses
(hysteria) find their origin in the patient’s early sexual activity, particularly in some
sexual seduction the patient may have suffered. When he discovered that in the
unconscious, fantasies cannot be distinguished from memories, Freud dismissed this
theory when it concerned a genuinely traumatizing sexual experience.
q Baader, Franz von

(1765 – 1841 Munich): Studied medicine, mineralogy and chemistry; occupied

important
positions in the mining industry and was honorary professor of natural philosophy,
religion and
society in Munich.
xxiv
r Kretschmer: schizothymic system of forms

(cf. endnote ‘e’ on page xiv): the schizothymic type of character, as a pre-morbid
personality or temperament of the schizophrenic, is described by Kretschmer, among
others, in
these terms: a lack of psychic approachability in combination with extreme sensitivity, a
façade
of aloofness, a predetermined distance, an unsocial, selective way of observation, a
considerable
ability for abstraction, an ability for perseverance, an inability for compromise.
 s Kraepelin, Emil
(1865 Neustrelitz – 1926 Munich): Professor of psychiatry in Munich; a founder of
scientific clinical psychiatry, his nosology became the basis of the classification of
psychiatric
diseases. He distinguished two groups in which these manifested themselves: dementia
præcox
(schizophrenia) and manic-depressive delusion. Kraepelin gave German psychiatry a
leading role
until the Second World War. His ‘Psychiatry’ was the most widely read textbook of its
time.
Influenced by W. Wundt he did research on the physical and psychic aspects of the
production
process and on the toxic effects of alcohol, exhaustion and medical drugs. Kraepelin is
also
considered as the founder of pharmaco-psychiatry. Kraepelin’s ‘German’ psychiatry (as
distinct
from Bleuler and the Swiss school), as far as treatment is concerned, represents
‘therapeutic
nihilism’.
xxv
Theoretical Part I - I
The Origin and Development of the Inferiority Feeling and its Effects
The conclusions of the ‘theory of organ inferiority’1 (see Studie l.c.) were
concerned with the causes, the behavior, the appearance, and the altered function of the
inferior organs and led me to considerations of compensation by the central nervous
system, which were followed by some elaborations on psychogenesis. A remarkable
relation between organ inferiority and mental overcompensation came to light, that
allowed me to acquire a fundamental insight: the experiences of organ inferiority will
come to be an ongoing stimulus in the development of an individual’s psyche.
Physiological observation shows that this results in a reinforcement of the nerve tracts
in quantity as well as in quality, in which a simultaneous original inferiority of these
tracts can reflect their tectonic and functional peculiarities within a general picture. The
mental aspect of this compensation and overcompensation can only be disclosed by
psychological observation and analysis.
After the extensive descriptions of organ inferiority — as the etiology of the
neurosis — in my earlier work, especially in the Studie, in the ‘Aggressionstrieb,’2 in
the ‘Psychischen Hermaphroditismus,’ in the ‘Neurotische Disposition’ and in the
‘Psychische Behandlung der Trigeminusneuralgia,’3 I may in the present description
confine myself to those topics that point towards a further clarification of the
relationship between organ inferiority and psychic compensation and are important for
the problem posed by the neurotic character. Summarizing, I stress that the organ
inferiority as I have described it comprises ‘the incompleteness of these kinds of
organsa, their often demonstrable developmental arrests, their lack of development in a
histological or functional direction, their functional failure in the post-fetal period, and
on the other hand the increase of their tendency to grow if they are under force of
compensation or correlation, the frequent purposiveness to greater functional
performance as well as the fetal character of organs and organic systems.’ It can easily
be demonstrated in every case — from the observation of children and from the
anamnesis of adults — that the presence of clearly inferior organs has an influence on
the psyche and tends to lower the self-esteem and to increase the psychological
insecurity of the child; however, it is exactly from this decreased evaluation that the
struggle for self-assertion originates, assuming much more intense forms than we would
expect. If the compensated inferior organ gains a wider scope of activity both
quantitatively and qualitatively and obtains means of protection from itself as well as
the entire organism, then the predisposed child, in his feeling of inferiority, will elicit
from his psychic capabilities the often conspicuous means to increase his own value,
among which we may note most prominently neurotic and psychotic means.
1 A. Adler, Studie über Minderwertigkeit von Organen, München 1927.

[Unveränderter reprografischer Nachdruck, Darmstadt 1965.]

2A. Adler, C. Furtmüller und E. Wexberg (Hrsg.), Heilen und Bilden. Grundlagen der

Erziehungskunst für Ärzte und Pädagogen. 2. Aufl. München: Bergmann 1922 [Repr.
(Hg. mit Carl Furtmüller) Heilen und Bilden. Ein Buch der Erziehungskunst für Ärzte
und Pädagogen. Mit einer Einführung von WOLFGANG METZGER. Frankfurt/Main 1973
(Fischer Taschenbuch Bd. 6220).]
3In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c.

Ideas about congenital inferiority, about predisposition, and constitutional

weakness are to be found even at the outset of scientific medicineb. If we leave out at
this point many well-known contributions, we do this — although they often contain
fundamental insights — only because of the fact that, although they do assert the
relation with organic and with mental diseases, they by no means explain it. It is here
where all those dissertations about pathology that base themselves on a general concept
of degeneration belong. Stiller’sc theory of the asthenic habitusd goes much further and
constitutes an early attempt to establish an etiologic relationship. Anton’se theory of
compensation confines itself too much to systems of correlation within the central
nervous system; on this basis, however, both he and his gifted pupil Otto Gross f have
made noteworthy attempts to come to a closer understanding of certain mental
conditions. Bouchard’sg bradytrophiah, the exsudative diathesisi that Ponfickj,
Escherichk, Czernyl, Morom and Strümpelln have described and explained as an
inclination for disease, Comby’so infantile arthritismp, Kreibich’sq angio-neurotic
diathesisr, Heubner’ss lymphatismt, Paltauf’su status thymico-lymphaticusv, Escherich’s
spasmophiliaw and Heßx-Eppingery’s vagotoniaz are successful attempts from recent
decades to describe conditions with congenital inferiorities in relation to one another.4
A common factor among them is their reference to heredity and infantile characteristics.
Although the vague and unsettled borderlines between the dispositions as they are
described are accentuated by the representatives of these theories themselves, it is
nonetheless impossible to discard the impression that conspicuous types have been
selected that will, in the course of time, merge into a large group, that of the minus-
variants. Of extreme importance for the understanding of congenital inferiority and
prediposition to disease have been the researches into the glands with internal secretion,
in which morphological or functional deviations were discovered, such as the thyroid
gland, the parathyroid glands, the sexual glands, the chromaffin systems, and the
hypophysis. From the point of view of these organ inferiorities, surveys of the overall
picture appeared easier and the connections with compensation and correlation within
the functioning of the entire body became more apparent.
4Also Bauer, Kretschmer and others.

Among the other authors who did not take a primum-movens but a cooperating and
interacting of several organ inferiorities as the basis of their considerations, Martiusaa
should be mentioned above all. Similarly, the coordination of simultaneous inferiorities
is brought into prominence in my contribution Studie über die Minderwertigkeit von
Organen (1907)5. The fact should not be underestimated ‘that the simultaneously
inferior organs are related to one another as if they were in a secret bond.’ Bartelbb, too,
has already extended his considerations about the status thymico-lymphaticus, which
constitute a considerable enrichment of science, so far that they have crossed over into
the areas of systems of other authors a long time ago. Kyrlecc, along independent lines
and guided by entirely new pathological findings, also reached the same conclusion as I
did when I declared, on the basis of my observations, that the coordination between
inferiorities of the sexual apparatus with other organs is often only slightly developed,
but can be found so frequently, that I must maintain that there is no organ inferiority
without an accompanying inferiority of the sexual apparatus.
For reasons of discussions that will follow later I must also mention the opinion of
Freud, who emphasizes the significance of a ‘sexual constitution’ as a basis for neurosis
and psychosis, by which he means an arrangement of partial sexual impulses, varying
as to quantity and quality. This view simply corresponds to a postulate of his other
opinions. The development of perverse impulses and their ‘failed repression’ into the
unconscious would give a picture of the neurosis, and forms in itself a primum movens
for the neurotic psyche. From our considerations it will appear that perversion6, insofar
as it actually will develop in neurosis and psychosis, is not determined by a congenital
driving force but by a fictitious final goal, with repression as a by-product, coming into
being under pressure of the feeling of self-worth. However, everything in originally
abnormal sexual behavior that should be taken into consideration in a biological sense,
such as increased or decreased sensibility, greater or lesser reflex activity, the
functionality of valency as well as the compensatory psychic superstructure, stems
directly from a congenital inferiority of the sexual organ, as I have shown in the Studie.
5 A. Adler, Studie über die Minderwertigkeit von Organen. Berlin, Vienna: Urban

& Schwartzenberg. (translation: Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical

Compensation; A Contribution to Clinical Medicine. New York: Nervous & Mental
Diseases Publishing Company, 1917.)
6Siehe: A. Adler, Das Problem der Homosexualität. München 1917. In: Praxis und

Theorie der Individualpsychologie. Vorträge zur Einführung in die Psychotherapie für

Ärzte, Psychologen und Lehrer. München: Bergmann 1920. 2nd ed. 1924. Reprint:
Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie. Vorträge zur Einführung in die
Psychotherapie für Ärzte, Psychologen und Lehrer. Mit einer Einführung von
WOLFGANG METZGER. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer 1974. (translation: Practice and Theory
of Individual Psychology. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1927.)
There is a consensus of opinion about the nature of the predisposition to disease in
the case of organ inferiority. The position that I occupy (Studie, l.c.) puts more
emphasis than does that of other authors on the safeguarding of an adjustment by
compensation. ‘With the release from the maternal organism the fight of these inferior
organs with the outside world begins, a fight which inevitably must break out and will
do so with more vehemence than it would in the case of a normally developed
apparatus. This struggle is accompanied by higher morbidity and mortality rates. At the
same time, however, the fetal character provides an increased opportunity for
compensation and overcompensation, increases the adaptability to ordinary and
extraordinary resistances and safeguards the attainment of new and higher forms, of
new and higher achievements. Thus the inferior organs provide the inexhaustible test
material that the organism, by means of continuous cultivation, repudiation and
improvement, uses in its attempts to arrive at a harmonious relation with the altered
conditions of life. The (occasional) overvaluation of these organs is rooted deeply in the
compulsion of constant training, in the variability and the greater tendency of growth
that is often associated with inferior organs and in the more pronounced development,
due to introspection and concentration, of the appertaining nervous and mental
complex.’
The damage of constitutional inferiority may manifest itself in many variations of
diseases and predispositions to disease. At times physical or mental states of weakness
will occur, at times over-irritability of the nervous tracts and then again clumsiness,
ungainliness or precocity. A host of childhood defects cooperating with the
predisposition to disease will closely unite itself with the organic or functional
inferiority. Strabismus, anomalies of refraction of the visual organ or photophobia with
their consequences7, deaf-muteness, stuttering and other speech defects, difficulty of
hearing, the organic and mental disadvantages of adenoid vegetations, fully developed
aprosexia, the frequent diseases of the sensory organs and of the respiratory and
digestive tracts, conspicuous ugliness and deformities, peripheral indications of
degeneration and nævi, which may indicate organ inferiorities on a deeper level, (Adler,
Schmidtdd), hydrocephalus, rachitis, anomalies of stature such as scoliosis, round
shoulders, genua vara or valga, pes varus or valgus, prolonged incontinence of both
feces and urine, malformation of the genitals, the consequences of the smallness of the
arteries (Virchow) and all the numerous other consequences of the inferiority of the
internal secretion glands, such as have been described by Von Wagner-Jaureggee, Frankl
von Hochwartff, Chvostekgg, Bartelhh, Escherichii, Pinelesjj and others, all of these
reveal, in their enormous abundance and in the variation of their relationships, the wide
range of manifestations of disease, as the physician’s understanding of organ inferiority
has disclosed it to him. Pædiatricians and pathologists in particular were the first to pay
attention to these relationships. But the study of ‘degeneration’ has become increasingly
important to neurology and psychiatry alike; from Morel’skk theory of the characteristics
of degeneration, the path of advancement leads straight to the consideration of nervous
diseases on the basis of an inferior constitution.
7Siehe Mutschmann, Der andere Milton. 1920.
We need only consider the statistical work of Thiemichll-Birksmm and the
contributions of Potpeschniggnn (as quoted by Göttoo) about the fate of children who
had been treated for tetanoid convulsions in their first and second years. Of these
children only a miniscule fraction had become entirely healthy. In most cases evident
signs of physical and mental inferiority, as well as psychopathic and neuropathic
features, manifested themselves in a later stage. The authors mention the following
examples: infantilism, squinting, difficulty of hearing, speech defects, mental
deficiency, sleep disorders, pavor nocturnus, somnabulism, enuresis, increases in the
reflexes, tics, paroxysms of rage, truancy, timidity, fits of passion, pathological lying,
impulsive running away from home. Göttpp as well as other authors came to the
conclusion that there exists a disposition for severe neuro- and psychopathic states in
spasmophilic children. Czernyqq and others call attention to the fact that a similar
relationship can be found in children with gastro-intestinal disorders. Bartelrr was able
to discover a remarkable preponderance of the status thymico-lymphaticus among
suicides, especially hypoplasia of the sexual organs. With regard to juvenile suicides I
myself, Netolitzkyss and others have accentuated the fact of physical inferiority. Frankl
von Hochwarttt has described states of excitement, irritability, hallucinatory confusion
in tetany. French authors (as quoted by Pfaundleruu) ascribe moroseness, indolence,
sleepiness, absent-mindedness, stupidity and plegma to the pasteceous torpid habitusvv
of children; restlessness, liveliness, irritability, precocity, moodiness, affectivity,
intolerance, peculiarity of disposition, and onesided talentedness (Dégénérés superieurs)
to the erethistic torpid habitus. Pfaundler calls attention to the perturbations,
inconveniences and painfulness which plague constitutionally inferior children as a
result of skin disorders, colic, sleep disorders and functional anomalies. Czernyww, who
drew attention to the relation between the intestinal disturbances of children and
neuroses, particularly emphasizes the importance of psychotherapy for children who
have become neurotic in the course of constitutional diseases. Hamburgerxx has only
recently drawn attention to the nature of ambition in neurotic children, Stranskyyy did
this for the relation between myopathy and psychic manifestations.
These brief references give us an overview of the attempts that the contemporary
direction in research makes to emphasize and maintain the relation between mental
anomalies in childhood and constitutional inferiority. The first comprehensive
fundamental observations concerning this relation I have published in the Studie, in
which I pointed out how a special interest and constant attention try to protect the
inferior organ. I was able to point out in this and other works how the inferiority of an
organ is constantly exerting influence on the psyche, in action and thought, in dreams,
in the choice of profession, in artistic inclinations and abilities8. The existence of an
inferior organ demands the kind of training of the appertaining nerve tracts and of the
psychic superstructure that will render the latter active in a compensatory manner, when
a possibility for compensation exists. In that case, however, we must also find that
certain connections that the organ has with the outside world are re-enforced within the
psychic superstructure. The originally inferior visual organ corresponds with a
reenforced visual psyche, an inferior digestive apparatus will be accompanied by a
greater psychic capacity in relation with everything nutritional, gourmandise,
acquisitiveness, and — in the direction of its financial equivalent — frugality and greed
will manifest themselves in an accentuated fashion. The capacity for compensation of
the central nervous system will manifest itself by qualified reflexes (Adler) and
conditioned reflexes (Bickelzz), by sensitive reactions and an accentuated sensitivity.
The compensating psychic superstructure will develop to a re-enforced degree the
psychic phenomena of presentiment and forethought and their effective factors such as
memory, intuition, introspection, perceptivity, hypersensitiveness, in brief, all the safe-
guarding psychic forces. To these safeguarding forces also belong fixation and the
accentuation of those characteristics that constitute useful guiding lines in the chaos of
life, thus diminishing insecurity.
The neurotic individual comes from this atmosphere of uncertainty and in his
childhood has been under the pressure of his constitutional inferiority. In most cases this
can easily be detected. In other cases the patient behaves as if he were inferior.
However, his will and thought are invariably built on a foundation of a feeling of
inferiority. This feeling should always be considered in a relative sense, as having
developed from the person’s relations towards his environment, or towards his goals. It
has always been preceded by assessment of and comparison with others, at first the
father, the strongest person in the family, sometimes the mother, the brothers and sisters,
and later every person with whom the patient comes into contact.
On closer examination, one will find that all children, but in particular those with a
more troubled character, have made a keen estimation of themselves.
The constitutionally inferior child, whom we can put on the same level with, and
consider to be equally disposed to neurosis as the ugly child, the child who has been
brought up too strictly, and the pampered child, will search more diligently than a
healthy child to escape the many evils of their existence. And soon the child will long to
banish into the distant future the fate that he sees hovering in front of him. The child
will need some expedient to do this, so that, in the insecurity of life, in his disoriented
state of being, he will have a fixed image in his mind’s eye. He will seize something to
help him construct this expedient. In his self-estimation, the child will add up all evils,
considering himself incompetent, inferior, degraded and insecure. And in order to find a
guiding principle, the child will take as a second fixed point the father or mother, whom
the child will now equip with all powers in this world. And if the child takes this
guiding principle as the norm for his thinking and acting, in trying to raise himself from
his insecurity to the level of his all-powerful father, even to surpass him, then the child
has already taken a huge step away from the firm ground of reality and is entangled in
the meshes of a fiction.
Similar observations may also be made, in a lesser degree, among normal children.
They, too, desire to be grown up, to be big, to be strong, to rule, ‘like the father,’ and are
guided by this final goal. Their gestures, their physical and spiritual attitude are at every
moment directed towards this final goal, to such a degree that one can easily observe an
imitative facial expression, an identical mental gesture. The example becomes a
signpost to the goal. Eventually, every desire will become an urge for compensation, a
recompensation of the inferiority feeling.
A special psychic achievement of the child should still be pointed out, which will assert
itself before and during the formulation of the guiding line towards superiority. One can
hardly come to a better understanding of this phenomenon than by assuming that the
unavoidable denial of the gratification of organic functions will force the child, from the
very first hour of his extrauterine life, into a hostile, belligerent attitude towards his
environment. This will result in further attempts to exert and augment the organically
determined abilities, — c’est la guerre! — as I have described them in my work on the
‘Agressionstrieb.’9 In the temporary deprivations and discomforts of the first years of
infancy we can find the particular impulse which will initially develop into a number of
general aggressive characteristics. But very soon, in his weakness and helplessness, in
his anxiety and in his multifarious incapacities, the child will learn to appreciate the
means by which he can assure himself of the help and support of his relatives, as well as
of their interest. In his negativistic behavior, in his obstinacy and in his refusal to be
educated, the child often finds the gratification of being conscious of his powers, and
thus does away with the painful feeling of his inferiority. With the expressions of his
weakness and his submission, the child attracts the care of his environment. Both basic
ideas of the child’s behavior, obstinacy and obedience,10 are his guarantee of an
elevation of his feeling of self-worth; they help him gropingly to find his way towards
the goal, or an equivalent, as we would like to remark beforehand. In constitutionally
inferior children the awakening feeling of self-worth is continually being suppressed;
their self-esteem is lowered, because their ability for gratification is so very much
smaller. Consider the many restrictions, the courses of treatment, and the pain of
children suffering from gastro-intestinal diseases, the enervation and pampering of
those anemic, weakly children who suffer from an inferior respiratory apparatus, the
itching and the complaints in connection with prurigo and other exanthemata, the many
degrading diseases of children, the fear of infection of the parents of such children,
which will often lead in the same direction in which the frequent disturbances in their
upbringing and in their progress at school, and the recalcitrance of such children will
also lead so often to isolation and unpopularity among friends and within the family. In
a comparable manner, self-esteem will be damaged by rachitic clumsiness, congenital
obesity and the lesser levels of mental backwardness. The child usually finds support in
the assumption of a neglect experienced from the parents, which may sometimes be
alleviated by the position the child occupies in relation to his brothers and sisters, as a
first child, as a second child, as the only girl among boys, or the other way around, and
which can be found very often in later children or the youngest child, depending on
their individual situation.
The hostile aggression, stimulated and strengthened in constitutionally inferior children,
goes closely together with their striving to become as big and strong as the strongest,
and strengthens and stresses those impulses which underlie infantile ambition. All later
trains of thought and all activities of the neurotic will manifest themselves as having
been constructed on the same lines as his infantile wish fantasies. The ‘recurrence of the
identical’aaa, the typical destiny, can nowhere be understood better than in the neurotic.
His inferiority feeling toward both people and things and his insecurity in the world
force him to the reenforcement of his guiding lines. He will cling to these throughout
his life, so as to obtain certainty, to orientate himself in the world by means of his
beliefs and superstitions, to escape from his inferiority feeling, to safeguard his feeling
of self-worth, to have a pretext to evade some dreaded humiliation. Never did he
succeed so well in achieving all this than in his childhood. His guiding fiction, namely,
to behave as if he must excel everyone, may, therefore, also manifest itself in such a
form that he will behave as if he were a child. This is often clear in cases of bed-
wetting, agorophobia, anxious neuroses, etc. The gratifications that the striving for
power brings in childhood acquire exemplary status and strengthen the guiding line.
It would be wrong to assume that only the neurotic exhibits such guiding lines. The
healthy person would also have to do without an orientation in the world, if he would
not arrange his world view and personal experience according to certain fictions. It has
already been shown that he, too, acquired these by basing himself on old experiences
(‘regressions’). In hours of insecurity these fictions will manifest themselves more
clearly, and they become the imperative of beliefs, of ideals and of the free will; but
they also act in secret, in the unconscious, as all psychological mechanisms, of which
they are only verbal images. If they are examined logically, they should be viewed as
abstractions, as simplifications that have for their task the solution of life’s difficulties,
in analogy to the simplest incidents. The archetype of the most insignificant incidents,
the tendentious meshwork of apperceptive memory, these we have found in the child’s
efforts to settle his difficulties. It is self-evident that we also find them among savages,
among primitive people, because all human questions concerning the striving for power
demand a solution. Jung’s and Freud’s fantastic suppositions of a phylogenesis prove to
be superfluous and confusing. Every human gesture is being generated anew in every
individual. In dreams this manner of apperception is even more obvious; we shall be
concerned with this later.
The neurotic carries this feeling of inferiority with him constantly. Because of this, the
development of his ‘analogical reasoning,’ and his attempts at finding a solution by
using his earlier experiences as an analogy, are stronger and clearer. His misoneism
(Lombrosobbb), his fear of anything new, of decisions and tests, — which are present at
all times — originate in his lack of faith in himself. He has chained himself so strongly
to his guiding lines, taking them literally and trying to realize only them, that, without
knowing it, he has abandoned every unrestrained, unprejudiced approach towards the
solution of real problems. Even the inevitable limitations within the real world, where
things clash violently in space, do not compel him, consistent with his attitude, to do
away with the preconceived fiction, but only to change it into pessimism. The psychotic
patient will try to carry through the realisation of his fiction even more consistently. The
neurotic is in real life uncertainly hanging on to his self-created guiding line, and he
will attain an apparent split in his personality because he wants to satisfy both the real
and the imaginary demands, in order that these will restrain his doubt, in which he can
then remain stuck.
The form and content of the neurotic guiding line find their origin in the impressions of
the child who feels neglected. These impressions, which must of necessity arise from an
original feeling of inferiority, create an aggressive attitude, the goal of which is
overcoming of insecurity. In this aggressive attitude all of the child’s efforts that
promise to elevate his feeling of self-worth find their place, successful attempts that
prompt repetition, unsuccessful attempts that serve as mementoes, tendencies that make
preparations towards the safeguarding final goal, which have come forth from a
conspicuous organic deficiency or psychic predisposition and result in a number of
mental predispositions, even such as might have been observed in others. Every
manifestation of the neurosis originates from these predisposing means, which strive
toward the final goal of superiority. They are mental predispositions, always ready to
initiate the struggle for the feeling of self-worth; they obey the commands of the
guiding fiction, which tries to realize itself by means of these ways of reaction that date
from childhood, and have been ready ever since. In the fully developed neurosis, the
fiction will whip up all these predispositions, which will now behave as final goals. The
anxiety, that formerly had to provide reassurance against loneliness, depreciation, and
the feeling of insignificance, is hypostasized, and the compulsion, that is, originally, in
the sense of the fiction, an attempt to act as if one is in control by amassing a number of
nonsensical difficulties, becomes independent, while the patient’s pseudo-masochistic
method to attract attention or to evade a dreaded decision is symbolically expressed in
powerlessness, paralysis, hysterical pains, and functional disturbances. The immense
importance of the neurotic’s insecurity, as I have recognized and described it, will
inevitably lead to such a reenforcement of this predisposition and its consequences that
originally minor phenomena of a functional character may undergo the most astonishing
developments as soon as inner necessity calls for it. One will always find the tendency
to eliminate at work, trying to achieve easier circumstances.
Because of the feeling of insecurity, the neurotic will aim his outlook far into the future.
To him, all present existence appears to be only preparation. This circumstance is
another major contributor in stimulating his fantasizing activity alienating him from the
real world. As with religious people, his kingdom is not of this worldccc, and like them
he cannot break free from his self-created deity, namely, the elevation of his feeling of
self-worth. A number of general characteristics will of necessity develop in a being that
has turned away from reality. In the first place there is the deep veneration for the
methods that are to serve his fiction. He will, as a rule, demonstrate a carefully
demarcated behavior, exactitude, pedantry, on the one hand so as not to increase the
‘great difficulties of life,’ on the other hand, and principally, however, to distinguish
himself from others in work, in dress, in morals, thus to acquire a feeling of superiority.
Regularly these characteristics will give him the feeling that he is carrying an immense
burden, which, in combination with his illness, will lead him to believe that he has to
play the role of martyr and hero. In overcoming this arranged, selfcreated difficulty, he
will once more seek and find the elevation of his feeling of self-worth. At the very least
he can always refer to the overwhelming, insurmountable mountain of symptoms that he
has always before him if the call reaches him: ‘And where were you when the world
was divided up?ddd’ Usually this reenforced characteristic will also serve to bring him
into contact with the ‘enemy,’ to stimulate the development of those situations that will
bring him into conflict with his environment, so that he can make ‘substantiated’
reproaches. At the same time these eternal reproaches serve to keep alert his feeling, his
observation, to prove to himself that he is being neglected, that he is not being taken
into account. This trait is already found in the childhood of many neurotics, when it
serves to put someone into their service, for instance the mother, who then has to take
nightly care of their clothes in a strictly prescribed manner, must always be present and
must always carefully preserve parity among the children, etc. In this case the neurotic
action will often result in a way of life in which the patient goes through life as a kind
of living accusation, demonstrating his depravity and at the same time the unjustness of
others. Similarly, anxiety and timidity will often conspicuously manifest themselves,
and I must maintain my opinion, in face of all other attempts at explanation, that the
psychic phenomenon of anxiety originates in an` hallucinatory excitement of a
predisposition that developed somatically in childhood from tiny beginnings as soon as
there was any threat of physical injury, but which later, and more particularly in the
neurosis, will be conditioned by the final goal, so as to shirk from a denigration of the
feeling of self-worth and to make other persons subservient, and to let himself be
excused from life’s demands by a similar empathy with an anxious humor. Anxiety is in
itself a completely intelligent function, which, like the entire act of living, represents in
one part the striving to arrive at superiority from a phase of feeling inferior. It can easily
be understood that all wish-fantasies can attain gigantic proportions, and also that
whatever is attained will rarely guarantee satisfaction. One may safely assume that
every neurotic ‘wants to have it all.’ This desire corresponds with his guiding fiction, a
desire to be strongest. If he recoils from any undertaking that might be profitable, as he
usually will from any crime or immoral act as well, this is because he is fearful of his
feeling of selfworth. For this same reason he often shies away from lying, but in order
to avoid any risk, and to protect himself from digressions, he may nourish within himself
the idea that he might be capable of great evils and crimes.11 An attached feeling of
guilt in the neurosis is always directed straight towards the same final goal of
superiority, just as an overstrained religiosity. ‘I am conscientious, too!’ Or it serves to
refuse to take on a task that he has before him. ‘The twinge of conscienceeee is
indecent,’ is Nietzsche’s opinion. He should have known about this kind of thing. It will
be obvious that this unbending pursuit of the fiction will result in social harm. It leads,
by way of tendentious exaggeration and sophistical hair-splitting, to incapacity and to
exemption.
The egoism of nervous people, their envy, their greed, of which they are often
unconscious, their tendency to devalue people and things, all originate in their
insecurity feeling, and they are intended to safeguard that tendency, to guide it and to
stimulate it, to excuse oneself. Since they are enveloped in fantasies and live in the
future, their absent-mindedness does not come as a surprise. Changes of mood are
dependent on the play of the imagination, which at one moment may touch on painful
memories, and at another may soar in the expectation of victory, analogous to the
hesitations and doubts of the neurotic, the best means by which to avoid any decision.
Their sensitivity as well as their pessimism play an important role in it. There will
appear in the same way certain special characteristics, all of which are familiar to the
human psyche, but directed and reenforced by the hypnotizing final goal. Sexual
precociousness and falling in love are means to express the increased tendency of the
wish to conquer; masturbation, impotence and perverse inclinations are in the direction
of the guiding line of fear of the partner, and fear of decisions, along with which sadism
represents an attempt at playing the ‘wild man,’ so as to stifle a feeling of inferiority —
just as all perversions are attempts by faint-hearted persons to replace the norm by bad
behavior. Homosexuality, which is increasing in our days, may always be understood as
an unconscious evasion as well, when the vanity of the neurotic is threatened. This
conclusion of Individual Psychology is at present still in contrast with that of the
suppositions of all other independent researchers.12
8 See also: A. Adler, Die Theorie der Organminderwertigkeit und ihre Bedeutung

für Philosophie und Psychologie. Vortrag in der Philosophischen Gesellschaft an der

Universität zu Wien 1908 [abgedrückt in Adler, Heilen und Bilden, l.c.] und J. Reich,
‘Kunst und Auge.’ In: Österreichische Rundschau 1908.
9A. Adler, ‘Der Agressionstrieb im Leben und in der Neurose.’ In: Heilen und Bilden,

l.c. 10A. Adler, ‘Trotz und Gehorsam,’ ibidem.

11Which is made easier by his lack of community feeling, by his lack of interest in, or

his hate against his fellow human beings.

12A. Adler, Das Problem der Homosexualität, l.c.; und ‘Über Homosexualität.’ In:

Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c.; und im Handbuch der normalen und
pathologischen Physiologie, 1926.
Until now we have considered the elevation of the feeling of self-worth , which is
always trying to push itself through with particular force, to be the leading force and
final goal of the neurosis that develops from constitutional inferiority. Meanwhile we
have not failed to notice that this is nothing but an expression of a certain striving and
desire, the origins of which are deeply rooted within human nature. The form of
expression itself and the deepening of this guiding idea, which might also be described
as the will to powerfff (‘Wille zur Macht’ — Nietzsche), teaches us that there is a
special, compensating force involved whose object it is to end the inner insecurity
common to all human beings. The neurotic will use a rigid formula that usually pushes
through to the surface of consciousness to try and find the fulcrum needed to lift the
world off its hinges. It does not make much difference whether the neurotic is largely or
hardly aware of this driving force. He never does understand the actual mechanism, nor
is he able, on his own, to explain and break out of his analogous conduct and
apperception. This can only be achieved through the Individual Psychological process,
which allows us, by determining the almost meaningless psychic movement, to guess
and understand the infantile analogy by means of abstraction, reduction and
simplification. Thus it will frequently appear that the neurotic is always apperceiving
after the analogy of contrast, indeed, that most of the time he recognizes and approves
of nothing but contrasting relations. This primitive orientation in the world, which
corresponds to Aristotle’s antithetical categoriesggg as well as to the Pythagorean tables
of oppositeshhh, also derives from the feelings of insecurity and represents a simple trick
of logic. What I have described as polar, hermaphroditic opposites13, Lombrosoiii as
bipolar, and Bleulerjjj as ambivalent, is based on this method of apperception, which
operates on the principle of the antithesis. One should beware not to make the usual
error of regarding this as an essentiality of things, on the contrary, one should recognize
it as the primitive process that measures all things, all forces, all experiences, by means
of fitting an opposite to them.
As the analysis advances further, one of these opposite pairs in particular will often
become more apparent, the original form of which, as we have established, is the
inferiority feeling and the elevation of the feeling of self-worth. This simply corresponds
to the primitive efforts of a child to find an orientation in the world and thus to avoid
danger when more tangible opposite pairs come to be understood. Among these I
regularly found the following two: 1. above — beneath; 2. masculine — feminine.
Subsequently, one will always find groupings of memories, feelings and actions, which
have been arranged along the lines of this antithetical type according to the patient’s
own ideas, which may not always conform to generally accepted ideas:
inferior=beneath=feminine; powerful=above=masculine. This grouping is important
because, since it can be falsified and protected at will, it makes possible the distortion
of the world view which enables the neurotic always to hold on to his position as a
neglected person by means of arrangement, accentuation, or arbitrariness. It lies in the
nature of things that in doing this, the experiences of his constitutional inferiority come
to his assistance, as does the constantly increasing aggression of his environment, which
the patient is continually annoying with his neurotic behavior.
13‘Der psychische Hermaphroditismus.’ In: Heilen und Bilden, l.c. ‘Psychic

Hermaphroditism.’ In: Healing and Developing, l.c.

Sometimes the neurotic is not entirely conscious of his supposed or real defeats.
One will then always find that his pride, his feeling of self-worth refuses to recognize
them. Notwithstanding this he will act as if he has taken notice of the new setback, and
the riddle of a nervous attack will often be solved only after this fact has been
understood. The actual cure does not profit much from prying out these ‘repressed’
experiences, unless it enables the patient to see the relation with the infantile
mechanism of susceptibility to the attack. Sometimes an apparent deterioration will
follow, which may be explained by the fact that the patient will direct his
susceptibilities towards the physician because the latter has damaged his feeling of self-
worth and is trying to get him to follow another route than that of looking away.
There is still one important question that must be answered. To what does the
patient relate his inferiority feeling? Since the patient is capable of imagining any
correlation only in the case of organ inferiorities that are obviously bringing about a
predisposition for disease, he will always find himself on the path of conjecture. He will
not seek the cause of his inferiority in disturbances of the secretions of his glands, for
instance, but in a general way will put the blame on his weakness, his small stature, his
bad upbringing, the small size or anomalies of his genitals, his lack of complete virility,
his effeminacy, feminine traits of a physical or (psychic) nature, his parents, his
heredity, in some cases also on the lack of love, bad education, deprivation in his youth,
etc. And as to his neurosis, we may define it as follows: An intensification of his
predispositions on an analogous, infantile basis, his symbolized thoughts, his
predisposition for emotion as well as success, will come into action as means of
expression as soon as the patient fears or experiences depreciation in a certain
situation and turns to flight. Having been, so to speak, previously inoculated with
inferiority feelings, he will show an anaphylactic reaction against any decrease of his
feeling of self-worth, and will continue to find in hesitation, in vacillation, in doubt, in
scepticism and in the degradation of people, of women, of all mankind, as well as in the
onset of a neurosis or psychosis, a refuge and safeguard even against the greatest
discomfort that could possibly hit him, against the arousal of a distinctly experienced
inferiority. As such, therefore, the typical reasons for the onset of neuroses and
psychoses are also easily guessed and identified:
 I. The search for differences between the sexes, vacillating ideas of the role of his
own sex, and doubts about his masculinity are all causes for the arousal of the
inferiority feeling, as are the experience and grouping of characteristics believed to be
feminine, such as vacillating, hesitating, hermaphroditic apperception and
hermaphroditic disposition. Disposition and psychic gestures of the feminine role bring
about an increasing passivity, anxious anticipation, etc. However, they incite the
masculine protest, a stronger emotionality (Heymanns).
II. Beginning of menstruation.
III. Epoch of menstruation.
IV. Epoch of sexual activity, of masturbation.
V. Readiness for marriage and marriage.
VI. Pregnancy.
VII. Puerperium and lactation.
VIII. Climacterium, decrease in potency, aging.
IX. Examinations, career choice.
X. Danger of death14 and the loss of a very close person.
All these epochs and experiences give rise to increases or changes in the
preparatory attitudes towards life. Their common link is the expectation of fresh,
always social facts for which, because of his undeveloped community feeling, he is not
adequately prepared, and which, for the neurotic, will invariably imply a new fight, a
new danger of being defeated. He will immediately take to intensive safeguards, the
most extreme of which is suicide. Every onset of psychoses and neuroses marks a
reinforcement of his neurotic disposition, in which there may frequently also be found
safeguarding prominent characteristics, such as, among others: an increase of
oversensitivity, greater caution, irascibility, pedantry, obstinacy, frugality, discontent,
impatience. Since these characteristics can easily be pointed out, they are also
particularly suitable to determine the existence of a psychogenic disease. The avoidance
of the approaching demands of life, the deferment of any solution to questions of life, or
the acquisition of extenuating circumstances all develop into a secondary, ideal goal,
which will be stimulated by the lack of interest for others.
In the preceding pages we have reached the conclusion that it is the feeling of
insecurity that forces the neurotic to a stronger attachment to fictions, guiding lines and
principles. The healthy person, too, has these guiding lines in mind. But for him they
are a Modus dicendi, an artifice to distinguish above from below, left from right, right
from wrong, and he does not lack the open-mindedness to free himself from these
abstract fictions in case a decision has to be made and reality has to be taken into
account. Nor do the phenomena of the world fall into strict opposites for him; he is,
rather, continually trying to disassociate his thinking and acting from that unreal
guiding line and to bring them into harmony with reality. The only reason for him to use
fictions as a means towards a goal is to be found in the usefulness of the fiction in
making up life’s balance at all. But the neurotic, like a child that is still unaware of the
world, or like the primitive understanding of earlier peoples, clings to the straw of
fiction, hypostasizes it, arbitrarily grants it real value, and tries to realize it in the world.
The fiction is unsuitable for that, and its unsuitability will even increase if it is elevated
to the status of dogma, anthropomorphized, as it is in a psychosis. ‘Act as if you were
lost, as if you were the greatest, as if you were the one most under attack.’ The symbol
as modus dicendi controls our speech and our thought. The neurotic takes it literally and
tries to realize it in the psychosis. In my work on the theory of neuroses this point of
view has always been emphasized and maintained. A happy coincidence made me
acquainted with Vaihinger’skkk brilliant Philosophy of As If (Berlin 1911), a work in
which I found lines of thought that I was familiar with from the neurosis, represented as
valid for scientific reasoning in general.
14 This should be the starting point in coming to an understanding of war neurosis

and war psychosis, the general and constant fear of the neurotic for decisions about and
against him and his own life. The military approach had to lead to the sad result which
is electric torture.
After we have come to the conclusion that the fictitious, guiding goal of the
neurotic is an unlimited increase of the feeling of self-worth, which will degenerate
straight into the ‘will to appearance’ (Wille zum Schein — Nietzschelll), we can proceed
to take the abstract concept of this problem of life into consideration. Since in the
search for sexual differences the role of the man is decidedly given preferential
treatment, the formal changes according to the ‘man — woman’ antithesis appear at a
very early stage, and the neurotic is confronted with the formula: I must act as if I were
(or wanted to become) a complete man. The feeling of inferiority and its consequences
are being identified with the feeling of femininity, the compensatory compulsion in the
psychic superstructure insists on safeguards in order to retain the masculine role and the
meaning of the neurosis assumes the form of the antithetical fundamental idea: I am like
a woman and I want to be a man. This guiding final goal comes with the necessary
psychic gestures and predispositions, but will also express itself in physical bearing and
facial expression. And with these preparatory gestures, as the vanguard of which we
may consider neurotic characteristics such as ambition, distrust, hostility, egoism and
aggressiveness, the neurotic approaches life and people, waiting anxiously, with
increased tension, whether he will prove himself to be a man. Sham fights play an
important role; they are introduced so that the neurotic can train himself, so that he can
learn lessons from other or similar conditions, so as to make himself more cautious, and
to obtain by means of example, as in a dream, deceptive arguments that he does not
dare to wage the main battle, that he must shift the field of battle. As to what extent he
arranges, exaggerates and depreciates in doing this — and this is made possible for him
by a certain arbitrariness — and in what sense he falsely arranges things and goes on
working towards the establishment of his fiction, these are all subjects that demand a
separate discussion, such as I have furnished in the specific part of this book and in the
Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c. However, it emerges from the rather
frequent cases in which the straightforward effort to behave in a masculine fashion
meets with great resistance, that the older compensatory will to power is behind the
masculine protest of the neurotic, revaluating feelings and turning pleasure into pain,
and resorting to the use of a detour: the role of the woman is valued higher, passive
characteristics are strengthened, masochistic and passive homosexual characteristics
emerge, by means of which the patient hopes to acquire power over men and women, in
short, the masculine protest utilizes feminine means. That this artifice, too, is dictated by
the will to power is proved by the other neurotic characteristics, which strive after
power and superiority in their strongest form. This apperception according to the
masculine–feminine pattern, however, not only introduces a sexual jargon into the
neurosis that should be regarded symbolically and must be analysed further, but it also
forces eroticism in a direction that fits the essential personality.
Simultaneously or predominantly, one finds in the neurotic the method of
apperception according to the spatial opposition ‘above-beneath.’ For this primitive
attempt at orientation, which the neurotic intensifies and strongly emphasizes, analogies
can also be found among primitive peoples. However, although it is easy to understand
that the masculine principle is identified with perfection, we have to resort to conjecture
as far as the equation of ‘above’ is concerned. It would seem rather plausible to
consider the value and importance of the 'above' and sensitive head, as opposed to the
feet. Still more important it seems to me that the assessment of the value of the ‘above’
and its equation with perfection finds its root in the strong desire of man to soar, to fly,
to achieve the impossible. Humankind’s universal dreams of flight and their common
pursuit seem to confirm this supposition. It is certainly important as well that in the
congressus sexualis the ‘above’ blends in with the masculine principle.15
The strengthening of the fiction in the neurosis causes a concentration of attention
on those points of view that the neurotic considers to be important. This results in the
narrowing of the range of vision as a motor and psychic predisposition. At the same
time the accentuated neurotic character comes into force, which realizes safeguards,
comes into contact with hostile forces and, extending far beyond the limits of the
personality, beyond time and space, it advances, as the secondary guiding line of
caution, the will to power. Finally, it is the task of the neurotic attack, and in this it is
comparable to the struggle for power, to protect the feeling of self-worth from
depreciation and to postpone any decision about the personal value, to move it beyond
reach.
From the resulting attitude of attacker or attacked, the neurotic gets the impression
that life is particularly hostile. His absorption into the community is, from that point on,
obstructed, and as occupation, society and love do not fit into his aggressive attitude,
they are usually shyly avoided or will, at the very best, constitute the exercise-ground of
his ambitious frenzy of power. A deeply pessimistic world-view and his misanthropy
deprive him of all the pleasures of the giving partner. The mood of taking-desiring has
filled him entirely, poisoned him with dissatisfaction and forces him to think of himself
all the time, and never of others.
15 Freud finds occasion to attach some insignificant critical words, as one would

do, perhaps, with a spoken remark, to this last, rather unassuming observation, the truth
of which every psychologist can easily verify. Freud has bad luck with my spoken
remarks. He speaks about my well-known socialist world-view in a polemical way that
is difficult to understand. And my tender rejection: ‘It is not a pleasure to stand in his
shadow,’ that is to say, to be blamed by association for all absurdities of Freudism
because I have cooperated in the psychology of neuroses, he is not slow to interpret as a
confession of my revolting vanity, served to readers who have no clue. Since, until now,
none of those who know about this, their teacher’s bad luck – and not mine, as is so
often incorrectly maintained – have been ready to admit it, I am forced myself to
destroy a legend in the making.
 From the constitutional inferiority and from situations in childhood that work
similarly, then, a feeling of inferiority will develop, which demands a compensation in
the sense that the feeling of self-worth is increased. In this process the fictitious final
goal attains an immense influence, drawing all psychic forces in its direction. Itself
originating from the safeguarding tendency, it organizes psychic predispositions into
safeguarding goals, among which the neurotic character as well as the functional
neurosis stand out as conspicuous artifices. The guiding fiction has a simple, infantile
scheme and influences the apperception and the mechanism of memory. In an
apparently hostile world, the interest in one’s own person will grow stronger and the
interest in others will dwindle.
Endnotes for Theoretical Part I-I
a The incompleteness... through ...organic systems

In the ‘Studie über Minderwertigkeit von Organen’, 1977, 103, this actually reads
somewhat differently: ‘The incompleteness […] the increase of their tendency to grow
if there is a need for compensation and if there are opportunities for compensation, the
frequent striving for greater functional performance, [all this] leads to the supposition
that all inferior organs possess part of the foetal character’.
b the outset of scientific medicine

An overview of these older ideas concerning the constitution was produced only in
1914 by the neurologist and historian of medical science Max Neuburger (1868-1955):
he was chairman of the Institute for the History of Medical Science (1912-1934),
Professor honoris causa 1934-1938; dismissed in 1938, he emigrated to England, 1948
the USA, and returned to Vienna in 1952. Adler knew him from the neurology
department of Moritz Benedikt in the Viennese General Policlinic, probably in the
1890s.
c Stiller, Berthold

(1837 Miskolz – 1922 Budapest): Gastro-enterologist, internist, assistant

physician in the Israelitisches Krankenhaus of Budapest in 1864-65, whose head he
became in 1974; in 1876 he became a lecturer on abdominal diseases, later for internal
medicine, in 1883 he became professor.
d Stiller’s theory of the asthenic habitus

A type of physical build, postulated in 1907 by Stiller and in 1919 by Julius

Bauer, with a particularly narrow thorax, more or less comparable to the later
‘asthenics’
of Kretschmer’s. Cf. Stiller, B.: Die asthenische Konstitutionskrankheit (Asthenia
universalis congenita, Morbus asthenicus). Stuttgart 1907.
e Anton, Gabriel

(1858 Saaz/Bohemia – 1933 Halle): Psychiatrist and eugenicist. Between 1905

and 1933 he was professor in Halle, described the ‘balkenstich/suboccipetalstich’.
Founder of an extremist bio-psychiatric school with strong German nationalistic
populist
tendencies in Graz (1894) and later in Halle.
f Gross, Otto

(1877 Graz – 1919 Berlin): Physician, psychiatrist, psychoanalist, author,

anarchist, son of the criminologist Hans Gross (1847 – 1915) from Graz, he was a pupil
of G. Anton. Gross moved in literary-anarchist circles in Zurich, Ascona, Munich and
Berlin (a.o. Erich Mühsam, Ludwig Rubiner, Leonhard Frank, Franz Jung) as well as in
psychoanalitic circles. He wanted to complement psychoanalysis with the social causes
of
neuroses, which got him in conflict with Freud. After mediation by Freud he was
admitted to the Burghölzli in 1908, where he stayed with C. G. Jung in order to cure his
drug habit. He was the subject of several police inquiries in connection with murders
and suicides in Ascona. In 1913 his father requested to have him arrested as a ‘mentally
disturbed anarchist’ and he was admitted to the lunatic asylum Tulln near Vienna. This
sparked off a campaign in the press, a.o. by the ‘Aktions-Gruppe’.
g Bouchard, Charles Joseph

(1837 Montiérender/Haute Marne – 1915): Pathologist and epidemiologist in

Paris, he became professor and in 1886 a member of the Academy of Medicine.
h Bouchard’s bradytrophia

Retarded or impeded, and therefore reduced, metabolism as a typical phenomenon of

the so called bradytrophic tissues or in pathologic processes.
i exsudative diathesis

Hereditary disposition for infectious reactions of the skin and mucous membranes.
Particularly in childhood, it is favorable for the appearance of Dermatitis seborrhoides,
eczema, neurodermitis, Lichen urticarius and chronic catarrh. The term originated with
Adalbert Czerny.
j Ponfick, Emil

(1844 Frankfurt am Main – 1913 Breslau): Pathologist, from 1873 professor of

pathologic anatomy in Rostock, 1876 Göttingen, 1878-1913 Breslau, where he
maintained relations with A. Czerny.
k Escherich, Theodor

(1857 Ansbach – 1911 Vienna): Pediatrician, professor in Vienna 1902-1911.

discoverer of the Coli commune bacteria. founder of a large pediatric school in
Germany
and Austria (M. von Pfaundler, E. Moro,. F. Hamburger, C. von Pirquet, A. von Reuss).
l Czerny, Adalbert

Czerny, Adalbert

1932, also acting professor in Düsseldorf, founder of a large pediatric school in Breslau
(M. Thiemich, W. Birk) and Berlin. He played a decisive role in the definite academic
establishment of the subject (1918) in Germany.
m Moro, Ernst

(1874 Ljubljana/Slovenia – 1951 Heidelberg): Pediatrician, professor 1919-36,

described, among others, the so-called moro-reflex, also published works on dietetics,
allergies and eczema infantum.
n Strümpell, Adolf

(1853 Gut Neu-Autz/Curland – 1915 Leipzig): Internist and neurologist, 1903-09

Breslau, 1909-10, Third Medical Clininc in Vienna, 1910-15 Leipzig. In the 1890s he
coined the term ‘traumatis neurosis’, and took a decisive part in the reinterpretation of
this disease in a psycho-dynamic sense, whereas initially it had been defined as being
organic-neurological; the new interpretation was intended to counter the patients’
possible claims for benefits. His attitude towards the ‘Austrian’ and ‘Viennese’ medical
practice, insofar as it had not been determined by German medical men, was
characterized by a pronounced contemptuousness and anti-Semitism.
o Comby, Jules

(1853 Pompadour/Corrèze – ?): Pediatrician, 1896-1919 médecin-chef at the

Hôpital des Enfants-Malades; influential French pediatrician, 1898-1922 founder and
coeditor of the ‘Archives de médecine des enfants’. Before 1914, he often attended
meetings of German pediatricians.
p infantile arthritism

A common kind of exsudative diathesis, typically causing painful joints, bones and
muscles, as well as pseudo-neuralgia. Described by Comby, in 1901-02: Archives
médicales d’enfants 4, 1901 and 5, 1902.
q Kreibich, Karl

(1869 – 1932 Prague): Dermatologist, in 1904 he became extraordinary professor

and director of the dermatological clinic in Graz, 1906-1932 director of the
dermatological clinic in Prague, where he became professor in 1908.
r angio-neurotic diathesis

Also known as vasoneurotic diathesis: a disposition for vasomotor reactions,

particularly irregularities in the area of capillary regulation; it may manifest itself in
various ways (such as vasomotor angina pectoris, migraine, Reynaud’s syndrome) and
in various organs; it may the result of an allergy for medication or food, and be related
to infections, chemical poisons and mechanical trauma.
s Heubner, Otto

1843 Mühltrof/Vogtland - 1926 Loschwitz bei Dresden): Pediatrician, director of

the child hospital in Leipzig from 1891, director of the Charité child hospital in Berlin
from 1894, professor in Berlin 1895-1913. Founder of an influential school of pediatrics
in Leipzig and Berlin, he played a decisive role in the first academic institutionalization
of pediatrics in Germany.
t lymphatism

Also known as lymphatic diathesis or status lymphaticus: a disposition for

hyperplasia (overdevelopment) of lymphatic organs, usually in combination with a
pasteceous habitus and low resistance to infections.
In the discussion of the section for internal diseases of the Society for Internal
Medicine and Pediatrics (Gesellschaft für Innere Medizin und Kinderheilkunde) in
Vienna on June 25, 1908 (Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift 34, 1908, 219f.), that
followed J. Bartel’s lecture on ‘Hypoplastic Constitution’ (see endnote bb on page 22),
Escherich interpreted Bartel’s hypoplastic constitution as status lymphaticus and
regretted the fact that Bartel had limited himself to the description of patients older than
fifteen years, for the ‘clearest cases of status lymphaticus manifested themselves during
childhood, when they are often found in combination with rachitis, tetany and
scrofulosis. The developmental disorder of the lymphatic apparatus is nothing but a
partial manifestation of the status lymphaticus, the reason for which is probably to be
found in an insufficiency of the chromafine tissue.’ Josef K. Friedung on this occasion
interpreted the ‘status lymphaticus as chronic poisoning, to which the organism reacts
with hyperplasia of the lymphatic apparatus.’ Josef Kyrle confirmed Bartel’s
explanations with a referral to his studies of testicular atrophy (see endnote cc on page
23).
u Paltauf, Arnold

(1860 Judenburg/Steiermark – 1893 Prague): Forensic specialist, graduated as an

`M.D. in 1883 in Graz, 1885 assistant at the institute of forensic medicine Vienna (E.
von
Hofmann), 1889 private lecturer of forensic medicine in Vienna, 1891-1893
extraordinary professor of forensic medicine in Prague.
v status thymico-lymphaticus

Also known as thymolymphatism: hyperplasia of the thymus and the lympatic

apparatus among – usually pastaceous and hypotone – infants and toddlers. Used to be
considered as the cause of sudden infant death (‘thymus death’), an idea that had come
under attack from around 1930. Originally suggested by Arnold Paltauf around 1889-
90.
w spasmophilia

Metabolic epilepsy; a kind of hypercalcinamic tetany (disposition to convulsions

as a result of high levels of calcium in the blood) during childhood (‘children’s tetany’),
particularly in rachitic infants, in cases of insufficiency of the suprarenal glands and
disorders of the gastro-intestinal tract. Until the beginning of the 1890s (under the
collective term ‘convulsion’ or ‘eklampsia infantum’) it was regarded as a ‘rare, hardly
noticeable and harmless neurosis’ (Escherich 1907c, 2073). At the 10th International
Medical Congress in 1890 in Berlin, Escherich postulated that it might be an infantile
form of tetany (as defined by Trousseau, Erb and Franz Chvostek Senior); beginning in
the early 1890s, it appeared in both English and French as affection spasmodique or
spasmoparalytique infantile. From 1905-06, it was increasingly referred to as
‘spasmophilia’, a term coming from Berlin (O. Heubner) (see commentary to page x).
However, in the discussions of the society for pediatrics that were held during the
meeting of the society of German scientists and medical practitioners in Dresden in
1907 — contrary to Adler’s reference at this point —, Escherich strongly objected to
the ‘expression “spasmophilia” that has recently come into fashion’, because it was a
much more comprehensive term and its use would blur the close connection with adult
tetany. Then already, Wilhelm Stoelzer interpreted it as an ‘alimentary calcium
poisoning’. The decisive sources for Adler’s use of ‘spasmophilia’ are probably:
Hochsinger (1904, 1905), Heubner (1903) and Finkelstein (1905).
x Hess, Leo

(1879 Vienna – 1963 Brookline/Massachusetts): Internist, M.D. in 1903 in

Vienna, worked in the hospitals of Nothnagel & Noorden (First Medical Clinic),
Strümpell (Second Medical Clinic) and Wagerner-Jauregg (Psychiatric Clinic). He was
an asistant of the ophthalmologist Ludwig Mauthner for three years, and between 1914
and 1929 an assistant at the Third Medical Clinic (Franz Chvostek). In 1918 he became
private lecturer for internal medicine in Vienna, in 1929 extraordinary professor. In
1939
he emigrated to the USA.
y Eppinger, Hans

(1879 Prague – 1946 Vienna): Internist, son of the pathologist Hans Eppinger
senior (1846 – 1916). In 1926 he became professor and director of the medical hospital
in
Freiburg/Breisgau, 1930-33 medical hospital in Cologne, 1933-45 professor of internal
medicine in Vienna, simultaneaously joining the former Third Medical Clinic (Franz
Chvostek) and taking over the anti-Semitic national-socialist group of assistants of this
hospital. After 1938 he was the leading internist of national-socialist Germany, and
participated in the planning of the desalinization of seawater at the Dachau
concentration
camp. As a result of the investigations during the Nuremberg medical trials in 1945-46,
he was exonerated by the Austrian interior ministry, but when eventually it became
necessary for him to give evidence in Nuremberg he committed suicide.
z vagotonia

A permanent disturbance of the vegetative balance in the sense that the

parasympathic system is predominant or its sensitivity increased, usually in
combination with a constitutional instability; also in female high-performance athletes,
particularly as an adaptation to the high physical performance of the circulation of the
blood. In 1910 postulated by Hess and Eppinger widely accepted internationally 1913-
14, particularly in the USA, Russia and Hungary.
(footnote 4) Bauer, Julius
(1887 Nachod/Bohemia – 1979 Beverly Hills): Internist, 1928-38 medical
superintendent of the Third Medical Division of the Vienna Public Outpatient Clinic,
1931-38 also of the First Medical Division; internist specialized in constitutional
pathology and endocrinology. In the period 1921-23 German eugenicists considered
him
to be the outstanding Austrian authority; in 1929-30, despite his already critical
opinions
concerning German literature about the physical constitution (1923-25), he got into a
controversy with Walther Riese about the abuse of the term ‘constitution’ in medical
opinions. In July 1935 he took a stand against ‘dangerous slogans in the theory of
heredity’ in Germany, and disputed with, among others, the national-socialist
eugenicists
Heinrich Reichel (1935) and Fritz Lenz. This was followed by a campaign of the
national-socialist foreign press against his appearance at the International Medical
Week
in Montreux, Switzerland, in September 1935. In 1938 he fled to Paris, in 1939 to the
USA where from 1966 he was a lecturer at the Southern California School of Medicine.
aa Martius, Friedrich

(1850 Erxleben – 1923 Rostock): Internist, 1889-90 personal physican of Grand

duke Friedrich Franz III von Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 1901-21 professor and director of
the Medical Hospital in Rostock. Founder of constitutional pathology and the theory of
pathological heredity.
‘that the simultaneously inferior organs are related to one another as if they were in a
secret bond.’ Studie über die Minderwertigkeit von Organen, 1907, 60; 1977, 88.
bb Bartel, Julius

(1874 Troppau/Silesia – 1925 Vienna): Pathologist, 1907 private lecturer for

pathology, one of Weichselbaum’s most important students. He published research on
pathology and bacteriology, particularly the etiology and histology of endocarditis, on
problems concerning tuberculosis, questions concerning the constitution, and on the
importance of meteorological factors for the organism.
cc Kyrle, Josef

(1880 Schärdingen/Oberösterreich – 1926 Vienna): Important authority on

syphilis, dermatologist, in 1918 he became extraordinary professor, editor of the
‘Vienna
Medical Weekly’ and secretary general of the association of medical practitioners in
Vienna. Politically, he was a representative of the younger generation with its support
for
the idea of ‘Großdeutschland’ and anti-Semitism. He made contributions in the fields of
the solution of the problem of alcohol abuse, developmental irregularities of the sexual
apparatus and the introduction of the ‘malaria-treatment’ of lues.
‘that I must maintain that there is no organ inferiority without an accompanying
inferiority of the sexual apparatus.’ Studie über die Minderwertigkeit von Organen
1907, 59; 1977, 86f. There, however, ‘must’ reads ‘might’.
‘With the release from the maternal organism...’ through ‘...the appertaining
nervous and mental complex.’ Studie über die Minderwertigkeit von Organen 1907,
73f; 1977, 10f. It is put differently there, with some omissions.
(footnote 7) Mutschmann, Heinrich
(1885 Essen – 1955 Marburg): Professor of English philology in Dorpat until
1938, with teaching assignments in, among others, Marburg. Mutschmann points out
that
the defective vision of the poet John Donne, which eventually led to complete
blindness,
can be traced in his work.
dd Schmidt, Rudolf

(1873 Leoben – 1947 Prague): Internist, 1913-38 professor and director of the I.
Medical Hospital of the German university of Prague. His main research was concerned
with gastro-intestinal diseases and the constituition. Adler had probably been impressed
by the inaugural lecture Schmidt held at Innsbruck.
ee Wagner-Jauregg

See endnote 'g' on page xiv. It is remarkable that his title, in accordance with the
Austrian laws on the nobility of 1919, has been left out in the 3rd edition.
ff Hochwart, Lothar Frankl Ritter von

(1862 – 1914 Vienna): Neurologist, from 1912 extraordinary professor. The most
important neurologist from the school of Nothnagel. He worked on tetany, the disease
of
Ménière, acroparesthesia, keraunoneuroses, occupational neuroses, nervous bladder
complaints, diseases of the pituitary gland and epiphysis.
Frankl von Hochwart
In 1919, the ‘von’ belonging to the title was left out, as with von Jauregg.
gg Chvostek, Franz Junior

(1864 Vienna – Burg Groppenstain/Carinthia): Internist and neurologist In 1911

he became professor and director of the Fourth Medical Clinic in Vienna, 1913-33
director of the Third Medical Clinic. Influential representative of the theory of the
constitution in Vienna, he worked in particular on neurology and endocrinology; he was
generally dismissive of more modern methods (laboratory, x-rays). Originally from a
Czech family he increasingly developed into an extreme German nationalist and (from
1920 on) with the help of his racist anti-Semitic students, he excluded women from
attending his lectures, although this was against current law. Besides a number of
Jewish
assistants from his early time there, his hospital produced a great many nation-socialist
doctors (for instance, Erwin Risak, Wilhelm Beiglböck, Otto and Viktor Satke, Karl
Thums) who occupied prominent positions in the Viennese medical world during the
national-socialist period or even performed tests on humans in the concentration camps
(Beiglböck).
hh Bartel

See endnote on page 22.

ii Escherich

See also endnote ‘k’ on page 19. Publications by Escherich on endocrinology are
unknown; however, he interpreted tetany as a disturbance of the function of the
epithelium particles, that is, endocrinologically; in this sense his whole work on tetany
is within the sphere of endocrinology.
jj Pineles, Friedrich

(1868 Sanok/Galicia – 1936 Vienna): Internist, endocrinologist and neurologist.

In 1912 he became extraordinary professor and departmental head at the Kaiser-
FransJosef or Mariahilfer Ambulatorium. Pineles attempted to prove that Escherich’s
specific
interpretation of infantile tetany was indeed due to a malfunction of the epithelium
particles.
kk Morel, Auguste Benedicte

(1809 Vienna – 1873): Psychiatrist, among others at the Salpêtrière in Paris;

founder of the theory of degeneration. He described nearly all chronic mental illnesses
as
‘mental degeneration’ (dégénérescence mentale) (1857, 1860) His theory (that of
Valentin Magnan, 1835-1916) gradually became dominant in French psychiatry during
the 1880s. The degeneration of young people: démence précoce (later, with a different
meaning dementia praecox, see commentary on Kraepelin). The question of inhereted
‘degeneration’ also made its way into German psychiatry (Kraepelin, Krafft-Ebbing,
Schüle). The search was for physical ‘signs of degeneration’ among the ‘mentally ill
and
mentally inferior’ and warnings were given for racial degeneration (Kraepelin). Adler
adopts ideas from the theory of degeneration with his theory of organ inferiority and
overcompensation. In the ‘Studie über die Minderwertigkeit von Organen’ 1907 he
often
mentions ‘signs of degeneration’ as ‘morphological organ inferiorities’ (Studie über die
Minderwertigkeit von Organen 1977, 31) or the the most important results from ‘organ
and nerve inferiority’: ‘degeneration – neurosis – genius’ (Studie über die
Minderwertigkeit von Organen 1977, 90) (see endnote ‘bbb’ on Lombrose, page 28).
ll Thiemich, Martin

(1869 Breslau – 1921 Leipzig): Pediatrician. From 1908 to 1913 he was

municipal pediatrician of Magdeburg and leader of the department of infant care at the
municipal hospital ‘Altstadt’ in Magdeburg. In 1913 he became extraordinary professor
and director of the baby clinic in Leipzig, in 1919 professor.
Thiemich’s lecture ‘Über die Entwicklung eklamptischer Säuglinge in der
späteren Kindheit’, held for the pediatric section of the 78th meeting of German
scientists
and medical practitioners in Stuttgart on September 19, 1906, was followed by a
discussion typical for the shift that was taking place at the time from the term ‘tetany’ to
‘spasmophilia’. Escherich (see endnote ‘k’ on page 19), was strongly opposed to
completely merging the older concept ‘eklampsia infantum’ into the ‘spasmophile
diathesis’. He preferred to assume a more general pathogenesis, though not an etiology,
for which he postulated a functional disorder of the epithelium particles. Otto Heubner
from Berlin pleaded for the concept of spasmophilia, even though a spasmophile
diathesis did not necessarily underlie all paroxysms. Finkelstein argued ‘that
spasmophilia best describes the constitutional condition’. Thiemich accepted ‘the term
spasmophilia in order to prevent a fruitless battle of words’, but considered it to refer to
a
concept identical to Escherich’s ‘tetanic condition’. The differences with Escherich had
already been established in several of Thiemich’s works from around 1900.
mm Birk, Walther

(1880 Groß-Wanzleben/Magdeburg – 1954 Tübingen): In 1919 he became

extraordinary professor in Tübingen and between 1919 and 1948 he was director of the
child hospital of the University of Tübingen, 1927-1947 professor. From 1910 his
research was mainly concerned with the general nutrition and breastfeeding of children;
he returned to the subject of functional neuroses of children only in the national-
socialist
period. During the Weimar Republic he was a signatory of several professorial appeals
in
support of the German nationalists; after 1933 he unequivocally supported
nationalsocialism.
nn Potpeschnigg, Karl

Until 1907 he was an assistant at the child hospital of Munich University under
M. von Pfaundler, later an assistant at the child hospital of the University of Graz under
Pfaundler’s successor Josef Langer (1866 - 1937). In 1911 he became a private lecturer
on pediatrics in Graz.
oo Gött, Theodor

(1880 Munich – 1934 Bonn): Between 1925-1934, professor and director of the
childhospital of the University of Bonn, 1932-33 Dean, in the period when Jewish and
politically undesired teachers and professors were suspended and discharged. He
particularly devoted himself to radiology, later neurology and psychopathology of
children; together with F. Hamburger, he was the most influential representative of child
psychotherapy within the world of German academic pediatrics. Gött opposed
Individual
Psychology and Psychoanalysis, as is obvious from a letter to Meinhard von Pfaundler
written in the Fall of 1931: ‘It is curious that these people invariably need to make
something or other absolute: in Freud, it is pleasure [Lust], in Adler it is power, and in
yet another it is the social; and then they use all their detective ability and intelligence
in order to construct a confused, forced system around this single principle and they
become blind and even blinder to reality in which, in the end, everything is life,
movement and flow and not a single atom is ever at rest.’
pp (See Gott above)
qq Czerny

See endnote on page 19. This comment from Czerny’s research of the exsudative
diathesis, also pointed out by M. Thiemich.
rr Bartel

See endnote ‘bb’ on page 22.

ss Netolitzky, August

Member of the board of health and an instructor of midwives, from 1907

provincial sanitary consultant for Niederösterreich, director of the Royal-Imperial
Institute for Midwives in Vienna. In his contribution ‘Krankheitszustände in ihren
Beziehungen zur Schule’ (1912), Netolitzky writes: ‘As motives for suicide in
childhood, the following are mentioned most frequently: wounded pride, the fear of
punishment or tests, strict treatment, religious fanaticism, moral neglect, even
unhappiness in love and the morbid need for sensation. These motives for suicide,
however, are nothing more than the final, often comparatively unimportant occasion; in
most cases, the more profound cause lies in an abnormal physical and psychic
disposition, which among individuals that are considered inferior comes to expression
in an increased excitability and abnormal behavior. The demands made on
schoolchildren, insofar as these are connected with an increased demand on the brain,
will only have a harmful result in those cases where hereditary predisposition, physical
abnormalities, and damaging influences from outside emphasize the already present
predisposition for disease and susceptibility and thus urge towards suicide. It is
absolutely indisputable that unfavorable social and domestic relations, hunger and want,
the sight of domestic misery, the anxieties of parents and not unfrequently an instinct to
imitate, all have their influence on the suicide of children.’
tt Frankl-Hochwart

tetany: see endnote ‘ff’ on page 23.

 uu Pfaundler, Meinhard von
(1872 Innsbruck – 1947 Piburg bei Oetz/Tirol): Director of the child hospital of
Munich University 1906-39, 1912 professor. He was the founder of a large pediatric
school in Germany (E. Moro, A. Uffenheimer, Th. Gött, E. Benjamin, J. Husler, R.
Degkwitz, B. de Rudder, O. Ullrich, A. Wiskott, G. Weber, H. Mai). His research was
mainly concerned with the theory of the constitution and the physiology of newborn
children. As late as 1936 he remarked in the introduction of an article that Adler’s
theory
of hereditary organ inferiorities had brought the Viennese pediatrist Josef K. Friedjung
to
find out, ‘keeping in mind the pathology of digestive organs, the influence of the
behavior of the ancestors of children who during their infancy showed no, or little, or a
more pronounced tendency to nutritional or digestive disorders’.
vv torpid habitus

The habitus of scrofulous children, with a thick nose and upper lip, pale
complexion and an apathetic expression of the swollen face, comparatively
welldeveloped fatty tissue while the muscles are underdeveloped and a pronounced
belly. According to Pfaundler, originally from French literature.
ww Czerny

See endnote on page 19.

xx Hamburger, Franz

(1874 Pitten/Niederösterreich – 1954 Vöcklabruck/Oberösterreich): Pediatrician,

director of the pediatric department of the Wiener Allgemeine Poliklinik 1908-1916. In
1916 he became professor and director of the child hospital in Graz, 1930-45 professor
in
Vienna. His main subjects of research were immunity, tuberculosis, as well as a theory
concerning heredity which he developed himself, from 1910 also the psychopathology
of
children and pediatric pedagogy. An increasingly extreme opponent of Psychoanalysis,
which he dismissed as sexual materialism. He did not actually express much of an
opinion on Individual Psychology, except in his ‘Die Neurose des Kindesalters’ (1939):
‘As we have seen, the child learns only by experience. Depending on its experiences,
the
child behaves in one way or another. It goes without saying that his predisposition plays
an essential role in this process. Some children may be predisposed to discouragement.
This type of child inspired Adler to develop his so-called Individual Psychology. There
are, however, children who do not tend so much to discouragement but rather to
impudence.’ Hamburger, as Adler, established the relation between Czerny’s exsudative
diathesis and Eppinger’s vagotonia; here already he turns against the sexual genesis of
children’s neuroses: ‘Sensitive, delicate children are often hurt by unseemly, rough
treatment from family members or teachers. In those cases it is often difficult to
establish
the actual reason, particularly once the children have become distrustful. In such cases
one should try to become a good friend of the child, which one should arrive at not so
much by means of words but rather by one’s entire behavior, that is to say, not
intellectually but mentally. Then one should carefully question the child
(Psychoanalysis
without unnecessarily dragging in sexual factors). Such an exploration of the little
patient, which should be as exact as possible, is particularly important, I think, because
it
simultaneously points the way to our therapeutic action.’ (In: Über den
vasoneurotischen
Symptomenkomplex bei Kindern 1911). After 1928, he more than once insisted on ‘the
biologic foundations of bringing up children’, which, in his opinion, had been
established
by Czerny, and he pleaded for vigorous strictness in education, the ‘healthy smack’ and
unconditional ‘selfishness’ of the parents. Between 1933 and 1945 — until 1938 also
abroad — Hamburger was the most important national-social pediatrician. He fled to
Western Austria in April 1945 and was released in June.
yy Stransky, Erwin

(1877 – 1963 Vienna): Psychiatrist, 1915-1938 extraordinary professor; from

1906 he was a judicial psychiatrist; 1946 professor, 1947-51 honorary professor in
Vienna. Around 1930 and after 1945 he was a leading representative of the theory of
psychological eugenics in Austria and an extreme opponent of Psychoanalysis. In 1937,
within the Austrian branch of the International Medical Association for Psychotherapy,
he represented the standpoint that Jews should not be involved with the psychotherapy
of non-Jews. In 1938 his qualification to teach was revoked because he was Jewish. In
1945 he was decisively involved in the ‘mild’ attitude of the Association of Medical
Practitioners towards national-socialist colleagues. Around 1950 he propagated a
psychiatric evaluation of aspiring politicians in order to prevent dictatorial
developments.
zz Bickel, Adolf

(1875 Wiesbaden – 1946): Pathologist-physiologist, 1906-40 extraordinary

professor and 1906-32 director of the department of experimental pathological
physiology at the Charité in Berlin where he also taught. He was the first professor of
pathological physiology in Germany. He worked on the neurotic regulation of
movement,
the physiology of digestion, the theory of vitamins, radiation biology, balneology and
climatology; after 1933, particularly nutritive physiology as part of the four-year-plan
(covering the so-called ‘protein deficiency’), ‘natural nutrition’ (propaganda of
wholewheat bread), race and nutrition, and also nutrition of Olympic athletes. Adler
referred to
Bickel here because the pediatrician had already specifically begun studying the
functional neurotic diseases of infants and children.
(footnote 8) Reich, Julius
Commercial advisor. Adler refers to an article of his in the Österreichische
Rundschau (see Volume XV. Vienna-Leipzig. May 1908, page 388f.), a cultural
magazine published by Alfred Freiherr von Berger, Leopold Freiherr von Chlumecky,
Dr.
Karl Glossy and Dr. Felix Freiherr von Oppenheimer. On the occasion of an exposition
of
works by Goya, the author gave a favorable description of Adler’s theory of organ
inferiority, particularly concerning the visual anomalies among artists. (collaboration
Schiferer)
aaa The return of the identical

The fundamental, metaphysical theory of the eternal return of the identical, which
Nietzsche interpreted as a confirmation of the ‘meaningless’ in the sense of the ‘most
extreme form of nihilism’, was limited by Adler in a psycho-pathological sense to
neurotic compulsive repitition. In addition, the distance Adler takes from Nietzsche
here leads to the latter’s name being left out altogether in the 1919 edition, an indication
that Adler was moving away from Nietzsche even further, resulting in his later criticism
(Wozu Leben Wir, transl. What Life Should Mean to You, 1931).
bbb Lombroso, Cesare

(1836 Verona – 1909 Turin): Professor of psychiatry in Turin. He transferred the

concept of degeneration to genius and crime and popularized the theory of
degeneration.
His book ‘Genius and Madness’ (Genio e follia, 1864) in particular enjoyed worldwide
success. Lombroso, too, linked this with a theory of compensation: ‘Some part of an
organism invariably must assert itself for the exceptional performance of another part.’
(Genio e degenerazione, 1894) Despite the fact that Adler was clearly deeply influenced
by the theory of degeneration, he expresses himself critically about the ‘theory of
degeneration’ and Lombroso: ‘mistakes of Lombroso’s’, ‘generalizations that are too
sweeping’, ‘rashness’, ‘untenability’ (Studie über Minderwertigkeit von Organen) (see
note to page x about Morel).
ccc his kingdom is not of this world

Refers to Jesus’ words to Pilate in the gospel of John, 18, 16: ‘My Kingdom is not of
this world.’
ddd And where were you when the world was divided up?

Jehovah’s words to Job, after he has complained about his sorrow, sworn his
innocence and his four friends have come forward with their declarations of sorrow:
‘Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?’ (Job, 38, 4).
eee twinge of conscience (Nietzsche)

Nietzsche exercises his criticism of ‘bad conscience’ mainly in ‘The Genealogy of

Morality’ (1887): it originates in resentment and as an ‘instinct of cruelty’ it is turned
backwards since this instinct, for reasons of sacerdotal-life-denying morality can no
longer externalize itself. This is why Nietzsche also calls such a conscience a ‘disease’,
which he considers to be related in particular with a godly ‘ideal’ that has been created
for ‘self-punishment’. In ‘Ecce Homo’ he makes philosophical use of autobiographical
material in dealing with this problem: ‘According to what they say about it, a twinge of
conscience does not seem to me to be an honorable thing. If the outcome is bad, one
loses only too easily the correct way of looking at what one did: a twinge of conscience,
to me, seems to be a kind of evil eye.’ Adler agrees with Nietzsche concerning the
‘improper’ neurotic use of conscience, but he does not elaborate on the ‘genealogy’ of
the conscience and distances himself from Nietzsche by a polemic allusion to the
latter’s person.
fff the will to power (Nietzsche)

For Nietzsche, all explanations of causes are ‘interpretations aided by psychic

fictions’, motivated by the feeling of power; ‘Life, a unique case (from this follows a
hypothesis about the unified character of all existence) strives toward a maximum
feeling of power; essentially is a striving for more power; all striving is nothing but
striving for power; this will is the basis and essence. (Mechanics is a mere semiotics of
the results).’
ggg Aristotle: antithetical categories

(384 Stagira – 322 BC Chalkis on Euboea): Aristotle’s main compositions on

logic, which for over 2000 years formed the basis of logic in the West, were the
‘Analytika protera’ and the ‘Analytika hystera’. In this ‘second analytics’, which may
be
considered as a complement to the theory of deduction, Aristotle deals with scientific
knowledge and its principles. Since a scientific conclusion always follows from certain
premises, which constitute ‘true, first, direct, more commonly known, earlier and causal
knowledge’, such analytics as an analysis of formal reasoning will lead to the
examination of simple propositions, whose essence it is that they are either true or false.
They then can be divided into affirmative and negative, general, particular and singular
propositions.
hhh Pythagorean tables of opposites

Among the so-called Pythagoreans, the philosophical community founded by

Pythagoras (580 Samos – 500 BC Metaponto), a system of thought came into being that
was based on a numerical and musical symbolism and held that oppositeness was the
world’s creative principle. The number 10, as the sum of the numbers 1 through 4,
united
the opposites from the following ‘table of ten’: finite and infinite, odd and even, one
and
many, left and right, masculine and feminine, mobile and immobile, square and
rectangular. This theory of opposites — as the foundation of harmony in the universe —
can also be found in Pythagorean ethics and its theories about the soul and medicine.
The
essence of good health, for instance, was the ‘rightful equality’ of opposites such as dry
and moist, hot and cold. As in politics, the ‘absolute power’ of one single quality was a
cause of illness. True symmetry therefore consisted in a sacred order which could be
experienced in music as a ‘cleansing of the soul’ (catharsis). Adler’s information here is
probably based on an article by K. Joel (Geschichte der Zahlprinzipien in der
griechischen Philosophie) which he quotes later (see endnote to footnote 4 on page
207).
iii Lombroso

See endnote on page 28.

jjj Bleuler: ambivalence

See endnote on page xxi.

 kkk Vaihinger, Hans
(1852 Nehren bei Tübingen – 1933 Halle): Professor of philosophy in Strasburg
and Halle, well-known commentator on the writings of Kant; in 1904 he founded the
‘Kant-Gesellschaft’—still active today—which Adler and his ‘Verein für
psychoanalytische Forschung’ joined in 1912, after he had broken away from Freud. In
his most important book, ‘Die Philosophie des Als Ob’ (or. 1911, transl. The
Philosophy
of ‘As If’; a System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind.
New
York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1925), Vaihinger pursues both an epistemological
theory as well as a satisfactory world view on the basis of an ‘idealistic positivism’.
Vaihinger’s argument is positivistic-pragmatic in that, in agreement with Nietzsche, he
interprets thinking as an instrument of self-preservation and subordinates it to the
incidents of life. The work is idealist by its connection to Kant in the sense that
theoretical reason cannot recognize the reality of existence in itself (‘an sich’), but
subjects it to categories of the intellect and reason which form the actual ‘objectivity’.
Vaihinger widens these subjective rules of logic and methodology by means of the idea
of ‘fiction’. This consists of consciously selected concepts, suppositions and methods
that
differ from ‘reality’, and which may even be self-contradictory, but with which we
succeed in attaining something we consider ‘meaningful’ in our practical, scientific,
esthetical, judicial, economic and religious activities. The most frequent linguistic form
of this positivist practicality is the ‘as-if sentence’. After a basic foundation in the first
part, Vaihinger deals with the separate types of fiction in part two and goes on to
attempt
to provide historic validation by going back to Kant, Forberg, F. A. Lange and
Nietzsche.
lll Nietzsche: ‘will to appearance’ (Wille zum Schein)

In accordance with the emphasis on ‘degeneration’ in the neurotic ‘will to

appearance’, Adler here resorts to Nietzsche’s assertion that ‘the appearance from the
very beginning nearly always becomes the essence and functions as the essence.’ And
also: ‘It is possible that appearence, the will to mislead, self-interest and desire should
be attributed a much higher and more fundamental value in the whole of life than
reality.’
Theoretical Part I - II
Psychic Compensation and its Preparation
Our observations have led us to a point where we can understand how the absolute
inferiority of the child, more especially the constitutionally disadvantaged child,
develops into a self-evaluation which generates the feeling of inferiority. Analogous to
the ∆οσ που στωαthe child will try to find a point of view that will enable him to assess
his distance to the problems of life. From this position of low self-esteem, which is
taken to be a fixed pole amidst permanently moving phenomena, the child’s psyche will
span threads of thought to the goals of his longing. These, too, are regarded as fixed
points and interpreted quite concretely by the human mind’s abstracting way of
observation. The goal: to be big, to be strong, to be a man, to be on top, is being
symbolized in the figure of the father, the mother, the teacher, the coachman, the train-
driver, etc., and the conduct, the attitude, the distinctive gesturing, the play of children
and their desires, day dreams and favorite fairy tales, ideas about their future choice of
profession1, these show us that the compensatory tendency is at work and is making
preparations for the future role. The individual’s own feelings of inferiority and
inaptitude, the feeling of weakness and smallness, the insecurity, will thus become a
suitable base of operation that will release, from the inherent feelings of disgust and
dissatisfaction, the inner impulses that will bring the child nearer to a fictitious final
goal. The scheme that the child uses to enable himself to act and to determine his
position is a general one, and corresponds with the urge of the human mind to force the
chaotic, the fluid, that which never-can-begrasped, into stable forms by means of
supposition, of fictions, so as to be able to assess it. We act in the same way if we divide
the earth’s globe by means of meridians and parallels; for this is our only means to get
fixed points whose positions can be determined in relation to each other. All similar
attempts, and the human psyche is full of them, are concerned with the introduction into
real life of an unreal and abstract scheme, and I consider it to be the main purpose of
this book to advance this insight, which I gained from the psychological observation of
neurosis and psychosis, and which can be found, as Vaihingerb has demonstrated, in all
scientific perceptual concepts. It does not matter at what stage one studies the psychic
development of a healthy or neurotic person, for one will always find that he is caught
in the meshes of his scheme, the neurotic because he cannot find his way back to reality,
and the healthy person because he uses it to achieve a real goal. Among first-born
children I have often found that the decisive presupposition and guiding fiction
consisted in a demand for the unquestioned recognition of their greatness and power as
there used to be in the past, while in younger children the destruction of the powerful
influence of others is more prominent, and for only children the search for a central
position will often develop into an unsolvable problem. It is the insecurity in childhood,
however, that provides the burning reason for the use and over-accentuation of the
scheme, the great distance from the man’s deployment of power, of his precedence and
privilege, which the child surmises and knows. We are all, and more particularly the
child and the neurotic, forced to leave the more obvious paths of induction and
deduction, and to avail ourselves of such artificial devices as the schematic fiction, by
something that originates in the insecurity feeling, the safeguarding tendency, which
adopts as its eventual aim the liberation of the feeling of inferiority, in order to elevate
itself to the full height of the feeling of self-worth, to complete masculinity, to the ideal
of ‘being above.’ The greater this distance is, the sharper the guiding fiction will
manifest itself, so that the feeling of ‘being below’ may be quite as decisive as for
instance the larger-than-life images of a strong father, of a strong mother.
1See: Heilen und Bilden, l.c. This work includes a large part of the questions concerning

upbringing and the argumentations and final conclusions from Individual Psychology.
Thus we see the emergence of exertions which exceed by far the level that might
be expected in the case of the most strenuous physical performances, or even in the
strongest desire for gratification of organic pleasure. Among others, Goethe points out
that, on the one hand, perception may be linked to a practical gratification of certain
needs, but that on the other hand, beyond this, man leads a life of emotion and
imagination. These words aptly express the compulsion to elevate the feeling of self-
worth, which also appears in one of his letters to Lavater, when Goethe remarksc: ‘This
desire to make the pyramid of my existence, the basis of which is fixed and prepared for
me, reach upward into the sky as high as possible, outweighs everything else and it will
never be out of one’s thought for even little more than a moment.’
It is easy to understand that such a tense psychic situation — and every artist,
every genius is fighting the same fight against his or her feeling of insecurity, but by
culturally valuable means — will lead to the re-enforcement and emergence of a large
number of characteristics that help constitute the neurosis. This concerns in the first
place ambition, which is presumably the strongest of the secondary guiding lines that
strive towards the fictitious final goal. And it brings forth a number of psychic
predispositions that are intended to assure that the neurotic will have precedence in all
of life’s circumstances, but that will make his aggression, his affectivity appear to be in
a state of continuous excitement. In most cases, therefore, the neurotic will give the
impression of being proud, obstinate, envious and avaricious, he wants to make an
impression everywhere, wants continually to be first, but will always tremble for any
possible consequences and gladly put off any decision. Hence the hesitation, the caution
in the behavior of the neurotic, his distrust, vacillation and doubt. He produces these
psychic predispositions on a small scale as a type of exercise, so to speak, in the sense
that he is making preparations, in order to obtain a series of guiding principles and
further safeguarding guiding lines towards the higher goals that hold him spellbound.
The patient is forced by his safeguarding tendencies to collect by experiment, in corpore
vili, arguments that will justify his entire vacillating psychic attitude and will continue
to justify it over and over again. As a rule this will result in the perception: I must be
cautious if I want to reach my goal! And it is indeed not all that rare for the patient to
commit acts of reckless carelessness in order to safeguard himself on his main point, the
masculine ideal, by laying a cautionary emphasis on his carelessness. Very often,
hallucinations and dreams take over the function of this cautionary voice in neurotics
and psychotics, by depicting how things used to be before, how it used to be with
others, or how it might turn out to be, in order to hold the patient on to the safeguarding
guiding line by the creation of a false mood.
This may seem to work out quite differently with neurotics who will be overcome
by depressions only when they find themselves in a quiet situation, when everything is
going quite well, when they are feeling quite well, when they are attending a concert, or
in a theater. This often concerns the kind of people who have come to be in comfortable
circumstances, and now, after Polycrates’ fashion, want to sacrifice something. In cases
like this, short-sighted analyses will not go any further than to conclude that there exists
a tendency to sacrifice, or some kind of guilty conscience. If, however, one adopts the
observational method of Individual Psychology, then it will soon become clear that in
‘sacrifices,’ in a ‘guilty conscience’ of that kind, a greedy feeling of triumph hovers
over the victory, over the envy and the defeat of others.
Besides this there will often be found — ‘to make the pyramid of my existence
reach upward into the sky as high as possible,’ — strongly emphasized characteristics
of aggressiveness, obstinacy and activity, frequently safeguarded or intensified by
pedantry, the latter in order to be predominant and to maintain the direction. It is indeed
not astonishing that the thirst for knowledge, as a powerful promoter towards elevated
goals, is exerted enormously. Equally clearly manifesting themselves are impatience,
fear of coming too late, fear of achieving nothing, as particularly intense motives not to
lose sight of possible profit, to do too much rather than too little for the achievement of
the fictitious final goal. In any case, these characteristics always lie within the field of
the developed neurosis, where the safeguarding tendency is manifesting itself more and
more clearly, leading to dangerous artifices: to deepen the feelings of inferiority, to act
as if one were curtailed, cut off from success, without anything to hope for, or more or
less to plunge into passivity, to force female characteristics to the surface, to behave in
a masochistic and perverse manner, and finally to reduce strongly one’s sphere of
activity, in order to upset and dominate it in an even more powerful manner by the
symptoms of the disease. In an identical manner, the arrangement of indolence,
exhaustion, and impotence of any kind comes about, furnishing the pretext to flee from
decisions that might hurt the pride of the neurotic, and to avoid study, profession or
marriage. Sometimes this developmental phase terminates in suicide, which will then
always be felt as a successful revenge on destiny and relatives, on the world in general,
as the result of a training (similar to melancholy) to make everything disgusting to
oneself.
The sense of guilt will also expand. This brings us to one of the most difficult
points in the analysis of neuroses and psychoses. A sense of guilt and a sense of
conscience are fictitious guiding lines of caution, similar to religiosity, and serve the
safeguarding tendency.2 They serve the purpose of preventing a lowering of the feeling
of self-worth if the excited aggression impetuously urges for selfish deeds and hurts the
community feeling, always threatening like the chorus of the Euminedes. The sense of
guilt implies looking backwards, conscience operates by foresight. The love of truth,
too, is supported by the safeguarding tendency, but is actually to be found within the
frame of our personality ideal, whereas the neurotic lie constitutes a feeble attempt to
keep up appearances and thus to furnish compensation. The neurotic love for truth
offers ample occasion for fruitless conflicts in order to waste time and debase others.
All these attempts to strive for elevation, to want power, must according to nature
be considered as a form of the striving for superiority or dominance, of which the
masculine protest is a frequent special example, since it represents an archetype of
psychic assertiveness according to which all experiences, observations and directions of
the will are grouped. The apperception is guided according to this very obvious scheme,
and the final goal — particularly in neurotics — is the development of the masculine
protest against a low selfassessment; simultaneously, attention, caution, and doubt, as
well as all other characteristics and further psychic and physical predispositions, to a
very high degree in particular the evaluation of all experience, will also direct
themselves towards this masculine final goal, so that all these phenomena contain, and
indeed betray to the specialist, the dynamics that push from beneath to above, from the
feminine to the masculine. The release of all these power lines, the fixation of the
faraway final goal, and the accentuation and occasional protection of inferior, feminine
characteristics for the purpose of combatting them better by means of the masculine
protest, take place by means of the same factor that also creates the organic
compensations, by means of the compulsion to compensate3, by continual efforts, to
make up for a harmful inferior performance by working extra time, which will be
expressed psychically in the safeguarding tendency, which takes the will for power, for
masculinity, as a guiding line, so as to evade the feeling of insecurity. Later, this
observation has become part of psychoanalysis as the ‘castration complex.’
The greatest obstacle to the understanding of neurosis is formed by the
conspicuous production of inferior, feminine characteristics and their acknowledgement
by the patient. Any manifestation of symptoms of disease belongs here, whatever they
may be, but also passive, masochistic characteristics, effeminate personalities,
homosexuality, impotence, suggestibility, susceptibility and an inclination to hypnosis
or, ultimately, the apparent absorption into feminine being and behavior. The final goal
will always remain the domination of others, which is experienced and valued as a
masculine triumph, or complete inaction. Nor will the compensating characteristics as
they have been described above ever be absent in the character structure of these
patients, as one might expect among people who take the feeling of curtailment as their
base of operations, and then will try by any means to bring in a substitute for whatever
is lacking in their exaggerated feeling of self-worth. In this psychic situation the sexual
element increases its influence as a symbol, in that patients of this type will often form
their apperceptions according to a scheme, as if their sexuality were damaged, and that
they are therefore constantly forced to look for a substitute. One form of this
substitution they find in the degradation, the effeminization4 of all other people. Well-
known reinforcements of certain characteristics originate in this depreciation tendency;
they represent other predispositions and are certain to harm others, such as sadism, hate,
dogmatism, intolerance, envy, etc. Also, active homosexuality, as well as perversions
that degrade the partner, and sex murders, too, arise from the neurotic’s depreciation
tendency, whose strength it is impossible to conceive too strongly. All of them represent
the incarnate symbolism of subjection according to the scheme of masculine sexual
superiority. In short, the neurotic may also elevate his feeling of self-worth by
degrading others, and, in the most serious case, by becoming the master of life and
death, be it of his own life or that of others.
2 See Furtmüller, Psychoanalyse und Ethik, München, E. Reinhardt 1912.
3 In Freud, this observation now appears in the form of the ‘death wish,’ which is

obviously only one of the many possibilities to re-establish the balance, the parity. [It]
has often been mentioned here and elsewhere in the psychology of the suicide. The
revenge, the tendency to devalue life, is, after all, unmistakable.
We have spoken earlier about the protection of feminine characteristics for the
purpose of better carrying on the struggle against the individual’s own, unstoppable
tendency to submission, for the purpose of improving self-control within the neurosis.
These emphases, along with the distinct tendency to accentuate the will to masculinity,
create the appearance of a rift in the psyche of the neurotic, which is familiar to writers
as the adoption of a double vied, of dissociation, as well as in the changing moods of
neurotics, but also in the successions of depression and mania, of ideas of persecution
and delusions of grandeur in the psychosis. I have always found, as an internal bond
between these contradictory conditions, the tendency to elevate the feeling of self-worth
in such a way that the ‘inferior situation’ connects with a degradation whereas it is
simultaneously being delimited and arranged as a base of operations. At that point the
masculine protest comes into play, which will often be carried through to such a point
that an identification with God or some kind of intimate relationship with God will be
asserted. This process is particularly clear in mania, which will invariably manifest
itself as the result of a feeling of degradation. Cyclical mania is the probable result of a
habitual repetition of this mechanism, as soon as the patient is overwhelmed by a
feeling that he is ‘going under.’ Besides, the normative criterion for this apparent ‘split
of consciousness’ is the sharply schematic and starkly abstracting method of
apperception of the neurotically predisposed person, who will group both internal and
external incidents according to a scheme of strict antitheses, more or less like the debits
and credits in bookkeeping, and invalidate any transition. These mistakes in the neurotic
reasoning, identical with a level of abstraction that has been pushed too far, are also
partially due to the neurotic safeguarding tendency, which needs sharply defined
guiding lines, idols, gods, bogeymen for the neurotic to believe in, for purposes of
choosing, guessing and acting. This alienates a human being from concrete reality. For
if one wants to feel at home there, one needs psychic elasticity, not rigidity; one should
make use of abstraction, but not worship it or make it a goal in itself, idolize it. There is
no such thing as an ultimate principle of life that is strong enough to deal with
everything. Those solutions of the problems that are most correct will, if they are
emphasized so strongly, disturb the course of life. It is the same if one turns purity,
truth, etc., into the final goal of all striving.
4In the Freudian psychoanalysis, this has later been described, in a simplified form, as

the castration complex.

Accordingly, we will find in the emotional life of the neurotic the tendency, indeed
to the most extreme degree, to stylize himself, his own experiences, and the people in
his environment, in a way quite similar to what is found in primitive thinking, in myths,
in legendse, in cosmogony, theogony, in primitive art, in the achievements of psychosis,
and in the origins of philosophy. However, it is inevitable in this process that all
phenomena that do not belong together will be rigorously torn apart by the abstracting
fiction. The compulsion to take this measure springs from the longing for orientation
and has its origin in the safeguarding tendency. It is often so strong that it demands the
dissection of unity, of categories, of the unity of the ego into two or more antithetical
parts.
From the self-esteem of the child whose organ inferiority with its resulting evils, as
we described earlier, induce him to develop special safeguarding methods, to the full
development of the neurotic technique of thinking and its guiding lines, that is to say, of
the neurotic character, a number of psychic phenomena will manifest themselves which,
according to Karl Groos’f ideas, should be regarded as training, but according to our
ideas should be considered a preparation for the fictitious final goal. They will manifest
themselves quite early, indeed may even suggest themselves during early infancy, and
will always form the basis of the influences of conscious and unconscious education.
The whole development of a child shows that he is preparing himself according to some
idea, which will usually remain rather primitive, but may frequently become
concretized by assuming the form of a person. Under this compulsion, whose psychic
mechanism is largely unconscious and only for a small part conscious, the developing
psyche will find more distinct expression, and both the spiritual and the physical life of
a human being, taken at a particular point in his development, may be understood as
part of his answer to the question of life.
This answer, which is really the way in which life is accepted, is, after all
experiences which we have collected, identical to the attempt to bring to an end the
insecurity of life, the chaos of impressions and sensations, and to strengthen our grip on
difficulties that must be overcome. The safeguarding tendency will certainly push forth
reflection, observation, indeed thought and anticipation, admiration, memory, attention,
assessment, and valuation. And since the feeling of one’s own inferiority supplies an
abstract standard for inequality among people, everything big and strong will become
the standard that is made into the fictitious goal, in order to be safe from insecurity,
from ‘the creeps.’ This is how, in the psyche of the child, a guiding line develops which
pushes for the elevation of the feeling of self-worth , to avoid insecurity, and still
stronger is this impulse in the neurotic, who has experienced inferiority even more
keenly. Myths, the common people, poets, philosophers and founders of religions have
taken the materials for the transformation of guiding lines from their own period in
history, so that physical or mental power, immortality, virtue, piety, wealth, knowledge,
the morality of the ruling classesg, social feeling or authoritarianism are all there to be
used, and will be taken up depending on the peculiar receptiveness of the individual
desiring perfection. Death may also represent such a safe haven. At this point the living
force of the child’s energies is being redirected into the selfcreated circle of its
subjective world, which is the guiding fiction that from this point on will falsify and
reevaluate all sensations and impulses, pleasure and pain, indeed even the urge to self-
preservation, to its own benefit; it will do this in order to ensure the attainment of the
goal which will use everything the neurotic has ever experienced and learned in its own,
specific way, so as to create certain predispositions and prepare the eventual triumph.
From his own, personal observations and experiences, however, the child will gather
impressions of the conditions of human coexistence, whose first representative may said
to be the mother, and he will take them into account, at least to a certain extent, in
forming his ideals and guiding fictions.
These preparatory actions with their reassessment of values can be observed most
clearly in the play of the neurotic child, in his deliberations about his future profession,
and in his physical and psychic attitude. These phenomena will still have to be
discussed in connection with the safeguarding tendency that controls them. As far as the
neurotic habitus is concerned mention should be made of the fact that it will as a rule
become conspicuous at an early stage, that it will take the form of a pantomimic
representation of a particular characteristic, either as an anxious, watchful, suspicious,
insecure, cautious and timid attitude, or one that is hostile, obstinate, self-confident,
self-congratulatory and impertinent. Blushing may easily be observed, or the eyes are
curiously captivating, down-cast or hostile. It will always be possible to trace back one
of these attitudes or gestures, some imitative feature for instance, to the prototype. One
can often already observe in neurotic children the imitation of the masculine principle,
of the father; the mother will only be introduced as a model by means of the
transformation of the guiding fiction, or when the moral superiority of the mother is
beyond doubt from the very beginning. Usually, these phenomena are insignificant, and
they will not normally be subjected to the observation of the physician: crossing the
legs, the arms, a peculiar stride, a predilection for certain foods, the borrowing of
certain characteristics, etc., or in the case of a very pronounced obstinacy, opposite
forms of expression. The retention of bad childish habits, such as eneuresis, nail-biting,
thumb sucking, stuttering, winking the eyes, masturbation, etc., may often be attributed
to that kind of obstinacy. They are the instrument that a weak person uses to diminish
the pathos of the distance to the strong, and are ultimately aimed at conquering some
authority, yet at the same time they form an excuse to avoid decisions, to postpone
them. In their own language they tell us: ‘I am still a child!’
Indeed, all important phenomena of this kind form typical features of the character
in themselves or will appear to be permeated by the neurotic character and, like that
character itself, they are an expression of the safeguarding tendency, the preparation
and predisposition of the compensatory force released by the inferiority feeling.
Endnotes for Theoretical Part I-II
a ∆οσ που στω

‘Give me fixed point (and I will move the earth)’, suppposedly said by
Archimedes (ca. 285 – 212 BC).
b Vaihinger

Compare Vaihinger, 1911 (transl. 1925) on ‘artifical classification’ in ‘scientific

fictions’. Refers to ‘Ferro’s meridian’. See endnote ‘kkk’ on page 30.
c Goethe writing to Lavater

see Goethe, ...Collected Letters and endnote to ‘footnote 27’ on page 84.
Compare Goethe quotation in endnote ‘ccc’ on page 124.
d double vie

Term from 19th century French psychiatry for ‘split consciousness’. See endnote ‘c’ on
page xxi.
e in myths, in legends, etc.

See Vaihinger 1911 (transl. 1925), on the ‘shift of idea’, with referral to early
Greek thought.
f Groos, Karl

(1861 Heidelberg – 1946 Tübingen): Professor of philosophy and psychology in

Gießen, Basel and Tübingen. Groos holds that playing is instinctive behavior serving as
a
practical exercise for important achievements and the development of certain functions.
g the morality of the ruling classes

‘Herrenmoral’: In his ‘Theorie der Herren-Moral’ Nietzsche distinguishes

‘Herren-Moral’ and ‘Sklaven-Moral’ and observes that these are mixed not only in
every
civilization but also ‘within one soul’: ‘If it is the ruling class that determines what is
the
meaning of the term ‘good’ then it is the elevated, proud conditions of the soul that are
experienced as distinguishing and determining hierarchy.’ (Beyond Good and Evil).
Part I- III
The Accentuated Fiction as Guiding Idea in the Neurosis
 The most important task of thinking is, in the first place, to anticipate actions or
events, to understand the means and the goal, and to influence them as much as
possible. This thinking in advance assures us, to a certain extent, of our influence over
space and time. Accordingly, our psyche is, in the first place, an organ of defense and
attack, born out of distress with limitations that are too narrow and obstruct the
gratification of our impulses from the very beginning. However, this purely
physiological form of impulse-gratification can last only until suitable means have been
found to stabilize and secure oneself against even the greatest challenge. By the end of
the suckling stage, when the child performs independent, self-assured actions that are
not directed solely towards the gratification of his impulses, when he takes his place
within the family and begins to adapt himself to his surroundings, the child already
possesses abilities, psychic gestures, and will. In addition, his actions have become
coherent, and one can see that the child is on the way to achieve a place in the world.
Coherent conduct of that kind can only be understood if one presupposes that the child
has found a specific, fixed point outside his own person that he is striving after with the
energy of his psychic development. The child, therefore, must have created a guiding
line, a guiding image, in the expectation that this is the best way to find his orientation
and achieve the gratification of his needs, the avoidance of discomfort and the
realization of pleasure.1 From this guiding image, the need for tendernessa in particular
will initially stand out as a part of the inborn striving for community, which is the
original stimulus of the ‘educability’b (Paulsenc) of the child. Soon, this attitude will be
accompanied by a striving to obtain the favor, the help and the love of the parents, and
by impulses towards independence, of defiance and resistance. The child has found a
‘meaning of life’ which he strives after, the outlines of which he is forming, and from
which rises the conduct that guides and evaluates his actions and his emotional
impulses. The helplessness of a child, his awkwardness and insecurity, force him to try
out different possibilities, to collect experiences, and to create a memory so that the
bridge into the future may be constructed, where greatness, power, and many different
gratifications dwell. The construction of this bridge is the most significant achievement
of the child, because otherwise he would be facing the entire gamut of impressions that
come rushing on without any sense of order, without counsel, without guidance and
without reassurance. It is hardly possible to define the limits of this first stage of the
awakening subjective world, the development of the ‘I’ properly, or indeed even to put
it into words. Nevertheless we can say that the child’s guiding image must be such that
it gives him the impression that it may provide greater security, and better orientation,
by influencing the direction of his will. However, the child can only acquire security by
struggling towards a fixed point, where he will find himself free from the imperfections
of early childhood. The metaphorical, analogous way in which we think brings with it
that the child will conceive of his own, transformed person in the future in terms of the
figure of the father, the mother, of an older brother or sister, of the teacher or some
official, of a hero, of an animal, or of a god. All these guiding images share the same
characteristic trait of greatness and of power, of knowledge, and ability, and thus they
represent, one and all, symbols for fictitious abstractions. And like the pagan idols made
of clay, they acquire power and life through the imagination of man, and so retroact on
the psyche from which they were born.
1 A.Adler, ‘Trotz und Gehorsam.’ In: Heilen und Bilden, lc. (see endnotes)
This expedient of thinking would have the imprint of paranoia and dementia
praecox that create for themselves ‘hostile forces’ out of life’s difficulties, if the child
would not dispose of the possibility to escape from the spell of his fiction at any time, to
eliminate its projections (Kant) from his calculations, and only use the impulse
provided by this ‘helping line’. The child’s insecurity is sufficient for him to set up
imaginary goals in order to find orientation in the world, but it is not large enough to
devaluate reality entirely and dogmatize the guiding image, as happens in psychosis.
Nonetheless, the similarity of the insecurity and the expedient of the fiction among
healthy, neurotic, and deranged people must be brought to attention.
What is common to all mankind in these processes is that the apperceptive memory
will come under the influence of the guiding fiction. Within certain limits, this provides
everyone with a coherent view of the world. The child’s insignificance and neediness
will continuously force him to push his limits further and further, and then fixate them
in such a way as the example of whatever is strongest suggests. And it will become
evident in the course of psychic development that what was at first an expedient that,
fantasizing all on its own, was only important and useful within the whole, has now,
however, become a method to define a position, to find a direction, and to provide a
foothold, indeed, has become a goal in itself, obviously because this is the only way for
the child to acquire security in his actions,2 which is impossible by direct gratificiation
of his impulses.
With this we have found the active point outside the physical sphere, which the
psyche takes for its goal, the center of gravity of human thoughts, feelings, and desires.
And the mechanism of the apperceptive memory with its host of experiences evolves
from a system operating objectively into a scheme operating subjectively, a scheme
modified by the fiction of the future personality. To this scheme the task will fall of
creating such connections with the external world as will serve the elevation of the
feeling of self-worth, to give hints and guiding lines to the preparatory actions and
thoughts, and to connect with the supply of completed preparations that are already in
existence. One need only remember the admirable observation of Charcotd, who
suggested that in scientific research one will invariably find only what one already
knows — an observation that may illustrate, if we adapt it to practical experience, that
the whole range of our perception is limited by a number of ready-made psychic
mechanisms, as Kant’s theory of our mind’s forms of perceptione also shows3. In similar
fashion, our actions are determined by this substance of our experience, a substance
defined and valued by the guiding fiction. Our value judgments themselves conform to
the standard of the fictitious goals, and not in fact to ‘real’ emotions or sensations. And
any action or conduct is the result, as Jamesf expresses it, of some sort of approbation
— it depends on a Fiat!, on a command or approval.
2 As can be learned from Karl Groos, Spiele der Tiere, our understanding of the

animal psyche is also based on the fact that we see the animal act as if it would follow a
fictitious guiding line. (see endnotes)
The guiding fiction is accordingly the original device, an expedient, by means of
which the child tries to free itself from its inferiority feeling. It introduces compensation
and is in the service of the safeguarding tendency.4 The greater the inferiority feeling,
the more pressing and the stronger the need for a safeguarding guiding line will
become, and the more clearly, too, will it manifest itself, and, in the same way as
compensation in the organic sphere, the activity of psychic compensation is linked to
some form or other of extra activity, and will be accompanied by remarkable
phenomena in the psyche, often of increased value and entirely new. One of the forms in
which it expresses itself, with the intention of safeguarding the feeling of self-worth, is
that of psychosis and neurosis.
Constitutionally inferior children, pampered, or despised children, with their
legions of complaints and insecurities, will develop their fixed point further and give it
more prominence, and put it on a higher level; they will draw the guiding lines more
clearly and stick to them more anxiously or dogmatically. Indeed, the main impression
in the observation of a neurotically predisposed child will be that he does many things
with much more caution and keeps in mind all sorts of prejudices, that he lacks open-
mindedness towards reality and, furthermore, that his aggressive attitude is highly
excited in that the child wants to find compensation in a certain situation by means of
hostility or submission. In most instances, the child will be guided in his choice of
weapons by his organ inferiorities, and will make the most of them in dealing with his
relatives, or fixate them in obstinacy. Often, the child will derive, initially by means of
stimulation or exaggeration, illnesses from his environment to reinforce his position.
When these methods fail to have their effect on the environment the removal of the
illness will be attempted by means of a superior exertion of force, from which quite
often, more in particular in those cases in which functional anomalies of the eye or ear,
of speech, or of musculature are overcompensated, certain achievements of a competent
and artistic nature may result. Strong tendencies towards independence are also linked
to this. Conversely, it may be that salvation is sought in greater dependence, for which
anxiety, a feeling of insignificance, weakness, awkwardness, inability, a sense of guilt,
remorse and pessimism may function as safeguards. The adherence to childish bad
habits, the fixation of psychic infantilismg, which may occasionally appear as
dissociationh or debility, tend in the same direction, insofar as they are not both
exclusively or partially the result of the obstinate attitude, the negativism of the child.
3 At this point I must also refer to Bergson’s fundamental theory. (see endnotes)
4W. Stern (see his Individualität. 1918) has, independently from me, reached identical

conclusions. Unfortunately, I cannot credit certain neurologists with the same

independence, such as Lewandowski for instance, who, in expositions about war
neuroses, has tacitly described the goal of safeguarding, of dominance, as the cause of
[mental] illness. (see endnotes)
A number of illnesses of neuropathological children are of a subjective nature,
corresponding to a complete or partial error of judgment that is made while the children
are attempting to understand or find reasons for their inferiority feeling. Often the
compensatory ambition, or the child’s aggression towards its parents, will already get
mixed into these logical interpretations. ‘My parents, my fate is to blame,’ ‘because I
am the youngest, have come too late,’ ‘because I am a Cinderella,’ ‘because maybe I am
not the child of these parents, of this father, of this mother,’ ‘because I am too small, too
weak, because I have a small head, am too ugly,’ ‘because I have a speech impediment,
a hearing defect, my eyes squint, am short-sighted,’ ‘because I have deformed genitals,’
‘because I am not masculine, because I am a girl,’ ‘because I am bad, stupid, clumsy by
nature,’ ‘because I have masturbated, am too sensual, too lustful,’ ‘because I am
perverse by nature,’ ‘because I submit easily, am not independent and obedient,’
‘because I cry easily, am too emotional,’ ‘because I am a criminal, a thief, an arsonist,
because I could kill someone,’ ‘my parentage, my upbringing, circumcision is to
blame,’ ‘because my nose is so long, because I have too much, not enough hair,’
‘because I am a cripple,’ ‘because I have been pampered, neglected,’ thus and similar
sound the means that the child uses to exonerate himself, by pointing at Fatum — just
as it occurs in Greek drama and the tragedy of fate — to save his self-esteem and put
the blame on others. In the psychic treatment of neurosis one is frequently confronted
with these attempts, and they can always be traced back to the relation between
inferiority feeling and ideal. Moreover, the value and meaning of these exposed lines of
thought, pricking the neurotic’s psyche like a thorn, lie also in their use, in the first
place, to whip up the neurotic striving in the direction of the ideal (typical example:
megalomania); and in the second place, as a refuge and excuse in those cases when a
decision about the feeling of selfworth has to be evaded (typical example: ideas of
insignificance). In the case of neurosis this latter application will, according to nature,
push itself to the forefront because in the course of time the neurotic goal will appear to
be set too high to be pursued in a straight line. The opportunity for advantage, however,
lies in the admixture of aggression, in accusing fate or heredity. In this way, the
neurotic acquires a durable base of operations, that he uses with an identical hostile
purpose to deploy, promote, and stabilize certain characteristic features, such as
obstinacy, dominance, fault-finding and pedantic desires, because this enables him at all
times to dominate his environment, the small circle of the family instead of the world,
usually by referring to his great suffering. All these resentments and made-up
predispositions, joined by bad habits maintained from childhood and frequently further
developed, as well as by symptoms of diseases of an alleged or self-created nature, are
all closely connected; indeed, the one cannot be separated from the other, and thus they
once again demonstrate their dependence on a factor outside their framework, on the
guiding fiction of ambition, created by the safeguarding tendency, on the longing to
elevate the feeling of self-worth. In the fictitious foundation of these kind of inferiority
feelings, invariably imagined or felt to be reinforced for safeguarding reasons, but
never insurmountable, I see the best opportunity for a possible cure. The question
whether the feeling of inferiority is conscious or unconscious is of minor importance
here. Once in a while pride will succeed in causing ‘memory to give in’ (Nietzschei).
The connection as it is depicted, however, is unknown to the patient. And therefore he
will remain, until the mechanism has been uncovered and corrected, until the
destruction of his predispositions and his neurotic plan of life, a plaything of his
sensations and emotions, whose interaction is made even more essentially complicated
because, as a result of the intended stimulation of the neurotic striving, certain
predispositions and characteristic features will interfere that deny the inferiority feeling,
such as pride, envy, cruelty, courage, irascibility, etc., until the crippling role of
ambition asserts itself, positioning itself in front of the patient and driving him back.
 Accentuation and the compulsion to prominently display inferiority play an
important part in the neurotic’s psychology. The apparent weakness, suffering,
incapacity and uselessness derive mainly from such representations, because the
neurotic, through this mechanism of coercion, must without fail behave, and therefore
feel, as if he were ill, effeminate, inferior, neglected, curtailed, sexually overexcited,
impotent, or perverted. The cautious attitude towards life that invariably accompanies
these impulses, the accentuated compulsion to strive upwards, the inclination to act like
a man in this way or other, to dominate all others and to use only one fatal difficulty to
hide the feeling of inferiority, the neurotic’s conviction that by means of these
arrangements he is largely evading decisions and depreciation and thus preventing a
depreciation of his feeling of self-worth, all these allow us to recognize the true state of
affairs: the low selfesteem of the neurotic will at a later stage develop itself into yet
another of his artifices, to get hold of the guiding line that will lead him to an elevation
of his feeling of self-worth. If in his actions he follows the motto half and half by giving
up certain strongholds during his war while opening up an additional battlefield, indeed
the very field of neurosis, then he does this only to protect himself against an ultimate
feeling of inferiority and to be able even better to put others to his service.
This is why one will always find that the neurotic — and with him, usually, his
doctor and his surroundings — is looking beyond, is squint-eyeing past his original
feeling of inferiority, that he is operating with his symptoms as if they involved purely
personal suffering. Except that ‘on this occasion’ the entire system of his life’s relations
comes into action and prevents his honest cooperation.
Through this hostile attitude towards life the neurotic will often come into a mood
of expectation, which was accurately recognized by Kraepelinj. His eyes are almost
exclusively looking at his own person, while he hardly even thinks about others. He
should first, with difficulty, be brought to realize that it is more rewarding to give than
to take.5
The sexual aspect of the psychology of neuroses, which Freud took as the cardinal
point, is explained in this way as the effect of a fiction. There is no objective criterion
for the ‘libido.’ Its elevation and degradation will always direct itself towards the
fictitious final goal. Every neurotic will easily succeed in simulating a high sexual
tension by means of more less expedient arrangements, and in particular by means of
the tension of the appropriate direction of attention, if he is grasping to prove how
much sexuality is hurting his security, how easily his feeling of self-worth might be
threatened from this direction. The reductions of libidinous impulses to psychic
impotence should be regarded as intentional restraints of aggression, as disorders of
natural predispositions, as constructions of an ‘as if’ that serve to safeguard himself
against marriage, against digressions from the goal, against degradation in the face of
the partner, against a downfall into poverty or punishability. Repressed or conscious
perverse tendencies should always be regarded as deviations or their initial
manifestation, just as seminal discharge and compulsive masturbation, as symbols of a
fictitious, safeguarding plan of life. They are necessitated by the guiding fiction, as soon
as the feeling of inferiority finds expression in fear of the sexual partner, as happens
frequently if there are sexual anomalies.6 The fiction of heroism may then even transfer
the perverse inclination into the unconscious or make the fear of the partner
unrecognizable outwardly or it may transform cowardice into fruitless aggression or
arrogance, so that only the specific situation may make it detectable. It will do the
former if it forcibly attributes this accomplishment to pride, the latter by making a
virtue of necessity and devaluating the partner. In the psychology of neuroses, the
occasional tendencies to incest, to which Freud ascribes such a paramount importance
for the origin of neurosis and psychosis, will also emerge as purposeful, secondary
constructions and symbols of the patient or the psychoanalyst, the mostly harmless
material for which is supplied by the history of early childhood with its preparations. A
real understanding of the, occasionally maintained, ‘Oedipus complex,’ for instance,
shows that it furnishes a metaphorical, usually a-sexual, conception of the masculine
consciousness of power, of the dominance over the father and the mother, yet at the
same time it betrays the cause of this demonstration: as if the mother were the only
woman that one could subjugate, that one could depend on, or as if the sexual desire (in
childhood already!) were to be carried through in spite of everything and therefore
under threat of danger, even in the struggle with stronger forces (the father, mortal
danger). As this interpretation shows, an examination of the sexual neurosis invariably
leads us to the conclusion that there exists a guiding fiction that takes a sexual form, or
is allowed to be given a sexual form by the therapist, and in connection with this to the
discovery of a mode of apperception that works according to a sexual scheme, as a
consequence of which both the neurotic as well as the ‘normal’ person will often
attempt to apprehend and understand the world and all its manifestations in sexual
terms. Our further investigations reveal that this sexual scheme, which often makes
itself notably present in speech, customs and habits, represents nothing but a formal
variation of the deeper and farther-reaching scheme of a much earlier origin, the
antithetical mode of apperception of ‘masculine-feminine,’ of ‘above-beneath.’7 The
perverse tendencies which come to be psychically established at a later point also derive
their material and direction from those harmless physical emotions and misjudgments
from childhood which are valued particularly highly in case of need, and, because of
potential pleasurable sensations, apperceived in a sexual metaphor. The psychologist
should not take that same point of view — for instance, to maintain an identical mode
of apperception as conclusive, or to substitute real sexual components for a fiction, in
the way the patient does. His task will rather be to unmask this attempt at orientation of
the neurotic as superficial, to destroy it as being fictitious and to weaken the inferiority
feeling, which is frantically pursuing lines of action in order to enforce the prevalence
of the masculine protest in circuitous ways. Perversion is invariably a sign that a
person is giving the norm a wide berth because he is afraid to be injured in his vanity.
Similar structures may be found in the case of compulsive masturbation, conspicuous
attachment to close or distant blood relations, in the case of paedophilia and
gerontophilia, impotence, failure to ejaculate and frigidity, the last as a disorder caused
by the complete refusal to go along.
5 His pleasure in life has been disturbed by his incessant ‘wish to take.’ He never

manages to get out of that mood of dissatisfaction, that feeling of curtailment. How
different is the mood of the person who is giving, who will think more about others and
possesses an equable disposition.
6See A. Adler, Das Problem der Homosexualität, l.c.
 The apperceiving memory, which influences our outlook on life to such an
enormous extent, appears, therefore, to be working with a certain scheme, with a
schematic fiction, and this fiction also corresponds to the way in which we choose and
form our sensations, the perception and representation of our experience and memory,
as well as the training of all our inborn inclinations and capacities, until these have been
transformed into suitable psychic and technical abilities, automatisms and
predispositions. The method of operation of our conscious or unconscious memory and
its individual structure belong to the personality ideal and its criteria. From this we
have been able to demonstrate that, as a guiding fiction, its purpose is to define and
indicate the problem of life as soon as feelings of inferiority and insecurity begin to
press for compensation. This established guiding line of our striving, which does not
contain any reality whatsoever, is absolutely decisive for the development of the
psyche, for it enables us to take steps forward, into the chaos of the world, just as a
child does when it is learning to walk, keeping a steady eye on a final destination,
without, however, actually having to reach it. With even greater determination does the
neurotic keep his eye on his God, his idol, his personality ideal and he clings steadfastly
to his guiding line, meanwhile losing sight of reality even more deliberately, whereas
the healthy person is always prepared to give up this device, this crutch, and deal with
reality in a free and easy way. In this case, the neurotic resembles a human being who
looks up to God, commends himself to His ways, and then religiously awaits how the
Lord will guide him; he is nailed to the cross of his fiction. The healthy person, too, will
create himself a deity and feel that he is being elevated, but he will never lose sight of
reality and take it into account as soon as working and creating are important. The
neurotic, accordingly, is under the hypnotic influence of a fictitious plan of life.
7 See Hippias’ Dream, Herodotus VI, 107: ‘he believed that he slept with his

mother.’ He dreamed this when he was planning to conquer the town where he was born
[‘Mutterstadt’], as he had experienced once before as his father’s companion. And from
this, the ‘Oedipus complex’ as a symbol of the desire to dominate. Among the Romans,
too, ‘cohabitation’ is found as a symbol for conquest, for victory. Compare the double
meaning of the verb ‘subigere.’ (see endnotes)
That the point of the personality ideal (Freud’s attempt to replace this term with
the word ‘super-ego’ has to be dismissed for several reasons), placed beyond reality as
it is, remains active in any circumstance, is, however, clearly to be seen from the
direction of the attention, the interests and the inclinations, which will always make a
choice according to previously determined points of view. The determination of the
goals in our psychic behavior and the predispositions it creates, decides that actions are
begun and, after a certain interval, ended, that, as Ziehenk emphasizes, intentional as
well as unintentional impulses are always aimed at reaching a definite effect, that we
must assume, as indeed Pavlovl has argued, a consistently intelligent function of the
organs. All these phenomena leave such a strong impression that since time immemorial
philosophers and psychologists considered as a principle of teleology what was actually
a calculated attempt at orientation towards a point that was assumed to be fixed.
The hypothesis of natural selection is incapable of explaining all these results,
which may be new and different as the occasion demands. Our experience absolutely
compels us to consider all these phenomena as dependent on a fiction that is working
unconsciously, and whose faint, conscious radiance we find as concrete final goals,
according to which we shape, in the last analysis, our conception of our experiences and
actions.
It is easier to point out the details of this guiding fiction than to name the fiction,
the fictitious final goal itself. Psychological research, as it stands now, has specified
several of such final goals. For our purpose, a critical discussion of two of these will be
sufficient. Most authors have come to the conclusion that all human actions and all
manifestations of the will should be considered as being controlled by feelings of
pleasure or pain. Under superficial consideration this will indeed seem to be correct, for
the human psyche is, as a matter of fact, inclined to seek pleasure and avoid pain. But
the foundation of this theory is precarious. There is no measure for experience of
pleasure, indeed, there is no measure for experience at all. Furthermore, there is no
perception, no action, that does not differ according to time and place, and so may
excite pleasure for the one, and pain for another. And even the primitive sensations of
organic gratification prove to have their gradations, and will vary accordingly,
depending on the degree of gratification and according to cultural guiding lines, so that
only desperate deprivation can succeed in making satisfaction a goal in itself. Well now,
if satisfaction has been attained — would the psyche then actually have to lose its
guiding line? The compulsion of the psyche to acquire orientation and security will
demand for the sake of consolidation and performance a more stable standpoint than the
precarious principle of the experience of pleasure and pain, and a more firmly fixated
point of view than the goal of attaining pleasure. The impossibility to find orientation in
such a goal, and to behave according to its demands, will force even a child to give up
such attempts. Ultimately it is a misuse of an abstraction to single out, by means of a
petitio principii, from all psychic activity, as variously structured as it is, the quest for
pleasure as a guiding motive, whereas initially every single emotion had already been
explained as a quest for pleasure, as libidinous. Schiller’sm keen eye, trained in the
school of Kant, saw much further when he granted that if ‘philosophy’ would at least in
the future guide events on earth, he believed that, in the meantime, it would still remain
dependent on ‘hunger and love.’ However, to ascribe the entire direction of sexuality, as
Freud does, or to the libido, which is or was the same thing for him, in a generalizing
way to love, is a violation of logical thinking, it is itself a bad sort of fiction, which, by
taking it as a dogma, could only lead to great contradictions and the garbling of
concepts, because it contrasted all too much with reality. Finally, the concept of ‘love’ is
at present not differentiated enough. It is being used for various expressions of the
community feeling that are fundamentally different. But if it is used uncritically, certain
overtones may easily become mixed in which would seem to suggest an exclusive
association with sexuality. It is from this inaccuracy in the use of words (parental love,
filial love, egoism, patriotism, etc.) that Freud’s mistaken point of view has evolved. He
found in all relationships the erotic overtones that he had already, unconsciously, put
into the concept of ‘love’ (‘libido’) beforehand.
The dispossession of the primacy of the ‘ drive for self-preservation’ seems to be
more difficult, especially because it is a principle that is provided with supplementary
teleological theories supporting it on the one hand, and biologically, with the weight of
the Darwiniann theory of selection on the other. However, we may observe at any
moment that we act in ways that are contrary to the principle of self-preservation or to
the preservation of the species, indeed, that a certain arbitrariness allows us to shift our
evaluations to a higher or lower level with regard both to pleasure as well as to self-
preservation, and that we often ignore self-preservation, completely or partially, and
even come to desire death (death-wish) as soon as pleasure or pain enter into the
question, and that on the other hand we often sacrifice our striving for pleasure as soon
as our ‘self’ or our ‘self-esteem’ threatens to be damaged. In what manner do these two
undoubtedly active stimuli arrange themselves under the main guiding line, which urges
the elevation of the feeling of self-worth? The two different points of view correspond
to two types of individuals, though more might be added, of which one is least able to
do without the contribution of pleasure to his feeling of selfworth, whereas the other
requires in the first place an infusion of the feeling of life, of the idea of immortality.
This gives rise to modified ways of apperception that demand an antagonistic manner
of thinking in the sense of ‘pleasure–pain,’ of ‘life–death.’ The former are unable to
devalue pleasure, the latter that of life. In the idea of procreation, which is once again
conceived in the antagonistic scheme of ‘masculine–feminine,’ the two types approach
each other and seek to express themselves in the direction of the ‘masculine protest.’ As
far as neurotics are concerned, the one type has tried to find compensation for his organ
inferiority, and the other has grown up in the fear of death, of dying young. Their view
of the world offers them only fragments, their psyche is partially color-blind, even
though it is often more sharp-sighted than the Daltonistso in their understanding of
color.
We end this critical observation with a reference to the absolute primacy of the will
to powerp, a guiding fiction that will set in more intensely and earlier, and will often
develop rashly, the more prominent the inferiority feeling of the organically inferior
child is. The personality ideal is created by the safeguarding tendency as a target that
fictitiously carries within itself all abilities and talents that the predisposed child
believes that he is deprived of. This fiction, accentuated as compared to the norm,
controls memory as well as traits of character and predispositions according to its own
idea. The neurotic apperception develops according to a metaphorical scheme that
employs strong contrasts, the arrangement of impressions and emotions is implemented
with values that are accordingly falsified and invented, and invariably there will be a
striving for an ideal parity.
It lies in the nature of the neurotic fiction, of the elevated personality ideal, that it
reveals itself at some times as an ‘abstract mechanism,’ and at other times as a ‘concrete
image,’ as a fantasy, as an idea. One should not overlook, in the case of the former, the
symbolism of the representation and its connection with the compensated inferiority
feelings, and in the latter case one should, before anything else, come to an
understanding of the decisive share of the psychic dynamic force that is pressing
‘upwards.’8 As long as this leading inclination ‘upwards’ does not manifest itself in the
analysis of a psycho-genetic disease, we have not yet come to a full grasp of the nature
of the disease; for no matter how valuable the insights of the psychotherapist may have
become, as long as the relation between the secondary guiding lines of the attainment of
pleasure, of affectivity (Bleulerq) and those others which arise from organ inferiority
(Adler), has not been established, our insight into the personality ideal remains
imperfect, ‘the spiritual link is unfortunately missing.’r
8 Among recent authors who accept this point of view I must mention above all H.

Silberer.
It is not surprising either that in different cases, the guiding personality ideal is
usually impacted by several of these influences at the same time, since they derive from
different, usually multiple organ inferiorities. A preliminary, if decidedly incomplete
diagram, as yet lacking the corrections brought about by the community feeling, and
corresponding to the more abstract psyche of the neurotic rather than the structure of the
healthy psyche, would be the following:
Personality Ideal as Goal

Feeling of Being Above

Masculinity Feeling

DesireTriumph Knowledge Wealth Art Cleanliness Appearance

Compensatory Safeguarding Tendency
Infantile Inferiority Feelings Femininity Feeling Feeling of Being Down

Insecurity F

In this diagram the most diverse connections should be imagined if it is to serve its
purpose as a pictorial scheme for superficial orientation. Instead of these connections
and the many different implications, we want to discuss a number of striking
phenomena that seem to be essential for an understanding of the neurosis and of the
neurotic character, and how these phenomena are concealed by the community feeling.
Each of the abstract guiding lines of neurosis and the psychic mechanism that
underlies them may be accessible to consciousness, or may be made accessible, by
means of some particular visual memory. This memory-picture may originate in the
remnants of a childhood experience, or it may be a product of the imagination, the
outward manifestation of the safeguarding tendency. It may represent a symbol, a
system of etiquette, so to speak, for a certain type of reaction, and now and then it may
be formed or re-formed only in a later period, often when the neurosis has already been
fully developed. Since it is obviously the result of a kind of economy of thoughts,
fashioned on (Avenarius), it is never of any significance as far as its contents are
concerned, but only as an abstract scheme or as the remnant of some psychic
experience in which once the fate of the will to power was realized. This schematic
fiction, no matter how concretely it may manifest itself, should never be regarded in any
other than an allegorical sense. In it is reflected an actual part of the experiences,
together with a ‘moral,’ and both of these are being maintained by memory in order to
secure all activities, either as a reminder, so as to hold on more tenaciously to the
guiding line, or as a prejudice, so as not to deviate from it, or because they just
happened to be there. None of these pictures from memory, childish fantasies, has ever
had any pathogenic effect, as a psychic trauma for instance; it is only when the neurosis
develops, when the feeling of strong depreciation of the feeling of self-worth leads to
the masculine protest and with that to a closer attachment to the long established
compensatory guiding lines, which already manifest themselves in this very memory,
only then will the appropriate visual memories be brought out from material from a
remote past and take effect because they can be used, partly to make the neurotic
behavior feasible, partly to interpret it, that is to say, because of their affinity. Above all,
this is where the predispositions for pain, anxiety and affect belong, which are based on
such memories as may be realized in the form of hallucinations and which can be put
on the same level as optic and acoustic hallucinations. Of course, this will mostly
concern typical memories, those that are as close and as closely related as possible,
because they represent or suggest, for the neurotic, who is clinging to the guiding line,
the smaller and larger circuitous routes that he has to follow in order to elevate his
feeling of self-worth .9 The neurotic psyche is characterized merely by a stronger
adherence to, and a stronger empathy with the guiding line. The symptoms will only be
brought to light by the contradictions with reality, the conflicts that arise from these and
the compulsion to acquire social influence and power. This will become even more
obvious in psychosis, in which the guiding line manifests itself with extreme clarity, and
in which new interpretations of reality are attempted, with ensuing demonstrations,
only, so to speak, to prove inability. The patient will in both cases behave as if he had
the final goal constantly before his eyes. In the case of neurosis he will exaggerate and
fight the real obstacles to the elevation of his feeling of self-worth or he will avoid them
by making up excuses. The psychotic, who is stuck firmly to his idea (idée fixe), will try
to change or to ignore reality for the benefit of his imaginary standpoint. The researcher
Freud, who deserves high praise for the disclosure of symbolism in neurosis and
psychosis, has drawn attention to the presence of an abundance of symbols.
Unfortunately he stopped short at exposing the sexual formulas they do or possibly
might contain, or at merely insinuating their presence, and he has not pursued their
more important dissolution into the dynamic process of the masculine protest, the
passionate striving upwards. This is how it came about that, for him, the meaning of the
neurosis was exhausted with its use in the conversion of libidinous impulses, whereas in
reality the appearance or compulsion of the elevation of the feeling of self-worth can be
detected behind the symbolism.
9 For this reason Individual Psychology attaches the greatest importance to the

understanding of the earliest memories from childhood and has proved that they
represent revealing signs from the period in which the lifestyle is being developed.
We have described the guiding personality ideal as a fiction, and consequently
denied its reality, yet we must maintain that despite its non-reality, it is nonetheless of
the greatest importance for the process of life and the development of the psyche. This
apparent contradiction has been expounded most brilliantly by Vaihinger in his
Philosophy of As If; and he recognized fiction as being opposed to reality, yet
indispensable for the development of science. I was the first to point out this curious
relationship within the context of the psychology of neuroses, and I was notably
stimulated and supported in my opinion by Vaihinger’s work. Therefore I am at present
in a position to call attention to some aspects of the fiction of the feeling of self-worth
that shed more light on its essence and importance, as well as on the form in which it
appears in the psyche. First and foremost, it is an abstraction and should be regarded in
itself as an indication of an anticipation. It is, so to speak, the marshal’s staff in the
knapsack of the insignificant soldier10 and consequently payment on account demanded
by the primitive feeling of insecurity. The construction of the fiction takes place as
disturbing inferiorities and obstructive realities are cast aside in the ideal style as it
always happens when the psyche is trying to find an escape and security from its
distress. The insecurity, painfully experienced as it is, will be reduced to the lowest
possible, yet apparently causal level and this will be transformed into its crass opposite,
into its antithesis, and taken to serve as the fictitious goal, which is then turned into the
guiding point of all desires, fantasies and striving. Then, for reasons of clarity, this goal
must be made concrete. Real deprivation, for instance the restriction of food during
childhood, will be experienced as an abstract ‘nothing,’ as a deficiency, against which
the child will long for ‘everything,’ for abundance, until it brings this goal nearer, in an
abstract way, in the person of the father, in the figure of a fabulously wealthy person, of
a mighty emperor. The more intensely and longer this deprivation is experienced, the
stronger and higher the level of the fictitious, abstract ideal will be set, and from this the
formation and arrangement of the given psychic powers into preparatory attitudes,
dispositions and characteristics will begin. Then the individual will ‘wear’ the
characteristics demanded by the fictitious goal just as the characteristic mask—the
persona—of the ancient actor had to fit until the very end of the tragedy. If a boy is
seized by doubt about his manliness, as happens with all constitutionally inferior
children, who feel they are like girls, then he will choose his goal in such a way as
promises him dominance over all women (and usually men as well). This will
determine his attitude toward women at a very early stage. He will always show a
tendency to attempt to prove his superiority over women, he will depreciate and
degrade the female sex and will—in a figurative sense—claim the mother as his own,
which in neurotically disposed children will often manifest itself in a gesture or in their
psychic attitude, and he will in a playful manner take the model of the mother as an
opposite to the masculine role in which he is then able to project himself. If such
infantile predispositional attitudes are consolidated, if a pedantic, basic behavior
manifests itself, and if the stimulated desire for dominance seeks a willingness to oblige
similar to the security of the feeling of self-worth found with the mother, then these are
already neurotic characteristics. It is only this neurotic rigidity of the insecure for
which Nietzsche’st assertion is valid that ‘everyone has an image of women within him
that is derived from the mother, and which decides whether he will admire women no
matter what, or to despise them, or to remain generally indifferent to them.’ However,
we must admit that this is the kind of character that is in the majority. Among them are
many who were despised even by their mother, and since then fear to be degraded in the
same way by every woman or demand excessive submission. The ‘incest complex’ that
Freud has compiled is an artificial product. The manifestation of real incestuous
tendencies is related to a neurotic aversion against society; it is an extreme attempt to
destroy a human society which, for its own sake, has banned incest, just as it has
masturbation.
 10 For those psychologists with a very keen insight I note here that I have inserted
the large number of comparisons taken from military life with a definite purpose in
mind. In military training the starting point and the fictitious purpose have been brought
closer together, they are easier to overlook, and every movement of the training soldier
is made into a predisposition to turn a primary feeling of weakness into the feeling of
superiority.
Nothing in the life and development of man sets to work with so much secrecy as
the construction of the personality ideal. If we ask for the origin of this secrecy, then it
would seem that the most important reason lies in the aggressive, not to say hostile
character of this fiction. It has come into being while constantly measuring and
considering the advantages of others and, according to its basic principle of antithesis, it
must have the injury of others as a goal. The psychological analysis of the neurotic
always shows the presence of a depreciation tendency, which is summarily directed
against everyone. The aggressive tendencies11 regularly manifest themselves in greed,
in envy, in the longing for superiority. However, the fiction of the subjugation of others
can only be used, be taken into account, if it does not disrupt from the start the
establishment of relationships. And therefore, it must be made unrecognizable at an
early stage, it must be disguised since otherwise it will neutralize itself. This
concealment is brought about by establishing a counter-fiction which in the first place
guides the visible conduct but under whose influence reality is approached and the
recognition of its active forces is accomplished. This counter-fiction, which invariably
consists of current, corrective examples of the community feeling, accomplishes the
formal change of the guiding fiction by pushing forward its own considerations, by
making allowances, based on their true importance, for future social and ethical
demands, and in this way it secures reasonableness, that is to say: general validity of
thinking and acting. It is a security coefficient of the guiding line to power, and the
harmony of both fictions, their mutual compatibility, is a sign of mental health. In the
counter-fiction the experiences and education, the social and cultural formulas, the
traditions of society play an active role. In times of high spirits, of security, of
normality, of peace, it is the formative force, which succeeds in obstructing the
predispositions for fighting and emotional disturbance and in assimilating traits of
character to the environment. If insecurity increases, and the inferiority feeling
manifests itself, then as the abstraction from reality is growing this counter-fiction is
devalued, the predispositions are mobilized, the fundamentally neurotic character
asserts itself and with it the exaggerated, elevated feeling of self-worth. It is one of the
triumphs of human wit that, in adaptation to the counter-fiction of the community
feeling, the guiding idea of power is made to prevail, to shine through modesty, to
triumph by humility and submission, to humiliate others by one’s own virtue, to attack
others by one’s own passivity, to make others suffer by one’s own pain, to pursue a
masculine goal with feminine means, to make oneself small so as to appear great, to
secure own’s own advantage by appealing to the community feeling. But this is the kind
of device the neurotic will use.
11See ‘Die Aggressionstrieb im Leben und in der Neurose.’ In: Heilen und Bilden. l. c.

(see endnote)
 I do not have to waste words about the importance of the very first perception and
emotion of inferiority and insecurity as an abstraction. Equally abstract is the setting up
of a fictitious guiding point and of the plan of life that is now spun out between these
two points. As far as the neurotic psyche is concerned, we have repeatedly emphasized
that an increased level of insecurity only makes it inevitable that the final goal is drawn
even further away from reality, is set even higher, in order to demand stronger proofs of
one’s full value, of one’s overvalue. In addition, the inferior sense-organs will produce
qualitatively and quantitatively changed sensations and the organs of movement will
show changed techniques, usually in a limitative sense, so that self-esteem, the ideal
guiding image, the view of life and the plan of life, as opposed to the norm, must
develop themselves towards a greater abstraction, greater renouncement of reality. In
the process, it is by all means possible that this compensation and overcompensation
may occasionally bring the concept of the world and the line of reality closer together,
as for instance in the great accomplishments of the artistic psyche.12 The over-stressed
personality ideal, however, which in its strong fixation, nearing an identification with
God, often confers a slight or pronounced hypomanic character on the nature and
behavior of neurotics and psychotics. If not its preparation, which is decided by ideas of
insignificance and persecution, will bring about, through some kind of inner conviction,
without which the goal could never have been established, a feeling of predestination.
During phases of great insecurity this will be markedly stronger and its importance as
anticipation of the guiding fiction, as pre-payment, will clearly manifest itself.
The valuable contribution of this effort towards compensation and security is
described by Gustav Freytagu in his Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben as follows:
‘But hitting the bull’s eye of a target is not really easy for me. For at Oels I had
noticed during instruction that I was very near-sighted. When I complained about this to
my father, he advised me to make my way through the world without glasses anyway,
and he told me about the helplessness of some theologian who had once, lying in his
bed, begged him to find his spectacles so that he would be able to find his trousers. I
have always followed this advice, and used glasses only in the theater and for looking at
pictures. I tried to overcome the difficulties which this defect caused me when I was in
company and I unsuspectingly overlooked much that might have disturbed a keener
observer. The joy brought by the beauty of flowers and prettiness of dress, or by
remarkable faces and the beauty of women, a radiant look or a gracious salute from far
away, these I was often obliged to forego, whereas others enjoyed them. But since the
soul adjusts itself dexterously to a defect of the senses, I developed in an early stage a
good understanding of those expressions of life which came within my range of vision,
and a quick sense to intuitively sense a great many things13 that I found unclear; the
smaller amount of impressions allowed me to ponder over them more quietly and
perhaps more intimately. However, the loss was still greater than the gain. My father
had however been right to the extent that throughout life my eyes retained a sharp
outlook at close range.’
This is a kind of visual fantasy that would abstract from reality to a considerable
degree in any case, but if one imagines how its development would be stirred up under
pressure of the safeguarding tendency, then in order to achieve the same goal of security
as in the example cited above, the result will be the development of a visual-
hallucinatory capability, which if it concerns the formation of a securing memory or
some kind of self-encouragement, may also manifest itself outside the dream state. At
this point, the abstraction, but the anticipation as well, is even further advanced and it
may lead to the well-known pathologic manifestations found among ‘telepaths,’
spiritists or people with a Cassandra-like disposition. An immense incentive to reach
out like this beyond the limits of what humans can do is provided, as usual, by the
tantalizing inferiority feeling that, with its reference to weakness, will ascribe to others
a greater power of vision, greater to such a degree that it seems as if they can see hidden
things, for instance, or can see into the heart. The safeguarding tendency of the child
with his secretiveness may at an early stage pick up this particular point and act under
the fictitious assumption that others can see ‘into its heart,’ that they can guess his most
private thoughts, an assumption that manifests itself often as an artifice in neurosis and
psychosis and carries the same value as for instance an increased feeling of guilt and a
neurotic conscientiousness, meant to be a safeguard against a threatening degradation of
the feeling of self-worth, against disgrace, punishment, ridicule14, humiliation, the
feminine role, and this to such a level that all inclination for actual activity may be lost.
12 See Robert Freschl, ‘Zur Psychologie des Künstlers.’ In : Der Friede. Vienna

1918. (see endnote)

13Is not this one of the ways to become an artist?

The neurotic’s stronger capacity for abstraction, identification and anticipation is

the basis not only for his hallucinatory character, his development of symptoms, and his
fantasies and dreams, but also for the apparent over-exertion of organ functions which
he prepares for battle by tendentious overvaluation. In addition, the neurosis gains space
by looking and thinking ahead in a more abstract way, subsequently developing the
neurotic caution that is so often observed and by means of which the patient, as a matter
of principle and in a sharply antithetical arrangement according to the ‘triumph–defeat’
scheme, keeps all possibilities of experience constantly in view. Or he will bring his
environment under his influence by increasing his organic susceptibilities, a first step
towards hallucinations, by being hypersensitive to smells and noises, touch and
temperature, by a hypersensitivity for tastes and pains, by sheer disgust, and he will
always bring his undertakings in harmony with his fictitious masculine guiding line by
wanting to be measured on a different scale. Foolishness and superstitions, the self-
arranged belief in a disastrous destiny, the firmly rooted conviction of one’s own bad
luck, these serve the same safeguarding tendency that constructs for itself the proof that
the personality is not responsible and that caution is necessary. The hallucinatory
arousal of fear, of which the neurotic makes abundant use as a weapon and a safeguard,
works in the same direction.
This book seeks to provide as much proof as possible that the traits of character, as
well as the emotional predispositions, are in the service of the guiding fiction. The
neurotic’s guiding line, leading steeply upwards as it does, exacts quite special means
and forms of life, which are brought together under the not very coherent concept of the
neurotic symptom. At one point we may find among them safeguards in hidden places,
which set the neurotic system of associations in exact motion, incomprehensible
blocking devices and protective fights, which successfully organize the central impulse,
the will to power; at another point there may be—and these are often hard to understand
—deviations comparable to secret routes in order not to lose the guiding line when the
direct route towards the masculine triumph appears to be blocked. One will often find
an apparently tentative alternation of nervous manifestations, until the more severe
symptom guarantees the harmony with the guiding idea. I believe to have described
these manifestations and their psychogenesis, too, in context and to a sufficient extent in
this work. They are all based on abilities that have been practiced and prepared over a
long time, abilities whose overestimation is supported by the method of neurotic
apperception and which is founded on its suitability toward the struggle for the ideal
feeling of self-worth. The preparations themselves belong to the beginning of the
neurosis, they accompany the construction of the personality idea and adapt themselves
to it. They may be recognized most easily in the childhood memories that have been
retained, in dreams that return often, in the expressions of the face and body and
repetitive behavior, in the play of children, and in the fantasies about their future
occupations and about the future.
14 See ‘Über neurotische Disposition’ and ‘Die Lehre von der Organminderwertigkeit in

der Philosophie und Psychologie.’ In: Heilen und Bilden, l.c. (see endnote)
It is the essence of a guiding idea that has been set high that it alienate its carrier,
the neurotic, from reality. Quite often this condition will manifest itself in a ‘feeling of
strangeness’ that is, however, in its turn overestimated and put to tendentious use, in
order to recommend a cautious retreat in an insecure situation. From time to time, and
in apparent contradiction to this ‘Retreat!,’ the unwarranted feeling of being familiar
with a situation, the feeling of ‘déjà vu’v will emerge, often to warn or encourage in the
form of a hidden analogy.15 I sometimes could observe how neurotic students, under the
feeling of predestination, announced their wish to speak on a completely unknown
question and then completely failed. Experiences like that may cause the neurotic to
experience his just emerging, emphasized feeling of ‘familiarity’ as extremely suspect,
as if he suffered from a permanent, sour aftertaste. The security by means of an
exaggerated personality idea and the attachment to it will also often determine the
feeling or even the fact of a certain unworldiness, which is usually, however,
tendentiously exaggerated. Fear of everything new, difficulty of movement,
awkwardness, timidity and taciturnity then accompany the neurotic, who has an
aversion against reality and society, and they invariably reveal his striving to reinterpret,
refashion and reconstruct reality, to experience it as hostile and futile, at the same time
revealing his lack of community feeling. This deficiency, too, will seek its
compensation and finds it in less severe cases in a counter-fiction leading to reality, a
counter-fiction that in its abstract, most insistent form seeks to exaggerate the meaning
of reality in order to establish, from an exaggerated fear of mistakes and defeat,
predispositions for every possible case. The vacillation between ideal and reality finds
an exaggerated expression in the neurotic psyche, in which skepticism as the paradigm
of the preparation to restrain prepares the search for ‘absolute truth,’ according to the
neurotic’s final goal. Or the outer forms will become pedantic, held on to as a fetish and
overestimated as if they would guarantee security. It appears to me that the following
passage from Hebbel’s letters16 points towards this feature: ‘It is impossible to honor
sufficiently the outer forms that one makes fun of so rashly in youth, for in a world
without rules and without rest they are the only lines that help us make the necessary
distinctions.’ In small things as in great, the craving to search for security will always
be evident; and man will always search for it in analogies and by abstract, dogmatic
methods.
15 The feeling of strangeness and the feeling of familiarity in the neurosis are

analogous to the image of warning and the exhortations by an inner voice in dreams, in
hallucinations and in psychosis. The first demonstratively indicates the fact that the
patient has not become at home on earth, that he is already feeling himself as good as a
higher being to whom life has nothing to offer. Adjoining this are comparable universal
feelings that also derive from pride: feeling as if one were in a dream, feeling confused
and dazed, feeling that one is different, etc. The relation of the description of this
condition with that of ‘closing off,’ of instances of the ‘twilight state,’ of delirium, but
also with that of extasis, cannot be denied. This ability to tear oneself away from
adapting, the capacity for ‘depersonalization’ (Janet) is closely connected to the almost
complete smothering of the feeling of self-worth. Pride takes over command almost
exclusively. With it, logic, creation and coherence of the human psyche are lost. (see
endnote)
The frequency with which sexual guiding lines are found in neurosis, or even more
the priority they assume, can be explained on the following grounds: 1. because they
can furnish an appropriate expression of the masculine protest; 2. because it is within
the patient’s options to experience them as real; 3. because the neurotic, according to
the way things go, can use them to avoid being ‘subjected’ to love and so furtively tries
to sabotage the community. In order to give it a wide berth, he will fulfill himself with
troublesome sexual material.
The suitability of the sexual, fictitious guiding line will, accordingly, also lie in its
value for the security of the feeling of self-worth, and is attached to its importance as an
abstraction and to its hallucinatory excitability, to its ability to make itself concrete and
to easily allow anticipations.
The hallucinatory character of the neurotic is accordingly a special case of the
security mechanism. It uses, just as speech and thought do, those primitive memories
that have been reduced to their smallest dynamic level, to which it is led by the
abstracting force of the searching safeguarding tendency. Its function and task is to
calculate, from simple experiences that lie in childhood, the way to elevation by
analogy, by emphasizing set-backs that have been experienced or by recalling
comforting memories of evils that have been overcome. The hallucinatory power
represents a complete predisposition of the over-strained safeguarding tendency and
takes its material, just as the functions of thinking and thinking ahead, from the cast-
iron stock of, in this case, neurotically directed recollections. What other authors call
regression in the neurosis, in dreams and in hallucinations, is the everyday process of
thought that falls back upon experiences, and this can only concern the material, and
can never explain the dynamics of dreams or hallucinations. The psychic dynamics of
hallucinations17 consist rather in the fact that in a situation of insecurity, a directing line
will be sought by force, and will be hypostasized by means of abstraction, by analogy,
with experience’s ability for assessment, through anticipation and the fictitious
representation that comes close to sensory perception. This last ability, which is the
most effective means of expression, may, because of the counter-fiction that inclines
towards reality as well as dreams and fantasies, be experienced as being in conscious
opposition to reality, or the safeguarding tendency may dissolve the counter-fiction and
let the hallucination be experienced as real, as for instance in schizophrenia.
16R. M. Werner, ‘Aus Hebbels Frühzeit,.’ In: Österreichische Rundschau 1911. (From

Hebbel’s Early Years; Austrian Review) (see endnote)

Jodlw defines civilization as “the striving of man, increased under specific
circumstances and with particular intensity, to make his personality and his life secure
against the hostile forces of nature as well as against other people’s antagonism, to find
increasing satisfaction for his needs, both real and ideal, and to develop his personality
without obstructions.” The neurotic will keep his eye much more steadily on this
guiding line, but he may also, depending on his needs, give a more schematic and
dogmatic expression to the guiding line that leads into the transcendent or the counter-
fiction that inclines towards culture, the latter in the sense of a neurotic deviation, for
example if he appears to submit himself largely to the ‘antagonism of other people’ as a
martyr, but in doing so defeats them, in the way Tolstoyx, for instance, has brought this
into a system. The masochist, too, feels that he is a dictator when he forces his wishes
onto the other person.
The development of this striving, to develop his personality without obstructions,
to reach the pinnacle of what the neurotic might call his culture, leads us, once again,
back to the interesting and psychologically important preparations that we mentioned
before, to the tentative efforts which are supposed to introduce the compensation of the
original inferiority feeling. All incomplete, infantile organs strive with all their innate
abilities and possibilities to development, to form purposeful, we might say intelligent,
predispositions. In these efforts of constitutionally inferior organs, with their numerous
failures, the impression of insecurity will grow as a result of the greater tension towards
the demands of the external world, and the low self-esteem of the child will bring about
a permanent inferiority feeling. This is how, already from the very earliest years of
childhood on, control over a certain situation will be undertaken according to an ideal
example, usually taken beyond this example and made into a ‘Leitmotiv,’ a permanent
impulse of the will is being fixated, automated, in order to transfer the permanent
command to one guiding ideal — the will to power. This is also the objective in the
neurotic psyche, which consciously or unconsciously corresponds to the formula: I must
act in such a way that I will become master of the situation in the end. If the child
remains in the phase of the inferiority feeling for a longer period, this will lead to a
heightening and strengthening of the intensity of this guiding formula, so that from the
particular intensity of all striving, of the preparations, the predispositions, the
characteristics in any period of development an original inferiority feeling may well be
inferred. One will also find these tentative efforts in those organs that are close to
normal, as the dispositions for walking, seeing, eating, and hearing are developed.
Exnery emphasizes that in the development of the child’s ability to speak, these tentative
efforts precede the successful execution of combinations of sounds. The development of
the preparations will be much more abnormal during the development of inferior
organs, whose predispositions and methods of operation will evoke, in the favorable
case of overcompensation, artistic achievements and proficiencies, but often, as is the
case with neurosis, will hardly ever develop at all, because they are protected by
cautiousness. The child is trying to get to know his faults, to remedy them or to make
them profitable by means of some artifice by the means offered by the safeguarding
tendency. Since he does not know the true basis of his own inferiority, and often does
not want to know out of pride, he will easily be tempted to bring other reasons forward,
to blame the ‘apparent hostility of lifeless objects,’ and in most cases the relatives—and
so the child takes up an aggressive, hostile position towards the actual external world,
just as pampered and hated children do.
17See: ‘Über Halluzination.’ In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c. (On

Hallucination) (see endnote)

Usually the child will retain some vague suspicion, the expectation of an evil
destiny, as an abstract remainder of his inferiority feeling, which the child likes to
exaggerate, and if the situation allows him, often restructures into feelings of guilt to
justify the development of his foresight, his caution, his standing still. The neurotic
striving will ultimately result in expanding and securing the personality’s limits, in that
the individual’s own powers are continually measured and tested against the difficulties
of the external world. Quite a number of the neurotic’s inclinations may be traced back
to these intensive efforts, his tendency to play with fire, to create and seek out
dangerous situations, and his pleasure in cruelty and the diabolical. The inclinations to
criminality, just as the sadistic impulses, depend on the guiding line to superiority, but
they will often be frustrated by the developing contradiction to the community feeling
and they will then more often be tendentiously exaggerated in memories, and so they
shrink back from being put into practice. The neurotic state has a predilection for the
use of deficient functioning of organs, of the typical deficiencies of childhood, of the
feeling of illness in general, on the one hand to secure the patient’s feeling of selfworth
—usually by means of a stubborn revolt—initially against the demands of parental
authority and later against life itself. On the other hand, in the style of an artful
obstruction, to put off decisions and conflicts that might become dangerous for the
fiction, to give up certain strategic positions in order to hold on to more important ones.
Indeed, the neurotic will often seek out minor defeats and will even bring them about
artificially, or he will create dangerous prospects, so that he may infer the justification
for his neurotic actions and his cautiousness from them. In neurotically retained
childhood deficiencies one should always expect a particular stubbornness and strong
aggression against the father and the mother.
A compulsive searching to understand external difficulties, efforts to conquer
them, to control them, to fight them, disdain for and devaluation of life and its pleasures
or flight from them are thus characteristic for one side of the neurosis. Nowadays this is
quite often accompanied by the patient’s glowing enthusiasm about life, about work,
about love and marriage, glowing, but platonic enthusiasm,18 while he is secretly using
the neurosis to barricade his entry to them, to secure his feeling of domination within a
narrow range, in the family, with the father or the mother.
This outlook of the neurotic, outwardly directed, fearful and cautious, intended to
safeguard the guiding fiction, is also regularly accompanied by a higher intensity of
self-scrutiny. From time to time, in situations of psychic insecurity, the personified,
deified guiding ideal can be found in the form of a ‘second self,’ as an inner voice,
analogous to Socrates’z daemon cautioning, inciting and accusing. And everything that
we are told by neurasthenics and hypochondriacs, as they are rummaging in their own
inner selves, how keen they are to control and attend every action of their lives, all this
is in every way valid for the neurotic as well. Self-scrutiny may lead to a limitation of
the battle-ground in that it uses the expressions of the fear of disease, while the neurotic
is always in a position to begin his safeguarding retreat and to indulge in his ‘organic’
feelings instead of his problems, and yet, ‘notwithstanding their burden,’ to solve his
task. It should be thought of as effective when the suspicion of defeat is accompanied
by the primitive safeguards of fear, shame and shyness, the more complicated ones of
disgust, conscience, and neurotic attacks, in order to prevent the feeling of self-worth
from sinking below the required level as a result of that expected defeat. Self-scrutiny
and self-esteem, always stimulated and strengthened by the guiding fiction so as to
create an operational base and to introduce aggression, immediately activate the
neurotic, dogmatic characteristics of envy, greed, dominance etc. In the neurotic’s
ongoing attempts to compete and struggle for his own value, and against that of others,
his increased self-observation plays an integral part, by passing signals to foresight and
fantasy and making their presence known when the patient is avoiding a decision or, for
the same purpose, delivers himself up to permanent doubt. That all these self-
observations originate in and are forced to come out by the feeling of insufficiency, is
equally easy to understand as the fact that they will eventually reach the goal towards
which they have actually been working: caution. Thus, self-scrutiny is to an equal
extent hesitation, egotism, megalomania, wisdom after the event, doubt and
insignificance, and it touches on all other phenomena that find instigation in the feelings
of inferiority; it serves more in particular to the enhancement of the ‘characteristics of
the masculine protest’ such as courage, pride, ambition, etc., and also to a deepening of
all security tendencies such as frugality, accuracy, diligence and cleanliness. Self-
scrutiny influences the attention and also serves to steer it, so that it occupies a
prominent position in the web of security tendencies. Its results, however, are
tendentiously falsified. It would be a great mistake to consider them to be libidinous or
to produce pleasure. Its function is rather to tendentiously arrange all impressions from
the external world and to bring them under a unifying heading, in such a way that the
primary insecurity of the individual is being protected from being exposed,
mathematically, so to speak, or statistically, according to some calculated probability,
that the individual may avoid a defeat. In Über die neurotische Dispositionaa (l.c.) I
have stressed this dynamic of the neurosis for the first time and it is the task of the
present work to present it in a more profound and more extended way. This self-
observation, then, once it is aroused and deepened, lies on the way to the neurosis, even
if it occasionally bears magnificent fruit in philosophy, psychology and selfknowledge.
It is the private philosophy of the neurotic, moving away from reality by missing the
mark, of his delusion — which may be corrected by analysis — that has a valuable
analogy in the γνωτι σεαυτονββ of the noble philosopher. The apparently incorrigible
delusion in the ruminations and fantastic self-observations of the psychotic, which is so
much easier to see through as being an arranged delusion to secure self-esteem, teaches
us to understand the distortion in the neurotic’s self-observations.
 18 For beginners or in the case of particular difficulties in the psychologic analysis
it may be recommended that they close their ears and pay attention exclusively to the
physical and psychic movements, as if watching a pantomime.
The striving of the neurotic for security, his securities themselves, may therefore
only be observed if one takes the original, opposite evaluating factor of insecurity into
account. Both are results from a judgment that arranges everything on an antithetical
basis, and that has come to depend on the fictional personality ideal, which offers,
however, only tendentious, ‘subjective’ evaluations. The feeling of security and that of
its opposite, insecurity, arranged like the contrasting set of inferiority feeling and
feeling of self-worth, are like this latter a pair of fictional values, a psychic construction
of which Vaihingercc says ‘that in them, reality has been artfully dismantled, that they
make sense and have value only together, but that individually, through isolation, they
will lead to senselessness, contradictions and illusionary problems.’ In the analysis of
psychoneuroses it will often appear that these contrasting pairs resolve themselves
along the ‘contrast’ that is understood in a real sense, i.e., ‘man–woman,’ so that the
inferiority feeling, insecurity, being ‘below,’ and femininity, will end up on one side of
the table of contrasts, and security, being ‘above,’ personality ideal, and masculinity on
the other. The dynamics of the neurosis can be observed accordingly, and in its effect on
the neurotic’s psyche they will often be understood like that by the neurotic himself, as
if the patient would wish to change from a woman into a man or to hide his un-
masculinity. These endeavors furnish, in their many-colored abundance, the picture of
what I have called the ‘masculine protest.’
The strength of the masculine influence in our cultural ideal, as well as, more in
particular, in the neurotic’s fictional guiding line, an influence that we find in what our
patients want, in how they behave, think and feel, in their attitudes towards the outer
world, in their preparations for life and in their predispositions, in every characteristic,
in every physical and psychic gesture — which provides the momentum for advance
and directs the line of life upwards — clearly indicates that at the outset of the psychic
development a lack of such masculinity was felt, and that the original inferiority feeling
of the constitutionally disadvantaged child, based on this contrast, is considered to be
feminine. Whatever may have been the basis of the inferiority feeling — if, by setting
up the masculine fiction, a strong neurotic safeguard is introduced and accordingly
made concrete, the presupposed foundation of the child’s insecurity will fall away, and
this insecurity itself, as a result of the neurotic contrastive arrangement, will be
experienced as a feminine phenomenon. The feeling of smallness, of weakness, of
anxiety and clumsiness, of sickness, of deficiency, of pain, of softness, will then
provoke reactions in the neurotic as if he must defend himself against a femininity
living within himself, and therefore must react in a masculine and strong fashion. In the
same way this response will be the result, the disposition of the masculine protest for
mental disturbance will react against every degradation, against the feeling of
insecurity, of curtailment, inferiority and submission, and so as not to lose his way
upwards, in order to make his safeguard complete, the neurotic will draw constantly
active guiding lines for his desires, actions and thoughts in the form of characteristic
traits in the wide, chaotic fields of his psyche. One will usually find that these
characteristics strive towards the masculine ideal in a straight line, both in male and
female patients; however, in accordance with earlier explanations, and particularly
following a decisive defeat of the patient, the neurotic subterfuges, attacks and
dispositions to attack, all of which we are already familiar with and whose
psychological integration and arrangement into the whole once again exhibit the
characteristic tendency towards elevation of the masculine feeling of self-worth,
manifest themselves, even if they would seem to be, from an external, superficial point
of view, timid, fearful, unmasculine, and might also be taken for an escape or retreat
from life. The simple question with regard to the persistence of the often far-fetched
expedients in the form of neurotic symptoms enables us to understand that in these
latter cases no decision has been made, but that the initially constructed, fictional
masculine guiding goal is active as before, and that there can be no question of cultural
adaptation, peace and contentment because the goal has been set too high. The
‘feminine’ lines will then appear as a first act, which is followed by a second,
‘masculine’ one, or the ultimate development will be delayed by the neurosis.
Certain insecurities of the child concerning his own sexual role notably reinforce
the masculine influence on the guiding fiction. Indeed, one may observe in all children
how the immense interest in sexual differences comes to light, usually in some hidden
form. The uniformity of children’s dress during their first years, feminine traits in little
boys, masculine ones in little girls, certain threats the parents make, such as that a boy
will be changed into a girl, disapproving remarks to boys that they are like girls and to
girls that they are like boys, can only serve to increase this insecurity as long as the
difference between the sexual organs remains unknown. But even if this has been
explained to the fullest extent it is still possible that because of anomalies of the sexual
organs, or wrong judgment and threats, certain doubts will arise that are clung to as
prejudices and will reappear again and again in later life in the contrastive picture of the
‘masculine or feminine,’ so that our original conclusion19 that the basis of neurotic
doubt is often the uncertainty about one’s own sexual role, only needs to be
complemented in this sense, that the neurosis maintains this position of uncertainty of
the patient against any decisions, in order to further expand the ‘hesitating’ attitude.
The longer the uncertainty about the own sexual role persists, the more pressing
the efforts and tentative preparations to attain the masculine role will become. Thus the
original picture of the masculine protest comes into being, whose goal it is, in all
circumstances, to thrust its carrier into the most masculine position possible, or
otherwise, as happens, usually already at the age of three, with girls and boys who have
been neurotically affected at an early stage, to prevent degradation in all its forms by
means of neurotic expedients, while at the same time developing straight-lined
masculine characteristics and strong affectdispositions.
The preliminary stage of the knowledge of one’s own sexual role, the psychic
hermaphroditism of the child, is probably present regularly. Its importance has been
called to attention by Dessoirdd and myself. That this stage, with its strong tendency
towards the masculine lines, is of the greatest significance for the development of the
neurosis with its highly elevated masculine guiding goal and its safeguards was shown
to me by the analysis of psychoneuroses. Goetheee proves himself to be a good observer
and an excellent judge of the childish psyche when he remarks in Wilhelm Meisters
theatralische Sendung: ‘As children, at a certain point, become aware of the differences
between the sexes, and their glances through the covers that hide these secrets produce
quite wonderful movements in their nature, so it happened to Wilhelm, too, when he
discovered this; he was more quiet and more unquiet than before, thought that he had
learned something and yet he noticed that because of this, that he knew nothing at all.’
In fact one finds as the first expression of this inexperience and its reductive effect
on the psyche an enormous increase in curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and in order
to give his life some direction at least, the child will come under pressure of a guiding
line that forces him to act as though he should know everything. If the child has
experienced the superiority of the masculine principle in our society, then the guiding
image will be fashioned in a masculine way, more in particular when a man, the father,
appears to the child as the person possessing knowledge.20
Peculiar characteristics, which become clearer in the neurosis, manifest themselves
in little girls who try to hold on to the masculine guiding line in this fashion. The feeling
of being depreciated is most predominant among them, as it is among boys who
consider themselves feminine, and this in such a degree that they are only interested and
motivated to collect proof of this depreciation and increase their aggression against their
environment. Images of castration, of feminization, of transformation into a man, of
masculine forms of life will pop up during analysis as signposts in the neurotic
psyche,21 indicating the urge for equivalence to men, and these will make the masculine
fiction reappear over and over again in the later changes of form that the guiding lines
undergo. The typical psychic attitude which these neurotics will regularly assume is one
of having suffered some kind of loss, or they will behave as if they must be very careful
in avoiding to suffer such a loss. E. H. Meyer informs us in his Indogermanic Myths (I.
page 16): ‘According to the Atharva Vedaff, the Gadharves (phallic demons) eat boys’
testicles, and so transform the boys into girls.’ The ideas about the origin of the sexes
that many neurotics seem to have had in childhood often take this or similar shapes, as
if from thoughts about a degradation that has been suffered and which manifests itself
in a sexual image of feminization. The immediate psychic result will then usually be a
more acute aggression against the parents, who are blamed for this degradation, and an
intensive search for balance.
19 ‘Psychischer Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der Neurose.’ In: Heilen und

Bilden. l.c.; and the studies in: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie. (see
endnote)
20See Hedwig Schulhof, Individualpsychologie und Frauenfrage. (IP and the Feminist

Question). (see endnote)

Fließgg, Halbanhh, Weiningerii, Steinachjj and before them among others
Schopenhauerkk and Krafft-Ebbingll base psychic hermaphroditism on the presence of a
hypothetical masculine or feminine substance in an individual. Our idea only
presupposes the contrast, such as it actually exists, in the appreciation of the masculine
and the feminine, and we take into account the general spreading of the contrastive,
metaphorical scheme of apperception: ‘masculine — feminine’ and, from the
compulsion exerted by the neurotically intensified and elevated personality ideal, we
infer the masculine influence, which is easy enough to detect. The latter also determines
the emphasis that is put on the feeling of the individual’s own inferiority by creating an
image belonging to the feminine role, in order to react to it with the emotions,
dispositions and typical characteristics of the masculine protest. A series of recent
works from the Freudian school have taken up the conclusions that I have published. If
we pursue this matter further, we will inevitably be led to recognize that the theory of
the libido is untenable, to discard sexual etiology and to an understanding of neurotic
sexual conduct as a mistaken fiction22 corresponding to our normal situation of
disinformation.
If we have thus come to understand the masculine protest as an expedient of the
psyche, by means of which it seeks to achieve full security and to bring itself into
protective conformity with the guiding personality ideal, it still remains for us to take a
careful look at the change of form of this guiding line, as it occurs every time when its
inherent contradictions become apparent and the goal of the neurotic striving, the wish
for superiority, is jeopardized. This is the case when reality threatens to seriously
degrade the feeling of self-worth, to put it to the test, or to defeat it. Particularly in such
cases, the neurotic will hold on to his ‘ideal’ more strictly than the normal person.
However, the more wrapped up in his reassuring neurosis he is, the sooner he will, in
anticipation of possible damage and supported by memories and mementos, construct
new neurotic deviations and apply further neurotic safeguards, which contain neither a
fiat nor a negation for any problem under consideration, but rather both at once,
although it will eventually result in a negation. His psychic-hermaphroditic character
will also manifest itself in that he will give way, submit himself, in a sense will become
‘feminine,’ whereas, at the same time, his endeavors reveal a tendency to advance, to
dominate, towards masculinity, with the result that he does not make any progress
whatsoever, since for every step forward he takes one backward, sometimes even
expressing this behavior in pantomime, as it occurs from time to time in compulsive
neurosis. Similarly, the fear of being humiliated, punished or put to shame, in short, of
being ‘below,’ may alter his straightforward masculine characteristics. The construction
of neurotic feelings of guilt, of ‘hereditary’ diseases and congenital criminal instincts,
of brutality, cruelty and egoism provides terrifying signs, in the same way as the
feelings of shyness, cowardice, clumsiness, stupidity and laziness that are expressed
neurotically. The bad, ineducable child, the years of adolescence, many forms of
psychosis, and often the preliminary stage of the ‘fully-fledged’ neurosis, show us the
masculine protest at a higher, straight-lined level of development. The performances are
upheld directly by the surge of the masculine protest as it has become an end in itself,
representing the intensified guiding fiction completely and entirely.
21 Freud came to an identical conclusion later.
22See also Oswald Schwarz, Wiener klin. Wochenschr. 1922 (Vienna weekly clinical

publication). (see endnote)

Our theoretical description of the neurotic psyche would be incomplete if it did not
also consider the nature and meaning of dreams. It is impossible for me to advance at
this place an elaborated, let alone complete, theory of dreams. However, for several
reasons I am obliged to communicate all observations and results that my research of
dreams in the practical part of this work has provided. In the course of the many long
years in which I studied the dreams of both healthy and unhealthy people, I have
reached the following conclusions:23
1. The dream is a sketch-like reflection of psychic attitudes and indicates, for the
researcher, how the dreamer intuitively takes up a position to a problem close at hand.
It will, therefore, coincide with the form of the fictional guiding line, and will only
provide attempts to think ahead, tentative preparations of an aggressive attitude. This is
why it may be used to great advantage for the understanding of these individual
preparations, the dispositions, and guiding fiction.
2. Similarly, the dreamer’s attitudes to the world around him, as well as his typical
characteristics24 and their neurotic divergencies, will come to light in a more or less
abstract manner. The abstraction found in the kind of thinking constituted by dreams
has been forced by the safeguarding tendency, which seeks to solve a problem by
making it less complicated and by leading it back to a simpler, a more childish picture
on the lines of the individual style of life, rather than by using logic; this is
accomplished by the same means employed by all thinking, albeit in a more profound
way, by using tendentious, selective memory, in a metaphorical, analogous manner,
through the hallucinatory evocation of terrifying or stimulating recollections. The
partial exclusion of reality by sleep supports the more abstract thinking in dreams, since
correction is to a large extent impossible as the sense-organs are sleeping. This
circumstance, as well as the lack of a consciously formulated goal within the reasoning
of the dream, are the reason why the dreamer is incapable of coming to an
understanding of the contents of the dream; in any case the dream will acquire meaning
only if it is taken as a symbol of life, an analogy, an ‘as if,’ the real driving force for
which can only be provided by interpretation.
23 See for more details: Theorie und Praxis der Individualpsychologie, l.c. and in

the 4th number of the 5th year’s issue of the Internat. Zft. f. Indiv.-Psycholgie. (Theory
and practice of IP; International Journal of IP) (see endnote)
24G. Chr. Lichtenberg already wrote: ‘If people would tell their dreams candidly, it

would be easier to read their character from them than from their faces.’ (see endnote)
3. These facts, still to be proven, and the form of expression taken by dreams, the
‘as if’ (‘It seemed to me as if’), reveal to us the nature of the dream as a fiction in
which those tentative efforts and tests manifest themselves that the individual
inclination to control a situation intends to put to use in the future. In the dreams of
neurotic persons one can observe, therefore, more clearly than in others, the neurotic
method of apperception, working on the principle of strong contrasts, the accentuated
feeling of self-worth and the guiding personality ideal, or one may infer them in
connection with their psyche. Nightly misgivings are often present in them, as opposed
to the visible fervor shown by day; just as Penelope, the patient unravels at night what
he has woven by day.
4. The progress of the neurotically intensified guiding line will often express itself
in the neurotic’s dreams, at least in the image of striving ‘upward,’ or the masculine
protest. The feminine or ‘below’ base of operation is always indicated.
5. Repeated dreams of identical content and dreams remembered from childhood
show the fictional guiding line most clearly. For these build themselves up on an
already finished scheme, or one that is found to be useful, a scheme erected and
maintained by the neurotic final goal. The various dreams of a single night indicate that
several solutions are attempted and are typical for a feeling of great uncertainty. The so-
called ‘dream-censorship’ (Freud), as a result of which the concealment or disguise of
an actual fact is achieved by distortion, reveals itself as the activity of the safeguarding
tendency, which has as its purpose the change of the fiction’s form in the neurosis as
well as in the dream, and, from an appropriate distance, tries to avoid contradicting the
more masculine guiding line by circuitous routes. Other ‘distortions’ lie in the nature of
the abstract thinking in dreams, in the use of deceptive comparisons, and in its character
as a mere reflection.
6. The symbolism and artifice of analogy within dreams are the emanation, in both
form and contents, of dynamic affect-reinforcements, their artificial word-pictures, so to
speak. They are the psychic superstructure over a necessary connection between the
psychic situation and a tendentious, mostly false, sophistically requisitioned memento,
which is supposed to furnish the resonance required by the ‘ideal.’ The superiority of
my rational interpretation of dreams also lies in the fact that we now come into a
position where we can point out to the dreamer what is his tendency and the more
obvious tricks of falsification that he performs in his dreams, by means of which he is
trying to hold on to his line.
The fulfillment of infantile wishes and later also the wish to die and regression in
dreams as it has been put forward by Freud is thus resolved into an attempt to think
ahead, to achieve security, in which tendentiously grouped memories, and by no means
the libidinous or sexual desires from childhood are used as mementos to help, a psychic
trick that dominates logical reasoning as well. The nature of the neurosis and its dreams
and delusions manifest themselves as different from the norm only in that the tendency
to choose the activated memories is intensified by the intensified fiction, or in short, the
neurotic perspective. The neurotic is not suffering from his reminiscences, but is
creating them. Accordingly, a dynamic method of observation is necessary if we want to
come to an understanding of the dream and the neurosis.
As soon as it has been found, the point of comparison, the goal, which is
absolutely necessary for the orientation and security of all actions, and which will be set
higher as the inferiority feeling rests on the child’s shoulders heavier and longer, must
be stabilized, hypostasized, declared to be holy, to be divine, for such reasons as
mentioned above, and compelled by the need for comparison and the adjustments that
take place in childhood. On the one hand there are the real conditions and actions of the
subject, on the other, as a compensatory result of the inferiority feeling, there is God,
the guiding ideal, metaphorically apperceived in a single person, in a single event. This
latter, ideal point now operates as if it had been given all directing force. This is how,
from organic, objective life, the first reflex — or instinct — or urge, what we call the
living soul, the psyche, comes into being.
Every step the child takes is in accordance with this system, and is directed by it. It
is an incessant process of weighing, groping, preparing and measuring with respect to
the ideal that brings the child forward in his development. The child measures himself
with men as well as with women, and in doing so, the ‘oppositeness’ of the sexes
provides yet another line of support and makes a psychic adjustment towards an
opposite and in a certain sense hostile, evasive line, the masculine line, compulsory. In
the neurotically disposed child the compensatory safeguarding tendency, heightened by
the feeling of insecurity, will bring about, as he is pitching attention ever higher, the
abstractneurotically deepened directing lines to the extravagant goal that is the
masculine protest. And the oppositeness between the sexes, as it is realized more keenly,
will provide earlier and more penetratingly the preparatory attitudes towards the other
sex, even more so if, as is the case with the neurotic, the exclusively masculine
evaluation of the ideal reflects on his inferiority feeling, and makes it seem feminine.
The very fact that upbringing takes place within the family circle is the reason why
the initial attempts to obtain a personality ideal are derived from the characteristics of
the most important members of the family, most often the father. Neurotically disposed
children who experience an intensification of their inferiority feeling in contrasting
themselves with their father will immediately begin preparations and construct devices
to fight, as if they had to surpass their father. In these preparatory attempts also lies the
attitude towards the other sex, that is, insofar as the child’s intellect can be mistaken as
far as his own sexual role is concerned, and many of the dispositions intended for the
future are practiced tentatively, awake or hallucinating in dreams, expectingly, in a
playful manner25 on members of the family of the opposite sex.
The role-model that, in a certain sense, the mother plays for the boy, has, as is well
known, been mentioned by Nietzschemm. As far as this is concerned, the limits that the
child draws for himself are a matter of experiment by the child. If the child is
neurotically disposed, his desires lack any limitation whatsoever. Dissatisfied because
the distance to his personality ideal is too great, the child will occasionally develop
sexual wishes towards the mother, a proof of the limitless intensity of the will to power.
Fixation of a sexual relation, however, must have other grounds than wishes that were,
at some time, nourished in a sphere where no limits existed. The boy’s desires also
extend to other female persons in his surroundings. The picture will then again be
relative to perversion. ‘The wish to possess the mother’ will become a sign of his
discontent, a symbol of his lack of moderation, of his obstinacy and his fear of other
women, his lack of community feeling. Now it is possible that in later life a ‘fixation’ on
the mother may occur from similar constellations, in any case also because the fixation
on the mother seems to be a safeguard against eroticism, not, however, because the
desire used to be libidinous at an earlier stage. For it does not matter what the nature of
the real relation with the mother was — the neurotic’s psyche will in any case use it, in
one way or another, as a safeguard against entering the community. Pampered children’s
attachment to the mother, which plays an important role in neurosis, requires separate
treatment. See also: Adler, Schwer erziehbaren Kindernn, Verlag Dresden, Am andern
Ufer.
The feeling of being depreciated is hampering the neurotic’s pleasure of
establishing contact with and being part of a community. His mood will continuously be
brought in a state in which he wants to take, and this interferes with his openness and
satisfaction and pushes him to think of himself more than of others. He will therefore be
unable to spread joy around him. He will, at the most, get as far as dispensing favors.
It is a frequent and characteristic finding that those parts of the body that are by
their nature inferior, develop a more delicate sensibility whose stimulation may from
time to time adapt a pleasurable character. I have described this phenomenon in the
Studie über Minderwertigkeit von Organen and trace its origin back to compensatory
arrangements that have come into operation among the individual’s ancestors in their
struggle for self-preservation when the organ, or part of the organ, in question was
threatened. This compensatory participation, at this stage of higher value, of an inferior
organ — inferior because it had sustained damage in the individual’s ancestry — is, in
fact, a kind of safety device, even if it proves to be an ineffective one. However, since
its technique has fundamentally changed and no longer keeps up with that of the organs
nearby, the psychic manifestations that are linked to this organ will also be conspicuous,
and conspicuously far from what is normal. This concerns the similar, if more minute,
variation on the basis of inferiority which I have cited in the biological explanation of
the variation, refinement and degeneration of organs26.
25See ‘Zur Lehre vom Widerstand.’ In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie,

l.c. (About the Theory of Resistance) (see endnote)

In this way, for instance, within the range of the nutritive organ, the apparatus that
senses taste has evolved as a security device, along with which, however, it developed
as a device of pleasure that then became responsible for the continuity of nutrition and a
proper selection of food. The variation, in comparison with the ancestors, is brought
about by ‘compensatory tendencies’ that are introduced into the genes. ‘Trend and
opportunity (in a broader sense, the social surroundings) dominate the genes’ and this
explains the prompt and uniform reaction — inferiority + compensatory safeguard —
by changes in the living conditions in the broadest sense, that is to say: all living
creatures within a single species will vary in the same way if an identical change occurs
in their way of life. With regard to human society one should keep firmly in mind that
— more than in the animal and vegetable kingdoms — the demands on single
individuals are both quantitatively and qualitatively quite diverse, so that their organ
inferiorities and their compensatory safeguards show a wide range of variation. And
these variations would be even more conspicuous27 if the human psyche, as the main
safeguarding organ, would not have thrust itself into the sphere of correlations and
compensations with such overpowering force. From this time on, the most influential of
the safeguarding tendencies will no longer manifest themselves as variations in the
organs themselves, but in the first place as psychic peculiarities. Notwithstanding this it
will remain easy to prove a connection, and we may infer from variations in the organs,
stigmata and signs of degeneration that the brain has made increased compensatory
arrangements and that extended safeguarding tendencies exist in the psyche. As the
nature and tendency of all psychic phenomena are filled with attempts at taking
precautions and making preparations towards superiority, the conclusion is
unavoidable that psyche, spirit, reason and understanding are for us abstractions of
those active lines to which human beings reach out beyond the sphere of physical
sensations, to which they strive to extend their limitations, in order to conquer a place in
the world and be secure against threatening dangers. The defectiveness of the organ in
its independent activity is thus magically elevated to the secure path offered by
knowledge, understanding and foresight!
 26 Thus, the intrinsic value of an organ in the ‘stream of life’ becomes a symbol in
which past, present, future and fictional final goal – just as in the character or the
neurotic symptom – are all reflected. The idea of the ‘symbolism in [a person’s]
appearance’ is by no means new, and it may be found in Porta, Gall and Carus.
Recently Kretschmer has been following this line. (see endnotes)
27Psychic safeguarding among human beings with their dispositions and characters

resembles the safeguarding variations in animals so closely that fantasy of children,

neurotics, poets, indeed, even language itself often use this analogy to explain, by
metaphorical means, a psychic gesture, a disposition, a characteristic trait, in an animal
allegory, in coats of arms for instance, in poetical metaphors, in fables and parables. See
also Erckmann-Chatrian, Der berühmte Doktor Matthieu, Goethe’s Reineke Fuchs,
paintings and caricatures. (see endnotes)
In the animal kingdom, a finely adjusted technical apparatus may still be seen to
perform the function of knowledge in human beings. The extremely sensitive nose of
the dog has become superfluous for humans, or brought into their service; the sense of
taste of cattle lets them avoid poisonous plants while grazing, a purpose for which man
uses his understanding eye. But the tendency is, and always will be, that our ancestors’
struggle to preserve their life is made easier by means of evermore finely graded and
varied organs as well as more refined expedients of the psyche.
And so we are allowed to regard this kind of more sensitive, peripheral apparatus,
and its peculiar physiognomy and physical expression, as signs of an organ under
attack, as telltale signs of an organ inferiority that has been overcome. This is also true
for the peculiar development of the sense of taste in humans, and for the greater
sensitivity to stimulation of the mucous membrane of the lips and mouth, which is
usually accompanied by a greater responsiveness of the gums, the esophagus, and in
most cases also of the stomach and the digestive tract. Physiognomically, this
description of the inferior mouth will take the form of more mobile, thinner, sometimes
thicker lips, of the tongue (lingua scrotalis Schmidtoo), and of the gums, often
accompanied by signs of degeneration of these parts, enlarged tonsils or of the entire
status lymphaticus. Sometimes, however, a superior development in the sense of a
compensatory tendency will not come to light, and even the hyperesthesia will not be
present. Very common indeed are anomalies in the reflexes; increased as well as
decreased pharyngeal reflexes belong in this same picture. As far as childhood defects
are concerned, one will observe a greater preoccupation with the mouth and its
surrounding area, touching of the mouth, thumb-sucking, a tendency to put everything
in the mouth, vomiting. In so far as it is not hampered by other coexisting organ
inferiorities, the digestion in such cases is usually good.
But the ailments, the deprivation, the pampering and the pain that accompany the
child with an inferior alimentary tract from the cradle, while at the same time arousing a
feeling of inferiority, depreciation and insecurity, will push the constitutionally
predisposed child to resort to various tricks. The personality ideal, stronger developed,
exaggerated even, and precocious as it is, also comprises fictional goals of
gratifications that are so satisfying that reality cannot match them. The attention of
such children is, as is the nature of compulsory ideas, directed towards all problems of
nutrition and their sublimations (Nietzschepp). Being deprived of some delicacy will
provoke an entirely different reaction in them than we would expect. Their minds turn
to the kitchen, their play and their childish choice of profession will develop their
disposition for procuring food into fantasies about becoming a cook or a confectioner.
They realize at an earlier stage, and more deeply, the importance of money in acquiring
power, as well as a sense of greed and frugality. Stereotypical and pedantic habits
concerning eating are commonly found, basic actions such as: putting the best morsel in
the mouth first or last; the impatient will preferably follow the first, those more cautious
and frugal the latter course. Idiosyncrasies against certain foods, the refusal to eat, hasty
swallowing and an inability to swallow will often be maintained as gestures of
obstinacy and are an expression of the use of a nutritional problem as aggression
towards the parents. Apart from organic diseases of the inferior nutritional apparatus in
later life, among which I have drawn attention, in this typus, toward ulcus ventriculiqq,
appendicitis, cancer, diabetes, and diseases of the liver and gall bladder, a stronger
participation, and a more frequent use of functional disturbances of the stomach and
intestinal tracts often manifest themselves in the neurosis. Its very close relation to the
psyche is reflected in many neurotic and psychotic symptoms. I believe to be on the
track of a special artifice of this kind, but am as yet unable to present a conclusive
picture. A number of neurotic symptoms, such as erythrophobia, neurotic obstipation
and colic, asthma, and very probably also vertigo, vomiting, headache and migraine,
have some kind of relation, which is as yet not entirely clear to me, with an arbitrary but
unconscious simultaneous activity of anus-contraction (‘cramp’ in other authors,
‘sigmoid flexure’ Holzknechtrr, Singerss) and abdominal pressure, symbolic acts, a kind
of language of the stomach that is generated by the dominance of the intensified fiction.
Compulsive blushing and hysterical impotence often seem to be initiated by a
simultaneous occurrence of closure of the glottis and abdominal pressure.
I have found the acquisitiveness and greed for money and power of these types of
individuals to be remarkably prominent, and an essential characteristic in their
personality ideal.
Endnotes for Theoretical Part I-III
a need for tenderness

Compare Adler, Alfred: Das Zärtlichkeitsbedürfnis des Kindes. Monatshefte für

Pädagogik und Schulpolitik, 1, 1908, repr. in Heilen und Bilden 1914.
b ‘educability’

According to Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776 Oldenburg – 1841 Göttingen),

‘educability’, as a readiness to learn, an ability to learn, is a fundamental concept in
pedagogy, because without it all educational efforts must necesssarily remain without
result.
c Paulsen, Friedrich

(1846 Langenhorn/Husum – 1908 Berlin): Professor of philosophy in Berlin.

Besides philosophical publications his pedagogical theory, based on anthropology and
sociology was influential. He initiated pedagogy as a subject in university and
demanded
‘realistic education’ and school reform. He was opposed to Herbatianism.
(footnote1)Trotz und Gehorsam
A. Adler, ‘Trotz und Gehorsam’. Monatshefte für Pädagogik und Schulpolitik 2, 1910,
repr. in Heilen und Bilden 1914.
(footnote 2) Groos
See endnote on page 39.
(footnote 3) Bergson, Henri: fundamental theory
(1859 – 1941 Paris): His philosophy of life, revolving around the central spiritual
concept of the élan vital, was aimed against a mechanical-intellectualistic application of
concepts. For Bergson, reality cannot be totally captured in concepts, on account of
which he resorts to ‘intuition’. Subject and object become one in the practical-intuitive
experience of life as a fleeting continuity (durée).
d Charcot, Jean-Marie

(1825 – 1893 Paris): Professor of psychiatry, director of the school of La

Salpêtrière, and the most influential neurologist and psychiatrist of his time. He was
particularly interested in hysteria, hysterical paralysis, epileptic fits and hypnotism. See
also endnote ‘b’ on page xxi.
e Kant, Immanuel: our mind’s forms of perception

(1724 – 1804 Königsberg): (German: Anschauungsformen underer Verstandes)

For Kant, space and time are purely concepts of the perception without which there
would be no empirical experience and which, together with the categories of pure
reason,
make available regular syntheses of perceptible phenomena.
fJames, William

(1842 New York City – 1910 Chocorua NH): 1885 professor of philosophy, 1889
professor of psychology at Harvard. James is one of the ‘founding fathers’ of academic
psychology and at the same time one of its critics by taking the standpoint of the
subject’s common sense (philosophical ‘pragmatism’). James’ whole work may be
viewed as a struggle to free the subject from the fetters of the determinism of thinking,
as a defense of the subject’s right to think for himself. His central concept, the ‘stream
of consciousness’ as a ‘breath of thinking’ preceding conceptual thinking, had
enormous influence on his contemporaries, far beyond the confines of psychology. He
was a supporter of the representation of the ‘unity of the self’ as an idea constructed by
the subject. It may have
influenced Adler.
The fiat of will (1880, 196): ‘mental “click” of resolve’; (1890, II, 526): ‘the act
of mental consent’ — play a central role in James’ theory of action, as a formal
compromise between the teleology of the self — represented as a unity — and the
mechanism of the willful act. Only the fiat of will can explain the decision made in
choosing between alternative ways of acting if the will is in a critical situation, which is
experienced as painful hesitation and emotional unrest.
Works: The Feeling of Effort (1880). In: Perry, R. B. (Ed.): Collected Essays and
Reviews. New York: Russel and Russel 1969; Principles of Psychology. 1890; Will to
Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. 1897; Varieties of Religious
Experience. 1902; Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. 1907; A
Pluralistic Universe and The Meaning of Truth. 1909; Some Problems of Philosophy.
1911 (posthumously); Essays in Radical Empiricism. 1912 (posthumously).
(footnote 4) Stern
See endnote on page xxii. For Stern, ‘individuality’ is one of the identifying traits
of the ‘person’: every person is ‘unique in its way’; ‘in the end, something inherent
remains that makes every person confront any other person as a world in itself.’
(footnote 4) Lewandowsky, Max
(1876 – 1918): Neurologist, lecturer of psychology, became professor in 1909, in
1910 he founded (with Alzheimer) the ‘Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und
Psychiatrie’, and edited the ‘Handbuch der Neurologie’ between 1910-14. On the
subject
of shell-shock he writes (among others): ‘The patients develop a neurosis in order to
bring themselves in safety.’ His argumentation for a ‘purely psychic cause’ of shell-
shock
is founded on the concepts ‘flight into disease (Freud)’ and ‘desire for disease
(Bonhoeffer)’ (1917). Adler extensively quotes Lewandowsky in his work on shell-
shock
of 1918/20, with reference to the 1917 article (though erroneously dated by Adler as
1913). Lewandowsky’s position was similar, among others concerning the analysis of
shell-shock as a desire for security.
See Adler’s article: Die neuen Gesichtspunkte in der Frage der Kriegsneurose.
Medizinische Klinik 14, 1918.
g psychic infantilism

Survival or return of traits that are said to be essential characteristics of the

childish psyche. These form a long list, comprising things such as an abnormal
suggestibility, obstinacy, restlessness, instability, directness, an inability to distance
oneself, a lack of serious goals, etc. It manifests itself in many neurotic or psychotic
developments. The term ‘infantilism’ was first used by Lasègue in 1864, initially
referring to adults, from 1908 also to retarded developments during childhood (by
Anton), and subsequently the subject of ongoing psychiatric research.
h dissociation

In Bleuler’s theory of schizophrenia, dissociation, or a slackening of the

associative tension, is considered to be a primary=physiogenetical symptom
(fundamental symptom) of schizophrenia (see endnote ‘f’ on page xxi.) Many of the
secondary=psychogenetical symptoms originate in it, such as for instance the split
between different psychic functions.
i Nietzsche

‘“I did that”, my memory says. “I can’t have done that,” my pride says, and it
remains relentless. Finally, memory will give in.’ (Beyond Good and Evil)
j Kraepelin

See endnote on page xxv.

(footnote 6) Das Problem der Homosexualität
Adler, Alfred: Das Problem der Homosexualität. München: Reinhardt 1917.
Schriften des Vereins für Individualpsychologie. Heft 7. (Repr. 1930, 1977).
(footnote 7) Herodotus
(ca. 484 Halicarnassos – 425 BC): Greek historian, contemporary of Sophocles.
(footnote 7) Compare the double meaning of the verb “subigere”. ‘Subigere’ may mean
‘lead upward’ and ‘subjugate, force, necessitate’.
k Ziehen, Theodor

(1862 Frankfurt – 1950 Wiesbaden): Professor of psychiatry and neurology in

Jena, Utrecht, Halle, Berlin, from 1917 professor of psychology and philosophy in
Halle.
Among other things, he lectured on the psychology of representation and association He
introduced the concept ‘complex’ in the sense of an emotionally charged complex of
representations, on which C. G. Jung based his concept of ‘complex’, as he used it in
his
associative experiments.
l Pavlov, Iwan P.

(1849 Ryasan – 1936 Leningrad): Professor of physiology. He experimented with

animals to study conditioned reflexes (1903-04) which were evoked by different
incentive stimuli. The organism in this way is able to learn entirely new reactions.
Pavlov’s experiments formed a decisive point of departure of educational psychology.
m Schiller, Friedrich

(1795 Marbach – 1805 Weimar): He carried through the development of Kant’s

esthetical theories in a number of publications in which he invariably emphasizes that
human senses need to be educated as does human reason. An esthetic attitude makes the
transition to a logical and moral position easier, while in the finished work of art, form
almost dissolves matter (hunger and love).
n Darwin, Charles Robert

(1809 Shrewsbury – 1882 Down): English naturalist. In his epochal theory of

evolution the best adaptions assure survival in the struggle for existence (the principle
of
natural selection). The struggle for existence may be understood as an expression of a
drive for self-preservation, as Adler is suggesting here. Adler often refers to Darwin,
particularly in the ‘Studie über die Minderwertigkeit von Organen’.
o Dalton, John: the Daltonists in their understanding of color

(1766 – 1844): An English physicist and chemist. Daltonism, a disorder of the

ability to distinguish the colors green and red, was first observed by Dalton in himself
in
1798.
p the will to power

See endnote on page 29.

q affectivity (Bleuler)

For Bleuler, affectivity is ‘the whole of moods and feelings, affects and general
excitability of a human being’ (Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, 1916). See also endnote ‘f’ on
page xxi.
r ‘the spiritual link is unfortunately missing.’

Mephistopheles, in Goethe’s ‘Faust’: ‘Fehlt leider! nur das geistige Band.’ (line 1939).
 (footnote 8) Silberer, Hans
(1882 – 1923 Vienna, suicide): Sports writer, memeber of the Vienna
psychoanalytic association 1920-22, friend of Stekel after the latter broke with Freud.
He
attempted to establish a theoretical reconciliation between Freud, Adler and Stekel. He
published on dream theory, the development of symbols, mysticism and alchemy.
s a kind of economy of thought; the principle of least resistance

See endnote b’ to R. Avenarius and Ernst Mach on page xiii. Vaihinger puts both
under the heading of ‘biologic epistemology’: ‘Thought processes are not only
subjected to the general laws governing life’s events but indeed this experiential
material is, by means of a concrete ‘economy’, transformed and made useful for life.’
There he also raises the problem of the ‘principle of the unity of the psyche’ with
reference to the ‘the least amount of exertion according to Avenarius.’
t Nietzsche

Quoted from ‘Human, All Too Human’.

(footnote 11) ‘Die Aggressionstrieb im Leben und in der Neurose’ In: Fortschritte der
Medizin, 1908, repr. in Heilen und Bilden.
u Freytag, Gustav

(1816 Kreuzburg/Silesia – 1895 Wiesbaden): Writer in the time of the

‘bürgerlicher Realismus’ (‘bourgeois realism’). Compare the endnote ‘p’ on page 188.
(footnote 12) Freschl, Robert
One of the first members of the Association for Individual Psychology, considered
to be a Nietzschean who after the war could no longer accept Adler’s idea of
community. However, in 1925 he is still listed as a member of the Viennese Association
for Individual Psychology.
(footnote 14) ‘Über neurotische Disposition’ and ‘Die Lehre von der
Organminderwertigkeit in der Philosophie und Psychologie’
Über neurotische Disposition: zugleich ein Beitrag zur Ätiologie und zur Frage der
Neurosenwahl. Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse und psychopathologische Forschung 1,
1909, 526-545. Repr. Heilen und Bilden 1914. Die Theorie der Organminderwertigkeit
und ihre Beduetung für Philosophie und Psychologie. Universität Wien, Philosophische
Gesellschaft, Wissenschaftliche Beilage 21, 1908, 11-26. Repr. Heilen und Bilden 1914.
v déjà vue’

As a failure of memory or a manifestation of depersonalization; it comprises

curious experiences of familiarity in which the experience of the moment seems to be
already known, as if it had been experienced before, and may even lead to the
conviction that what will happen next is already known as well. The term emerges in
literature and psychology in the 19th century. In psychiatric literature its first
appearance is in 1868 (Jensen) as a double observation of the brain, in 1888 as ‘aura’ in
an epileptic (Jackson), but it also often manifests itself in healthy people.
(footnote 15) depersonalization
P. Janet (see endnote ‘b’ on page xxi) has described the feelings of self-alienation
and insufficiency (incomplétude) in the case of psychasthenia, which develop alongside
a decreasing psychic tension and a diminishing unifying force of consciousnes. Such
feelings of deficiency are related to the ‘own personality’ of the patients, that they
‘could no longer recognize it and complained about its breakdown’ ( In: L’état mental
des hystériques. Paris, 1911). This feeling of a ‘loss of personality’ (depersonalization)
comprises thoughts, acts, experiences as well as feelings; conspicuous elements are
dissatisfaction with oneself, pessimism, a loss of interest, an avoidance of exertion and
of initiatives in social relations, which eventually results in a general feeling of a
useless existence (Les obsessions et psychasthénies. Paris. 1903). The concept is also
applied to describe conditions of psychosis, melancholia, mania, hypochondria, etc.,
particularly including the ‘sense of the body’ or ‘scheme of the body’.
(footnote 16) Hebbel, Christian Friedrich
(1813 Wesselbuhren/Dithmarschen – 1863 Vienna): Playwright, lyricist.
(footnote 17) Über Halluzination
Zur Theorie der Halluzinationen. In: Praxis und Theorie der
Individualpsychologie (transl. Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology)
w Jodl, Friedrich

(1848 Munich – 1914 Vienna): Professor of philosophy in Prague and Vienna.

Representative of philosophical positivism (following Auguste Comte) which regards
philosophy as a synthesis of the sciences and finds that ethics must be freed from
religion, in order to create a ‘religion of humanity’.
x Tolstoy, Count Lev Nikolayevich

(1828 Petersburg – 1919 Krasnyi Rog): Russian author who developed a

theology and philosophy of life that emphasized morality in its striving for truth and
social justice, an agrarian and cultural communism and a self-renunciating love of one’s
fellow man.
y Exner(-Ewarten), Sigmund von

(1846 – 1926 Vienna): Physiologist, professor, successor of Brücke 1891-1917,

an early student of Freud’s at the Brücke Institute. Besides his positivistic-scientific
research he also published speculative, nature-philosophical constructions concerning
the
brain. In his ‘design’ for a scientific psychology he attempted to approach problems
concerning perception, judgement, memory, etc., by means of physical constructs
(intercerebral excitement, guided energy).
z Socrates

(470 – 399 BC Athens), demon: Plato and Xenophon give the name ‘daimonion’
to the inner voice that was supposed to have led Socrates to divine inspiration. It is the
divine sign which, according to Plato, keeps Socrates from doing any injustice, but
never
gives any positive advice. This ‘daimonion’ does not have the shape of any particular
‘demon’ or god.
aa Neurotic Disposition

See footnote 19, on page 116.

bb γνωτι σεαυτον

Meaning ‘know yourself’, was written in the entrance hall of the temple of
Apollo’s oracle in Delphi. The saying is supposed to derive from one of the ‘seven wise
men’ who lived in the 6th century BC (Chilon or Solon). Socrates (see commentary to
page x), who is referred to here as ‘the noble philosopher’, supposedly applied the
saying
to himself both in his thinking and acting. In both cases it may be considered as a
maxim
expressing a pragmatic ethical outlook, not to succumb to the ‘hybris’ of the desire of
knowledge and thus to explore as a human being the divine order of things. In Plato,
too,
it is not a rule of introspection, but a wise saying from Socratic pedagogy against the
Sophist claim to (political) power by means of knowledge. It follows that this
‘selfknowledge’ is therefore not a principle of individuality but a desire to go back to
fundamental principles—in Plato the idea of ‘the good’. Later, in Hegel, too, the
expression is not in the first place intended as an incitement to the knowledge of an
individual’s single characteristics, but to the knowledge of the human condition in itself
(Phänomenologie des Geistes). It was only after the dissolution of Hegel’s
ontologicallogical system that the phrase came to be interpreted in a more subjective-
psychological
sense, as Adler does here.
cc Vaihinger

See endnote on page 30.

dd Dessoir, Max

(1867 Berlin – 1947 Königstein/Taunus): Professor of philosophy. He studied,

among other things, the dual personality (dual ego with supra- and subconsciousness),
hypnosis, and the psychology of sexuality. He developed the theory that sexual
development evolves in two phases: in the ‘undifferentiated’ phase, the sexual impulse
may be expressed either homosexually or heterosexually, in the ‘differentiated’ phase
heterosexuality is normally the exclusive object of the impulse. In other cases the
individuals remained in an ‘embryonic’ stage, which would lead to homosexual,
bisexual
or other perverse tendencies.
(footnote 19) Psychischer Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der Neurose In:
Fortschritte der Medizin 28, 1910, 486-493. Repr. Heilen und Bilden 1974.
Psychischer Hermaphroditismus und männlicher Protest — ein Kernproblem der
nervösen Erkrankungen. Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie 1920/1974.
(transl. Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology).
ee Goethe

Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung (1777) I, 4.

ff Atharva Veda

A collection of charms and magic formulas from different ages, it is one of the
four Vedas that together constitute the basis of the further development of Vedic
literature. Besides prose texts, it contains 173 hymns, that comprise not only ‘white’ but
also ‘black’ magic: defense against evil spirits and disease, inducing happiness in love,
the death of a hated rival, etc. Some songs also express philosophical-religious
speculations.
 (footnote 20) Schulhof, Hedwig: Individualpsychologie und Frauenfrage
Individualpsychologie und Frauenfrage: München: Reinhardt 1914 (Schriften des
Vereins für Individualpsychologie. Heft 6). Schulhof, born in 1868 in
Ratzau/Reichenberg, was among the earliest supporters of Individual Psychology, and
was active in the German and Austrian women’s movement. She contributed, among
others, to the ‘Österreichische Frauenzeitung’, and lectured in Reichenberg and Prague.
(collaboration Schifferer)
gg Fliess, Wilhelm

(1858 Arnswald – 1928 Berlin): M.D., biologist. Closest friend of Freud’s, who
was strongly influenced by him. Among others, Freud took from Fliess the belief in the
existence of children’s sexuality and the theory on bisexuality in its importance for the
etiology of neuroses and repression. Fliess maintained the embryonic bisexuality of all
human beings. The sex that predominates in one person has repressed the psychic
representation of the submerged sex into the unconscious, as Freud approvingly quotes
Fliess in 1919. Neurotics, hermaphrodites and homosexuals are supposed to have
insufficiently repressed this bisexual basis. Otto Weininger’s book (see endnote ‘ii’ on
page 82) gave rise to a dispute about priority, carried on in public, between Fliess,
Freud and Swoboda, which in 1906 resulted in Freud and Fliess breaking off all contact.
Fliess accused Freud of having passed on his idea about bisexuality to his patient
Swoboda, who communicated it to his friend Weininger, the latter presenting it as his
own discovery.
hh Halban, Josef von

(1870 – 1937 Vienna): Gynecologist, extraordinary professor from 1909, director

of the gynecology department of Wieden Hospital in Vienna 1910-37. He did research
in
the field of gynecology, among others concerning the theory of the inner secretion of
the
placenta and ovaries. The so-called ‘Halban Pregnancy Indicators’ are named after him.
ii Weininger, Otto

(1880 – 1903 Vienna): Studied philosophy in Vienna, and was considered a

genius. His dissertation was the basis for his book ‘Geschlecht und Character’ (Sex and
Character), published in 1903, which was spectacularly successful — it went through
25
editions in 20 years — and provoked a storm of controversy. Among others, it contains
a
‘characterology’ of the sexes, based on philosophical arguments and influenced by
Kant,
Richard Wagner, Ibsen and Tolstoy. It is obviously anti-Semitic and is generally
interpreted as anti-feminist. One of its theorems is the fundamental anatomical,
physiological and psychological bisexuality of people. Every man and woman is
supposed to be composed in different parts of a masculine and a feminine substance.
Shortly after the book was published Weininger shot himself in the house where
Beethoven died.
 jj Steinach, Eugen
(1861 – 1944): Physiologist and endocrinologist. Between 1906-18 he was leader
of the laboratory of general and comparative physiology and professor in Prague, from
1912 director of the department of physiology at the biological research institute (the
socalled ‘vivarium’) at the university of Vienna, 1938 he emigrated to Switzerland. His
research was concerned in particular with the physiology of the sexual organs, such as
the
transplantation of heterologous sexual glands, and he performed operations to ‘change’
homosexuals, for which M. Hirschfeld (see endnote ‘p’ on page 146) occasionally
provided him with patients. Steinach’s operations were also supposed to stimulate
rejuvenation. In 1922 Freud also underwent one of these operations, in order to prevent
the reoccurence of cancer.
kk Schopenhauer, Arthur

(1788 Danzig – 1860 Frankfurt): Friend of Goethe, influenced by Kant and

Buddhism. After a short attempt, he completely abandoned lecturing in philosophy in
1820. Literary success came to him only after the 2nd edition of his main work, ‘Die
Welt als Wille und Vorstellung’.
ll Krafft-Ebbing, Richard von

(1840 Mannheim – 1902 Vienna): Professor of psychiatry. He came forward

mainly with his research on sexual pathology. His book ‘Psychopathia sexualis’,
published in 1877 (followed by many and all different editions), was an enormous, if
controversial success and gave a decisive stimulus to the science of sexual pathology.
He
coined the terms sadism and masochism and distinguished four kinds of sexual
anomalies, later divided into two main groups: according to the sexual goal and the
sexual object. Constitutional, embryonic bisexuality was vanquished by monosexuality
during the normal course of development. For Krafft-Ebing this is one of the
explanations
for homosexuality and several forms of psycho-sexual hermaphroditism. Krafft-Ebing
took a skeptic attitude toward Freud but supported the latter’s appointment as professor.
(footnote 22) Schwarz, Oswald
(1883 – ?): Urologist, later psychotherapist. In 1919 he became private lecturer of
urology in Vienna, lecturing in 1920 on medicine and philosophy at the ‘Allgemeine
Poliklinik’ (his nickname under students was ‘urosopher’). He was very active as a
lecturer in the (students’) ‘Academic Association of Medical Psychology’ and his
‘Psychogenese und Psychotherapie körperlicher Symptome’ (Vienna 1925) was the first
compilation on psychosomatics ever published. He was a close collaborator of Adler.
He
left Individual Psychology in 1927, in connection with Adler’s exclusion of Allers and
Frankl. In 1938 He emigrated to the USA, where he completely dedicated himself to
psychotherapy. Adler refers to Schwarz’s work from 1922 and 1924.
(footnote 23) See for more details: Theorie und Praxis der Individualpsychologie, l.c.
and in the 4th number of the 5th year’s issue of the Internat. Zft. f. Indiv.-Psycholgie.
Traum und Traumdeutung. Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie 3,
1913, 574-583. Repr. Heilen und Bilden 1920/1974 (transl. Practice and Theory of
Individual Psychology). Weiteres zur Individualpsychologischen Traumtheorie:
Internationale Zeitschrift für Individualpsychologie 5, 1927, 241-245. Repr.
Internationale Zeitschrift für Individualpsychologie 5, 1927, 241-245. Repr. 1932.
Ausgewählt und herausgegeben von H. L. Ansbacher und R. F. Antoch, mit einer
Einführung von R. F. Antoch. Munich: Bergmann 1920.
(footnote 24) Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph
(1742 – 1799): Naturalist and rationalist, whose witty and elegant aphorisms
form an illuminating commentary on nearly every aspect of the intellectual spectrum in
the age of revolution (Franklin, Herschel, Volta, Rousseau, and others). The motto of
his
subjective thinking was: ‘One must experiment with ideas.’ Because of their intellectual
acuteness and the acute pertinency of language, his aphorisms have survived until the
present.
mm Nietzsche

See endnote on page 31.

nn Schwer erziehbare Kinder

In: Rühle, Otto und Alice (ed.): Schwer erziehbare Kinder: eine Schriftenfolge.
Heft 1. Dresden: Am anderen Ufer 1926. Repr. Psychotherapie und Erziehung 1982.
(footnote 25) ‘Zur Lehre vom Widerstand’
Beitrag zur Lehre vom Widerstand. Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse und
Psychotherapie 1, 1911, 214-219. Repr. as Beitrag zum Verständnis des Widerstands in
der Behandlung. Psychotherapie und Erziehung 1920/1974.
(footnote 26) symbolism in [a person’s] appearance... Porta, Gall and Carus
This refers to the title of a work by Carl Gustav Carus: ‘Symbolik in der
menschlichen Gestalt’ 1853 (1961), in which he introduced into ‘physiognomy’ — with
reference to Goethe — the concept of the symbol as a problem of human nature and as
a problem of the individual character. ‘Physiognomy’, that it to say, the theory of the
expression of the human face as well as physical shape, reaches back to antiquity, was
represented in the 16th century by Giovanni Battista della Porta (1543 – 1615) (De
humana physiognomonia, 1586), was revived and flourished in the 18th and 19th
centuries because of people such as the minister Johann Caspar Lavater (1741 – 1801
Zürich) (Physiognomische Fragmente, 1775-1778), the anatomist Franz Josef Gall
(1758 Tiefenbrunn – 1828 Montrouge/Paris) (organology or phrenology) and the
Romantic medical man Carl Gustav Carus (1789 Leipzig – 1869 Dresden). In the early
20th century it was taken further, among others by Ludwig Klages in his theory of
expressions and character and Ernst Kretschmer’s constitutional typology.
Physiognomie and theories concerning physical expression have often been connected
with racial typologies (already in Carus).
(footnote 27) Erckmann-Chatrian
Erckmann, Emile (1822 Phalbourg – 1899 Lunéville) and Chatrian, Alexandre
(1826 Abreschwiller – 1890 Villemonble): L’illustre docteur Mathéus (1859). In:
Contes et romans populaires (1866). Vol. III. Illustrés par Théophile Schuler. Paris: Jean
Jacques Pauvert Editeur 1962.
(footnote 27) Goethe
Reineke Fuchs. In zwölf Gesängen. Goethe’s poetic reworking of the story of
Reinaerd the Fox.
oo Schmidt: lingua scrotalis

Schmidt, Rudolf (1873 – 1947): See endnote ‘dd’ on page 23. Lingua scrotalis (or
plicata) is a congenital wrinkled or folded tongue (scrotalis refers to the scrotum). Adler
refers to the following passage in Schmidt: ‘We talk about “signs of degeneration”, but
it would be better to speak of “developmental disorders”. They can, although they do
not have to, be accompanied by deficiencies in the higher psychic functions. I give only
a few examples: there is, for instance, a tongue that has a surface that appears to have
been carved or furrowed. It carries the somewhat fantastic name “lingua scrotalis”. I
have found it remarkably often in suicidal persons. It is known to be present among
alcoholics, diabetics and suffferers of pellagrin. In my opinion, the common factor here
is the neuropathic constitution. The “scrotum tongue” seems to me to be a symptom of
further development of a neuropathic constitution.’
pp Nietzsche: sublimation

See ‘Human All Too Human: ‘The explanation [of classical philosophy] is that,
strictly speaking, no deed is unegoistic, and no viewpoint is fully disinterested, both
being nothing but sublimations, whose basis can only be discerned by the most detailed
examination.’ Against this kind of reasoning Nietzsche sets the necessity of a
‘chemistry of moral, religious, and esthetic notions and experiences’, through which
‘the most elevated colors have been gleaned from humble, indeed even despised
materials’. In ‘Nachlaß der Achtziger Jahren’ he writes: ‘The value of sublime man is
highest when he is very tender and brittle.’
qq ulcus ventriculi

stomach ulcer
rr Holzknecht, Guido

(1872 – 1931): Radiologist and founder of this specialism in Austria. 1918-31 he

was extraordinary professor and director at the Central Institute for Radiology of
Vienna
University, 1928 president of the international association of college and university
lecturers of medical radiology. He died of cancer caused by radiation in 1931. Between
1905-14 he often contributed to radiological research of stomach diseases, the
esophagus,
movements of the diaphragm and intestinal peristalsis.
ss Singer, Gustav

(1869 – 1944): Gastroenterologist, specialist on diabetics. 1911 extraordinary

professor, personal doctor of the Austrian prime minister Ignaz Seipel. In October 1938
he emigrated to Britain, and he died in London. Together with Scherschewsky, Fleiner
and Westphalen he coined the term ‘spastic obstipation’.
Practical Part II-I
Greed–Distrust–Envy–Cruelty–Derogatory Criticism of the Neurotic–Neurotic
Apperception–Neuroses of Old Age–Changes in the Form and Intensity of the
Neurosis–Organ Jargon
I want to address first those characteristics that can be demonstrated with a certain
regularity to be present in all neurotics and that express themselves in such a way that
the patient will strive, with increased greed, directly or indirectly, consciously or
unconsciously, by means of purposive thinking and acting or by an arrangement of
symptoms, towards increased possession, towards an expansion of his power and
influence, towards a depreciation and belittling of others. Usually, all these forms of
selfishness and egoism are found to coexist, and it is only after having acquired more
insight that one may recognize the monumental predominance of the circuitous routes
with which the patient deceives himself and his environment. Indeed, he even deceives
science. For while he is play-acting to appear unselfish, for example, one will find in his
attacks, in his neurosis, and at the same time, moreover, in the final goal that this
neurosis is striving after, the increased greed that we mentioned at the outset; this is
how he creates the impression of a dual ego, of someone who is suffering from a split
consciousness, and whereas a fictional final goal may cause him to adhere, in secret,
more forcefully than a healthy person to the scheme of greed, envy, and the desire for
power, the scheme of evil, disputatiousness and a desire to please, he yet may openly
play — as a result of this desire to please — the role of the benefactor and patron, the
pacifier and unselfish saint. Not that this will usually remain without disastrous results,
more or less like Gregor Werle’s fanaticism for truth in Ibsen’sa Wild Duck. It is
impossible to overestimate the importance of the neurotic’s desire to possess everything,
and it is equally impossible to exaggerate any description of the eagerness with which
he desires to be first — even though the most obvious characteristics seem to convey an
entirely contradictory impression. What is really driving the patient is the unambiguous
desire for absolute power, and since his feeling of self-worth takes offense at many of
his means, and the power of others may also prevent his triumph, he will close his eyes
from these inconvenient characteristics and conceal them from himself as well as from
others, and being fully knowledgeable of hostile impulses and their unpopularity, he
will let himself be guided publicly, in his ‘conscious impulses,’ by the ideal of virtue,
without letting these two lines interfere. His increased aggressive tendency, however,
will still betray itself, namely in his dreams, in certain uncontrolled acts, in attitude,
mimicry and gesture, and in the psychic activity whose expression is the neurosis. This
is why there is always someone in the environment of the neurotic who knows his bad
traits of character, without, however, understanding the entire seriousness of the
situation.
Concerning the question of the heredity of these kinds of characteristics, indeed, of
their antagonistic arrangement as well, it will usually become apparent that they are
acquired as secondary guiding lines according to the image of the father, the mother or
other representative persons, and are by no means inherited. The neurotic psyche finds
them in its own or in some other kind of exemplary material, for which will serve, in
many cases, the double-dealing, the split consciousness of human society. It will then be
the expedient of the neurosis, however, to hide those hostile, aggressive characteristics
that are often unsuitable for the fictional purpose of elevating the personality, to modify
them, to reach a similar goal rather more intensively even by circuitous paths, often by
means of opposite moods of character and neurotic symptoms. One will easily become
convinced of the fact that the exaggerated generosity of such patients obeys the similar
goal of the ‘will to power’ that the patient is also trying to approach by elevating his
aggressive drive, his greed and his thrift, when he appears in the role of giver although
he is nothing but the taker.
One of my patients, who came to me for treatment for stammeringb and depressive
moods, allowed his environment to know only his generous characteristics. One day he
made a large, voluntary contribution to a certain institute and as he told me this he
added, rather unexpectedly it seemed, the remark that he felt particularly depressed that
day. At the same time his stammering became more prominent. The accentuated
situation of his neurosis proved itself to be a result of his generosity because of which
he now feels depreciated, and one is justified in expecting the actual character to come
forward in further actions, thoughts and dreams running parallel with the neurotic
symptoms as these reveal themselves, because he has deviated too far from his goal: the
increase of his possessions. He must now do something that will bring him back to it.
‘It was already late in the afternoon,’ he went on, ‘I felt very hungry, and besides, a
friend was waiting for me in a restaurant where we wanted to eat together. So I had to
go all the (long) way there. My friend was still waiting. After dinner I felt a little
better.’ That is to say, he started to save money again right away and went on foot,
despite hunger, depression, and appointment. Besides, this way he could let his friend
wait, which for many neurotics is a concealed method to put their desire to dominate
into operation. Since that time I have seen many patients in whom hunger induced
headaches, tremors, depression and feelings of hatred. Some of this may be determined
organically, but the other symptoms are protests against a lowering of the feeling of
self-worth induced by hunger, which eventually may lead to deliria.
The very first remarks, actions, and statements of a patient in the presence of a
physician often contain what is essential in the mechanism of the disease and the
formation of the character. This is due to the fact that the patient has not yet acquired
any predisposition to be cautious in the presence of the physician. As the patient I
mentioned above introduced himself to me, he told me without being asked that his
father was not well to do, and could not make great sacrifices for treatment. During the
treatment, it became inevitable for him after a while to confess that he had lied to me
about this point in order to be charged less. And in many other respects he also proved
to be parsimonious. Yet, at the same time he tried to deceive himself, and more in
particular others, about this. The father also possessed both of these characteristics and
he had been particularly emphatic in bringing frugality to the attention of our patient,
who was often told: ‘Money is power, everything can be had for money!’ So it was
quite inevitable that when our patient, being, by the way, a second child, whose very
ambitiousness and desire to dominate began manifesting themselves already in his
childhood, got into an uncertain situation later in life and believed he was unable to
attain the standard of his father by straightforward means, would take refuge, under
pressure of his ambitiousness, to the expedient of convincing his father of his
powerlessness and the failure of his educational intentions by retaining a childhood
defect, stammering. He spoiled his father’s game by stammering, because he could not
be number one, because he could not surpass his father. By doing this, he relieved
himself at the same time from the obligation to put the god that he carried within his
bosom to the test. Among my other cases of stammering, too, this symptom was found
as an expression of hesitation in ambitious people who have lost faith in themselves.1
Among all stammerers, the desire to be pampered, to find extenuating circumstances,
prevails.
Our civilization, however, largely agrees with those children who discern the way
to power in amassing money. And guided in this way his will to power assumed the
outward form of frugality and, as he overstressed it, that of greed. It was the
contradiction between open, mean actions of parsimony and the personality ideal,
which must also take public opinion into account, that forced him to hide this tendency
to be greedy which he wanted to use to dominate his father, and subsequently forced
him to substitute stammering in order to be neurotically superior.
During the further course of the analysis the origin of his increased striving for
possessions became clear. In his first years he had suffered nearly constantly from
stomach and intestinal disorders that manifested themselves as an expression of an
inherited inferiority of the gastro-intestinal tract. Among the members of his family,
too, gastro-intestinal illness played an important role. The patient remembered exactly
how often he had to forego savory food despite his feeling of hunger and desire, while
his parents, brothers and sisters consumed it with great relish. Whenever he got the
chance, he would collect food, candy and fruit, in order to feast on them later. In this
tendency to collect and save we may see already the working of the safeguarding
tendency as it is being prepared, constantly trying to find some kind of compensation
for the feeling of depreciation. Occasionally this feeling of being depreciated may lead
to theft, especially in the case of failed rivalry with others.
However, how far the inferiority feeling actually reaches can be demonstrated by a
constructed example that I can illustrate with analogies from our case. Greed for power
and, subsequently, for possession, may be whipped up by the inferiority feeling to such
a degree that one finds them in certain phases in the psychic development where one
would hardly expect them. A very young patient of this kind will at first, it is true, only
desire the apple that he was not allowed while looking on as the father and brother are
eating it. Envy will begin to manifest itself and after a short while such a child may
have gone so far in his deliberations and considerations about the future that, based on a
striving for equality, he will try to prevent others from having something before the
child himself has it. The child will soon have expanded this wish, little meaning as it
carries indeed, to such a level that preparations and readiness are permanently on the
alert, he will, particularly in the case of original muscular incapacity, train himself in
climbing and jumping for a whole year in order to be able to climb a tree as a champion
in the fall. The human psyche cannot always account for fictional goals, and so this
child may appear to have broken away from its final goal, to put his disposition for
sports and gymnastics in the service of other tendencies that serve the feeling of self-
worth more or less in the same way as our modern states are preparing for war without
even knowing the future enemy.
1See also Appelt ‘Fortschritte der Stotterbehandlung.’ In: Heilen und Bilden, l.c.

(Progress in the treatment of stammering).

The father of our patient might easily have been taken as an incidental example by
the boy, because he towered above his environment in tallness, power, wealth, and
social standing. If the boy wanted to escape from the insecurity in which his
constitutional inferiority had plunged him, he would have to make his preparations for
life as if he followed a plan, towards a fixed point. The strongly distinguished guiding
line towards the ideal of the father is already a neurotic characteristic, for it reveals to
us the entire predicament and overexertion of this child, insecure as he has become. The
safeguarding tendencies in the neurosis lead the patient out of the realm of his own
powers and force him to a road leading out of reality: 1. because in order to resemble or
to surpass the father, he turns his fiction into his task, and is now compelled to shape,
arrange and influence his experience of the world under its force; 2. because one will
never entirely succeed in carrying out such an abstract fiction in real life, apart from
psychosis; 3. because in such a case, the overestimated goal is at the same time
intimidating. This is how an intensive searching, measuring, weighing and hesitating
impulse enters the child’s psyche, to which I must give some more attention.
In my experience, the too strict conception of the guiding image of the father, as I
have shown in several of my works, may be blamed on something which reveals itself
in the quest for the sexual role. The neurotically disposed child, or as I may say, the
child under pressure of a feeling of inferiority, wants to become a man — as soon as the
neurosis breaks out, wants to be a man. In both cases this can only concern a manner of
behavior, as if the child were a man or would become one. In this case, too, the
exaggerated safeguarding tendency brings the attitude of the incipient neurotic under
the spell of the fiction by force, so that it is also possible that a partially conscious
simulation comes about, that a girl, for instance, in order to avoid her inferiority feeling,
initially borrows masculine gestures from her father in conscious imitation. There is no
reason to suppose that she must first have fallen in love with her father. The fact that the
masculine principle is estimated higher is in itself sufficient, although it may sometimes
be experienced by the girl as well as the environment as a lover’s infatuation if the
preparation for the future playfully requires a suggestion of love or marriage. In our
case, the change of form and content of the guiding line to the compensatory
personality ideal transformed it to an ambitious striving to surpass the father in wealth,
esteem and — in connection with this — masculinity. The search for his own sexual
role came on intensively and in typical fashion as sexual curiosity, in which the patient,
in his feeling of inferiority, experienced his own smallness in contrast to his father’s
tallness as a harsh depreciation, as a lack of masculinity. His ambition, which should
enable him to rise up from his position of inferiority, compelled him to intensify his
feeling of shame, so that one might not see his small genitals when he was naked. In
addition to this, he was of Jewish origin. He had heard much about circumcision and
nursed the idea that he had also been ‘made smaller’ in this operation. His masculine
protest drove him to depreciate women as if he had to prove his superiority in this way,
and his relationship with his mother became as bad as one might imagine. But he also
harbored hostile feelings towards his father, whose partiality to him he nourished by
diplomatic adaptation, feelings that came to light in particular when his father
exaggerated his superiority, which he tended to do often. In this confusion of feelings he
looked for orientation and found it only in the idea that he should surpass the father,
become more masculine than he. This is how, as a sign of the masculine protest, he was
left with nothing but attempts to become wealthier, more respected, smarter than his
father, and to degrade his environment. After countless futile attempts, this striving
filled him with timidity and caution.
 His father had placed great hopes on the patient’s gifts as an orator, which had
already manifested themselves in his childhood, and he had not let himself be deceived
by the boy’s mild stammering and hoped he would take up a career in law. This was
where he could strike his father where it hurt most, while at the same time getting away
from the heavy pressure of expectation, and so his stammering gradually deteriorated
even more, a neurotic expression of safeguarding against the father’s superiority, to
which he was instigated by a stammering private teacher. Subsequently, this symptom
acquired innumerable other uses, for example that because of his stammering he always
gained time to observe his partner, to weigh his words, to avoid demands of his family,
to exploit other people’s pity, and also the advantage that expectations of him were low,
so that he could easily exceed them. It is interesting that his quite apparent stammer was
no obstacle in courting women; on the contrary, that it expedited matters rather, a fact
that becomes understandable if it is considered from our point of view, according to
which there is a quite widespread type of girl for whom one of the conditions for love is
that the man of her choice must be beneath her so that she can dominate him This kind
of girl will occasionally decide to take an inferior partner, in the expectation that this
will ensure her permanent gratitude.
In order to avoid becoming a social outcast, he put an end to his particularly hostile
inclinations against his parents, brothers and sisters and the servants by means of the
development of a new guiding line which was designed to give the impression that he
was a kind man. While this new development took place he made nightly confessions in
which he reproached himself for his maliciousness and arranged his feelings of guilt.
His growing understanding thus showed him a cultural subterfuge to elevate his feeling
of self-worth.
The lack of any direct aggression also became clear in that he demonstrated his
ambition not just in his ideas and imagination, but also in his good progress at school,
by which means he defeated most of his classmates. An increasing inclination toward
sarcasm and inciting others now became the only visible expression of what earlier
often used to be the kind of violent aggression that had given him the nickname ‘blood-
sucker.’ His aggressive attitude towards Judaism played an important role, which was
reflected in a compulsory act that began manifesting itself when he was about twelve
years old. Whenever he entered a swimming pool, he had to cover his genitals with his
hands and immediately submerge his head under water, where he kept it until he had
counted to 49, so that he would often come to the surface gasping for breath and
exhausted. The analysis revealed that the imaginary content was the striving of his
imagination to bring about the equality of the genitals. In ancient Jewish law, which he
had recently come to know, the 49th year is the year of the jubilee in which all assets
were once again made equal. Ideas of this kind and the simultaneous hiding of the
genitals indicated how this should be interpreted. One might almost come to the
conclusion that even his stammering was intended to get even with superiority, the
superiority of his father, of all people, because it formed an obstacle for him, and often
made him suffer. At the same time, the stammering seemed, to himself as well as his
environment, to form an undeserved, mysterious barrier for his abilities.
Indeed, his greed and his frugality were active in the same direction, to drive the
superiorities of others out of the field, to secure him from being humiliated and from
further depreciation by poverty, and he was compelled to expand these secondary
guiding lines considerably, molding and evaluating his experiences accordingly, in
order to achieve the elevation of his feeling of selfworth, to reach the masculine protest.
It was only if there were reason to believe that these characteristics might become
widely known, and so form a threat to his self-esteem, that he would suppress their
activity in public, that he would let them sink into the unconscious.
It would be absurd to take up a moral standpoint in a medicalpsychological
problem, to consider a person like the one above as morally inferior, for instance. I
would like to remind those who feel inclined to do so of the exceedingly strong,
compensatory, valuable characteristics, but on the other hand also of the wise maxim of
La Rochefoucauldc, who wrote: ‘I have never investigated the soul of a wicked man, but
I once did come to know the soul of a good man — I was shocked!’
In another case, the nature of greed not only manifests itself as a supporting
construction that compensates a feeling of depreciation, but above all as an artifice in
the service of the safeguarding tendency. A forty-five year old patient, who had been
suffering from psychic impotence and been pursued by suicidal thoughts throughout his
life, showed a particularly strong inclination to degrade others. We know this
characteristic from the description of the previous case, in which it served, as it always
does, to cancel out one’s own inferiority feeling. In association with this tendency, quite
frequently there are increased distrust and envy, neurotic, psychic supporting devices
whose task it is to falsify the search and evaluation of experiences. Invariably, a
tendency to cause others physical or psychic pain in one way or another will also
succeed in asserting itself in some hidden way. The abstract, guiding viewpoint of the
patient to secure his dominating position, ‘to be above,’ seemed manifestly threatened
and made the strengthening of fictional guiding lines a necessity. Memories from the
days of his childhood were used in the neurosis, according to which he nearly came to
be the victim of a homosexual. He had been raised as an only boy among sisters, a
situation that in my experience is often harmful for the understanding of one’s own
sexual role, making one hypersensitive and threatening one’s selfconfidence. His
attitude towards the father was important as well, because it, too, compelled him to
increased safeguards. The father, namely, was cruel, egotistical, and tyrannical, so that
the boy found it difficult to assert himself in a frank manner beside him. A number of
amorous adventures had brought the father in some very difficult situations, which our
patient used as a memento in his developed neurosis. His distrust directed itself against
all women in general. Throughout his life he remained prepared to make sacrifices for
his sisters, but his apperception of this fact was already emotional to the extreme, and
from it he tendentiously developed a way of reasoning that demonstrated how easily he
gave in to women. And from time to time he might indeed go quite far in doing this, in
order to sharply emphasize this impression of himself. At that point he was prepared to
withdraw from women, to refuse to submit to them.
From his childhood on, he had brought feelings of inferiority into a sexual image.
The origin of his unmanly attitude — the homosexual had after all wanted to take him
for a girl! — he looked for and found in an occasional cryptorchism that had to do with
an open canal in his groin. As long as he took his father as a guiding point, he showed
the usual preparations to become his equal. He secretly drank his liquor, he tried to get
his mother on his side, and at an early stage he chose the profession of his father, in
which he could satisfy the sadistic inclinations that had been stirred up by his feeling of
inferiority and the striving after the guiding image of the father: he became a butcher.
He also liked to practice his rough inclinations on girls and women; he bit them, beat
them, and once even participated in a rape. This experience, however, which showed
that he was still acting entirely in the cruel manner of his father, forced him, because of
the impending consequences of criminal prosecution, to a neurotic subterfuge. He used
his distrust of girls, already accentuated, to torture them with fits of jealousy, to bring
them completely under his influence, and in this way to secure the pretense of his
dominance. His ejaculatio præcox and the impotence connected with it (just as frigidity
an unmistakable sign of a lack of devotion), served his need for security, as did his
animosity towards women. He particularly liked to seduce married women in order to
disappoint them with his impotence, but at the same time to find, in a frivolous way,
confirmation of the fact that all women were bad. This inclination also manifested itself
in compulsive ideas to cause pain. Indeed, even during his treatment he was seized by
an impulse to bite and beat a female language teacher during a lesson, because the idea
had got into his head that she had a lover that she preferred to him. This sadistic
reaction to a feeling of subjection, as a masculine protest against the feeling of being
unmanly, of being weak, originates in childhood and runs through his entire neurosis. It
was not difficult to prove that his impotence similarly obeyed his final goal of finding a
way to escape from the dependency on love, the subordination to a woman, a tendency
that was continued, however, in his ongoing depreciation, in one way or another, of
women. When he failed to see a way in which to be successful with his teacher, he left
her abruptly because he knew that the girl was dependent financially on her hours of
teaching. Before doing so, however, he made up critical calculations of the cost of his
language lessons and found that they were beyond his means, which clearly leapt to the
eye as a false, purposeful valuation of a man who was very well to do. In identical
fashion he used the occasionally recurring memories of incestuous thoughts, so as to be
reminded with a shock of his weakness, his criminal inclination as soon as women came
into play. Thus he established an operational base on the grounds of which he had to
safeguard himself against the female sex, so that he seemed assured of a lasting
superiority throughout life.
The innermost core of his compulsion to safeguard himself from women was the
fear that he might experience disappointment in marriage or in love, which he would
have attributed to his unmanliness. Since he sought his neurotic goal in proving his
power, he could not but become cautious and inclined to neurotic subterfuges. In this
patient, too, there were early gastro-intestinal disorders and, as a peripheral sign of
inferiority, the fatal inguinal hernia and cryptorchismus. In his type of love-making,
exaggerated greed presented itself as the most useful means for safeguarding himself
against surrender. However, if this greed was to be of any use, then it must comprise the
whole sphere of his life’s relations and it must be omnipresent. It must in its turn be
supported and confirmed by all kinds of tricks. This was achieved by an arrangement of
compulsive ideas, among other things. Whenever he used a car, the thought struck him
that a collision might or could take place. Going into this compulsive idea in more
detail showed that he did not even remotely believe in this possibility, but that,
supported by his phobia, he always avoided all expensive means of transportation.
Indeed, even when he made a rather long trip by streetcar, he would, as the cheaper
fare-zone ended, begin to think of a collision or the collapse of the bridge that had to be
crossed, so that he would nearly always pay the lesser fare, save a few pennies and walk
the rest of the way. He was following a line that made him bitter of any expense, and at
same time he was limiting the sphere of his ability to perform.
And so it happened that he began to seek to degrade men as well, in order to secure
a uniformity of his behavior. This was already clearly expressed in his hunt for married
women, and he was pleased by the consternation and disappointment of the women he
seduced, the words of abuse he subsequently tossed at them, no less than with the
satisfaction of once again having shown himself stronger than their husbands. This
became, by degrees, the whole content of his life, a change of form in which his
original fiction, becoming the most masculine, had found its closest realization. Only
the fear of women, which had originally led him, in accordance with the feeling he had
of his own femininity, to an exaggerated masculine protest, reasserted itself in the
enormous safeguard against female domination and allowed him to strengthen beyond
any measure, as a protective barrage, his distrust and greed, both of which offered him
sharp arguments. Moreover, carried away by this safeguarding tendency he fixated the
psychic impotence that he had come to know during his first attempts. A servant girl
whom he had wanted to seduce as a young man had offered him resistance. He was at
that time inexperienced and thought he was impotent. Later, when he had become more
knowledgeable, his lack of experience made him feel that women were a puzzle to him,
that they were unfathomable. In the original impotence, however, which was nothing
but the psychic expression of his own objections, and in his helplessness towards
women, he found the neurotic subterfuges that gave him an opportunity to escape his
final defeat and avoid a decision disadvantageous for his masculinity. He now began to
compare himself with other men even more frantically. He would catch himself
unawares in a psychic situation in which, sitting at a table with others, and before
anyone had even spoken a word, he would already be warily planning what he should
reply, how he might prove the speaker wrong. If he spoke about a book, or a theatrical
performance, a company or a place, derogatory criticism of the most biting kind would
invariably force its way through. And so it was to be expected that whenever he
underwent medical treatment, after a short introduction, he would bring to expression
the characteristics of distrust, greed, and depreciation of others, often intricately
interwoven. His solidly fixated psychic gesture, his attitude were formed by attacking
and degrading others, and under close scrutiny, had to come to light . A decisive factor
was added to this. His object in visiting a doctor could not possibly be that he wanted,
purely and simply, to be freed of his impotence, for this would cast him into the chaos
of his fears. He rather wanted to find proof that he was incurable, or find a way in
which he could be potent without having to fear defeat. In order to realize the first goal,
the devaluation of the physician’s ability was a necessary precondition. However, he
would only be able to find the way to a cure by tracing his fear for women to its
mistaken sources, all the way back to his childish feelings of unmanliness, in which the
feeling of his inferiority had found concrete expression. One of the dreams he had in the
time before the end of his treatment illustrated this state of affairs very clearly. First of
all I should remark that I consider dreams as the reflection of an abstracting,
simplifying attempt to find, by thinking ahead and by testing difficulties against a
scheme that is unique to the patient, an escape from a situation where defeat is
imminent, so as to safeguard the feeling of self-worth.2 Consequently, one will find in
every dream the significant scheme of the antithetical mode of apperception:
‘masculine-feminine’ and ‘above-beneath,’ as this is originally inherent in every human
being, but is exaggerated in the neurotic. The notions and memories that come to light
have to be accommodated within this scheme first, in order to disclose the meaning of
the dream, whose aim is not — or at least not in principle — to fulfill some infantile
wish, but rather to generate an atmosphere adapted to the neurosis, whose interpretation
discloses introductory attempts to bring into balance, by reducing them to a smaller size
and in his own neurotic way, the patient’s debit and credit in favor of his feeling of self-
worth. The dream was as follows: ‘I am a dealer in old things in Vienna or in Germany
or in France. But I have to buy new goods and wash them, because this would be
cheaper then. Then they’re old goods once more.’
The new goods imply a new potency in contrast to the ‘old things,’ to his
impotence, which no one in any country had cured. Here, the idea of a new life, of a
possibility to attain potency, is dimly visible. The words, ‘because this would be
cheaper then,’ correspond to the way of thinking that we pointed out above, his fear of
having to spend money in case he would become potent. This idea, however, can only
be maintained under one condition, namely, if the patient is absolutely and completely
convinced that his urge to make love is excessive, that he does not know any limits
whatsoever and is senselessly pursuing women. Now, the patient will tendentiously
convince himself accordingly, using memories from his childhood, puberty, and early
adulthood. In doing this, he is also assisting in the creation of incestuous memories
from his childhood, which, if they seem useful to him, he will give the form as if he had
sexually desired his mother or sister. That is to say, he is using a fiction that he has
derived from his final goal, in order to acquire a safeguard for himself, just as
Sophoclesd shaped and developed the Œdipus legend in order to confirm the holy
commands of the gods. At the same time, his desire to subjugate the mother and sisters
will be expressed in a sexual jargon. Our patient has become a willing victim of his
incomplete understanding of dialectics, of the antagony inherent in primitive thinking.
The guiding idea of his personality ideal — ‘I am not allowed to desire blood relations’
— dialectically contains within itself the opposite idea of possible incest. Since the
neurotic wants to safeguard himself, he will adhere to the antithetical idea, play with it,
emphasize it, and use it in the neurosis, just as he does with all frightening memories
that seem useful for his security. In the life of our patient and that of all neurotics, there
had been many more experiences that might have convinced them that they were free
from any incestuous inclination, indeed, that they were always very temperate, cautious
and timid. However, since he wants to safeguard himself, his recollection and his
neurotic, falsifying way of apperception tendentiously push these characteristics to the
side. He has many more impressions of not desiring his mother or sisters, but he cannot
make use of these to safeguard himself. This is how there will remain nothing but a
trace of a memory of a preparatory, playful and risky undertaking, and because this
may serve as a warning for him, he makes it into a bugbear with which he frightens
himself. He wants to ‘wash it off,’ that is to say, to free himself from it. In exactly the
same way, neurotic fear, agoraphobia, hypochondria, pessimism and skepticism come
into being, in that the patients only rely upon those impressions and experiences that
may serve to provide security, that strengthen their emotional state, and depreciate all
others, particularly those that are antithetical. The ability of sophistse ‘in utramque
partem dicere’ of everything, is shared by the neurotic and the psychotic, and they use it
as they see necessary.
2 See in particular A.Adler, ‘Interpretation of Dreams.’ In: 4th installment of the

VIIth year of the International Magazine for Individual Psychology. [Traumdeutung in

Heft 4 des VII. Jhrg. der Internat. Zft. f. Indiv.-Psychologie]
The highly refined, tendentiously intensified dispositions of the neurotic and the
neurotic characteristics that accompany them are the reason why every new situation
brings confusion. (Lombroso’sf misoneism.) Most of all, our patient fears the situation,
unknown to him, of sexual satisfaction, because in this emotionally anticipated situation
he has placed himself — for safeguarding reasons — in the submissive position. Now
this fear, which is emotionally experienced as a fear of impotence, provides a further
safeguard against the possibility of being captivated, captured, deceived by a woman, or
of being no match for her, against a role that contradicts his masculine ideal and that he
therefore valuates as feminine. Out of harmless, ubiquitous characteristics such as
egoism, greed and frugality, he arranges a far-reaching, apparently immanent, but in
reality fictional guiding line of greed, because this seems to provide him with the best
protection. If he would, as he did in his dream, acquire what he had desired ever since
he was a child, namely, new genitals, a healthy potency, then he must protect himself
against this. And then he will reach for an expedient that he has known for a long time
and has often been recommended to him, but which really makes his erections weaker
rather than stronger, namely, washing with cold water. He considers this remedy,
inadequate as it is in his experience, equal to my treatment. The remedy is supposed to
bring about the opposite of what it is trying to achieve, and the current physician is
supposed to be just as unsuccessful as former ones. This is how the dream shows the
patient an escape, how to protect himself against treatment, which he can only do if he
gets the upper hand of the physician. ‘Then they’re old goods once more.’
In other cases of psychic impotence, a successful cure may be achieved quite
easily, and as we know, the remedies may be very diverse. After all, it often concerns
patients who have shown, merely by the fact that they actually consult a physician, that
they might be inclined to give up this kind of safeguard. In this case, medication, cold
douches, electricity, hydrotherapy and more in particular any kind of suggestion,
including that resulting from an analysis that does not make any sense. Sometimes the
authority of the physician’s word is sufficient to sweep certain misgivings aside. In
severe cases a transformation of the psyche that is too anxiously preoccupied with
security is necessary, as well as the introduction of the patient into the community,
which he seeks to undermine by his impotence.
Age will often send envy and greed soaring. From a psychological point of view
this not difficult to understand. No matter how hard poets and philosophers try to
glorify old age, only a very select group of souls will have the strength to maintain their
mental balance when they see the gate that leads to death looming in the distance. And
the privation and limitation that naturally come with age, the noticeable superiority of
younger people, of one’s own next of kin, which so often gives occasion in a harmless
or apparently harmless way to the depreciation of older people, will nearly always lead
to a depression of the feeling of self-worth. The sunny predisposition of Goethe,
refreshingly expressed in his Vater Kronosg, is probably an unattainable illusion for
most people, and fortunate indeed we may call those who survive the passing of their
best time without any serious spiritual damage.
According to our assumptions it logically follows that the time of old age, as the
permanent depreciation that it is, gives rise to a strong inferiority feeling. Those with a
neurotic disposition will particularly suffer from it. Occasionally, old age, or in women,
the climacteric, feelings of spiritual or psychic insufficiency, signs of impotence, the
family breaking up, the marriage of a son or daughter, as well as financial losses or
being relieved of employment or official positions, may be the initial cause of the
breakdown. In most cases, traces or manifestations of neurotic symptoms can be found
in the patient’s previous history. Old age with its losses has the same effect as other
depreciations of the feeling of self-worth. The stimulated aggressive drive will try to
find other ways of realizing an equilibrium, other ways which are, unfortunately, not
easy to find in this case. Renunciation would be much easier if the emotional life would
narrow down in equal proportion to the decline of physical and mental power. This
happens only rarely. And in order to find some kind of substitution, the aggressive
drive, stimulated by the insecurity, will for one last time whip up all feelings of desire.
General opinion will often try too hard to put an end to these attempts. The attitude, the
life, the desires, the clothing, the work, the accomplishments of aging people are too
much subjected to criticism. Those who are inclined to neurosis will only too easily
experience this criticism as a barrier, and they will even shy away from situations that
still offer opportunities for satisfaction. Such a person will force himself to submission,
he will want to kill off all his feelings and desires, without coming to terms with them.
Indeed, they will flare up with even greater intensity when renunciations are demanded
and no readjustments are made. This is how it happens that the active, hostile
characteristics come to the fore, that envy, jealousy, greed, a desire to dominate, and
sadistic inclinations of all kinds experience reinforcement, and, without ever being
satisfied, give rise to a restlessness that is incessantly demanding remedies,
substitutions, and safeguards. ‘Happiness is where you are not!’h For the actual position
of aging people is under serious threat in our society, because the value of one’s work is
nearly the only standard that determines the appreciation of one’s personality. The
appearance of power, however, prestige, is the neurotic’s meat and drink. Indeed, we
have even experienced suicide as the ultimate expression of the masculine protest in old
age. Often, one may find melancholy as an act of revenge.
The coming of old age has an even stronger impact on women than it has on men.
The very importance of the climacteric is usually exaggerated to an enormous degree.
However, for a woman, youth and beauty meant power, and more so than for a man.
Her charms could give her the dominance, victories and triumphs for which neurotic
greed is constantly yearning. Old age is felt to be a blemish. Besides this, her value
decreases more than that of the aging man, and the prevailing mentality may be called
hostile towards the aging woman. This deplorable fact finds its origin in the familiar
depreciation tendency of men towards women, and in conjunction with the psychic
effect resulting from our experiences in society it will endure to the grave, a neurotic
outgrowth that appears to be implacable and ineradicable. Consciously and
unconsciously, and from the nature of things often insurmountably, the degrading
tendency of those who are in the prime of their life is pressing on the feeling of self-
worth of the aging woman. The love of children and respect for the aged, as supportive
methods and guiding viewpoints of the community feeling in the relations with people,
will offer only very little relief and they can never satisfy the increased desire of people
whose powers are waning. At this point, the neurotic characteristic to reinforce his
guiding lines will set to work. ‘I am deprived, life has not given me enough, I will never
achieve anything anymore,’ these are the things that one may often hear in the
complaints of aging neurotics, and they will emphasize this way of viewing the world to
such an extent that they may suspiciously and distrustfully sink into an often repulsive
egotism that earlier had never manifested itself in them so clearly. Then, however, their
indecisiveness and doubt are stabilized. ‘Act as if you still have to prove yourself’ is
more or less how another guiding line is generated from the psyche, and this will make
the neurotic intensification of greed even greater, and the greedy, envious, domineering
impulses will come massively to the forefront, almost always, however, restrained by
the previously mentioned guiding lines, according to which the patients shrink back
from any desire and initiative. And so, torn away with difficulty from consciousness,
these impulses are practically lying under one cover, continuously maintaining
dissatisfaction, impatience and distrust, incessantly steering attention to the unattained
and often to the unattainable. Quite often the latter is sought after in sexuality, or
sexuality is constructed as a symbol of the unattainable goal. In this last case, the
success of which is on the one hand assisted by the great suitability of the sexual
symbol, but on the other just as well by the circumstance that anyone would probably
succeed in proving sexual dissatisfaction, which is after all what is most important, and
so all desire is sexualized. It is easy to see that the apperception of these persons is
based on a sexual analogy. However, one should avoid the mistake of taking the sexual
fiction, which might be called a modus dicendi or sexual jargon, for an original
emotion. In the theoretical part I have discussed the reasons for the clear and prominent
presence of the sexual guiding line among neurotics; one reason is that, like all the
neurotic’s guiding lines, it is considerably accentuated and, so to speak, experienced as
if it were real, whereas it was only arranged to function as a safeguarding guiding line;
a second reason is that it leads in the direction of the masculine protest. Thus it happens
that every desire of the aging neurotic woman may be related to a sexual analogy, not
only by herself, but, with a little effort, by the physician as well. Similarly, there can be
no doubt, in view of the previous observations, that the physician can satisfy the
neurotic’s need for a safeguarding analogy by prematurely offering him the sexual
guiding principle in the manner of the Freudian school. There is no benefit in this as
long as one does not succeed in disengaging the patient from his fiction, which will
only be possible when he has become more certain of himself and is able to recognize
his apparently libidinous impulse as a falsifying fiction.
Such a fiction is, for example, the masculine climacterici as it was described by
earlier authors, and by Freud and Kurt Mendelj. The climacteric of women is active
psychically, unconcerned with metabolic processes, by means of an increased inferiority
feeling. Simultaneous disturbances of the metabolism can only modify or intensify the
neurotic aspect, and only when they begin to manifest themselves specifically, by
increasing the insecurity. Basedow’s neurosis in climacteric women provides an
example of such a mixed and intensified picture. The neurosis of the ‘masculine
climacteric’k is likewise influenced only indirectly by the atrophy of the genitals, but it
may go through a process of intensification by aggravation of the abstraction: I am no
longer a man, I am a woman! Since the masculine guiding line is intensified,
hypostasized with attentiveness and arranged excitement on the basis of this ideological
standpoint, the curious manifestations of the ‘Johannestrieb’ may occur, the frequent
existence of which in women has been correctly asserted by Karin Michaelisl in her
book Das gefährliche Alter. Even so, the sexual guiding line is not the exclusive or even
the fundamental one, as, for instance, a biological method of observation would try to
have it, indeed, if one wants to do the facts justice, it should be considered as only one
form of expression, equal to all other forms of desire. A widow, no longer young, took
revenge on her children, because they had pushed her out of her central position in the
household, by having very public love affairs with younger men whom she paid. An
aging man suffered from insomnia for many years, which was really a condemnation of
his wife and child, a rebuke of their lack of love, while at the same time apparently
demanding sexual freedom, which should bring back sleep according to some ridiculous
prejudice. At the same time, exhaustion and continuous weakness prevented all sexual
stimulation.
Accordingly, the climacteric neurosis shows us another face in the neurosis that is
caused by the feeling of inferiority, and the characteristic traits that can be traced in it
— secondary guiding lines that seem inevitably to lead to the main guiding line — are
similar to the hypostatizations we are familiar with. I have never seen a case in which
the neurosis had manifested itself only in the climacteric. And indeed it is to be
expected, according to our presuppositions, that the ‘climacteric’ neurosis will have
shown itself on earlier occasions, often in a mild form, when favorable circumstances or
cultural activities could alleviate the attack by a partial gratification of the craving for
power. One will usually find a gradual increase over the years, an ever widening range
of the neurotic symptoms, which implies, from the very beginning, that an
intensification of the safeguarding tendency has become a necessity. An example would
be the transformation of headaches and occasional migraines in the trigeminus
neuralgia. Or the intensification of neurotic caution into anxiety, occasionally by
coming to grips with an anticipated disaster through melancholy. For these three levels
of safeguarding one should take into account the scheme that was referred to in the
theoretical part:
CAUTION: for instance, as if I might lose my money, as if I might be ‘below.’ ANXIETY: as
if I will lose my money, as if will be ‘below.’
MELANCHOLY: as if I had lost my money, as if I were ‘below.’3
In other words, the stronger the feeling of insecurity, the more the fiction will be
intensified as the abstraction from reality increases, and dogma is approached. And the
patient will nourish and falsify everything within himself that brings him closer to his
safeguarding guiding line, which is active in its small circle. Reality will be devaluated
in various degrees and the correcting courses, adjusted to the community, will prove
themselves to be more and more insufficient.
Not infrequently one comes across cases in which neurotic phenomena have
manifested themselves in pathogenic periods known to us, as if they were experiments.
Kischm and others have pointed out the actual anamnesis of neurotic complaints at the
beginning of menstruation. More often one will find in earlier stages neurotic molimina
menstrualian, or neuroses before marriage, in the puerperium, or continuously.
After these considerations we may well let the guiding lines as we have described
them join the neurotic’s main guiding line. The neurosis of aging persons is nothing but
yet another aspect of this, an adapted, psychic superstructure, built upon the one
elementary directing line: I want to be victorious. And this directing line, which would
be condemned to fail immediately, makes use of very different disguises without ever
finding one that is satisfactory. Often one gets an impression of great helplessness, of
resignation, as if the patients wanted to say that they have no idea as how to go about it.
Doubt becomes a part of all their plans; vacillation never leaves them, although one will
also see the patients showing off in an exaggerated way, as if they wanted to prove to
themselves that they are too old, or that they are still young. There is a tendency to
make efforts to gain power, influence, importance. But the feeling that they want what
cannot be had does not leave them. In their dreams one will frequently find some
attempt to help a feeling of superiority break through, to be young, but often also, and
sometimes well disguised, to be a man. Usually they will consciously state that they
think aging men are privileged. Also the traits of character, those secondary guiding
lines, show how the safeguarding tendency works. Pedantry, greed, envy, the desire for
dominance, and the desire to please will often come to prominence in deeply concealed
ways. Anxiety is very common; it often serves to prove that one cannot be alone. And
eventually the neurotic symptoms will bring the whole household under the patient’s
influence by force. Often there is a more or less timid, concealed attempt to realize a
certain wish, as if this would then assure triumph. Frequently this wish will concern a
divorce, or moving to a big city, the humiliation of sons-in-law or daughters-inlaw, as if
peace and quiet might then be expected. Difficulties with eating, of the bowel
movements, fragments of imaginary pregnancies and childbirths are not at all rare. In
addition, forgetfulness, trembling, occasionally a traumatic accident will be arranged, in
order to demonstrate both to themselves and others their increasing helplessness.
Certain complaints return time and again, every unpleasant incident attains a particular
importance, and their minds are at all times focused on future troubles. The
demonstrative emphasis on suffering and the hesitating attitude serve, on the one hand,
to captivate the attention of their social circle, on the other hand, as a prelude to their
withdrawal on occasions when they expect a painful humiliation. Psychologically, we
may conclude that complaining, too, is experienced as a form of revolt, as a protest
against inferiority feelings, and that it can be dispensed with only with difficulty: it is
intended to make the other weak, soft.
3See ‘Melancholy and Paranoia.’ In Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology, l.c.

Treatment meets with quite considerable difficulties since teaching someone to be

independent and perseverant at an advanced age is so much more difficult, and because
it is not easy to make expectations seem rewarding in a plausible way. As always, the
character of the psychotherapist and his actual or possible success will be used as an
incentive to envy, and improvements will therefore often serve only to provoke setbacks.
The authority over them that is so easy to attain will also disturb the balance of these
patients, who have never in their lives been able to adjust, or even so much as
subordinate themselves. As a final refuge in severe cases, it may be advisable that after
a thorough analysis of the case, the physician self-sacrifices himself, so that one must
take it upon oneself to give the impression that the treatment has failed and let the
laurels go to another method and another physician. In some of my own cases this
artifice proved to be effective. In these cases, far-reaching improvements and great
relapses took place after the treatment had ended, sometimes complete cures, apparently
spontaneously.
One of my patients, a 56-year old woman, had been suffering for 18 years from
anxiety, vertigo, nausea, abdominal pains and severe obstipation. She had spent a large
part of this time lying in bed or on a sofa, particularly since some eight years ago she
also had begun to suffer from terrible pains in her groins and legs. The patient had
previously been a strong woman, but when she was about sixteen years old she had
suffered, supposedly for months, from rheumatism in the joints. Her present situation
proved to be psychogenic, since there were no corresponding organic changes and it
was easy to point out the safeguarding characteristics4 that I have called attention to. I
ignored the advice of a wellknown gynecologist to undertake a hysterectomyo because
of perimetrical deformitiesp, since I had learned from other cases to assess the causal
importance of such procedures of stricture (Freud) for the neurosis as having an
immediate influence on the psyche. Changes of the genitals, manifestations of
developmental arrest, deformities as well as diseases are frequently to be found in
neurotics. And Bossiq is certainly correct in insisting on this correlation, as I already
did earlier (Studie, 1907). It is, however, a correlation that lies either in the arrangement
of a special type of inferiority feeling, which in the case of a neurotic disposition gives
occasion for the neurosis to break out, or in the fact that the neurosis, having broken out
for other reasons, is in need of some safeguarding indication of organic change in order
to begin preparations for the purpose of neurotic superiority that has already been fixed.
Sexual inferiority in the first place upsets the overall value of the individual and in the
second place it will turn, so to speak, into a vehicle, and this will become particularly
clear when very minor changes or even entirely imaginary, fictional ones such as the
supposed loss of the clitoris, enlargement of the labia minora, moistening of the
aperture, implausible features of masturbation or anomalies in the growth of hair,
phimoses, paraurethral passages and an asymmetric position of the penis, of the
testicles, or cryptorchism are taken as a cause and a symbol of the inferiority feeling.
The disease began with a pain in the abdomen that came up during a game of
tennis. A year earlier one of her daughters had died and her husband, who loved
children very much, wanted to have more children. The patient, who had been
bewailing her lot as a woman ever since her early youth, was not at all inclined to fulfill
this wish. The pain, which was probably caused by a strained muscle, gave fresh
nourishment to her resistance, of which she was only vaguely conscious: since that time
she could not stand any pressure on her abdomen, her abdomen became a delicate part
of her body and by a further arrangement of sleeplessness and nausea she brought
matters to a point at which her husband, on the advice of physicians, gave up sexual
intercourse and moved into a separate bedroom.
The information she gave about the rheumatism in her joints was typical enough in
itself. She blamed everything on her late mother. She had forced her, when she was still
living with her parents, to wash and iron the laundry, had always neglected her in favor
of her other children, all sons, and had gone on treating her, even in later years, just as
hard-heartedly. The greed of this aging woman had brought her into many difficulties.
Her suffering, however, was something she believed to have inherited from her father,
so that he too got his share of the blame.
4About whose differential-diagnostic importance there can be no doubt whatsoever.

Only the simultaneousness of an organic affect can still be regularly expected.

In my experience, such reproaches against the parents frequently point towards
another kind of reproach, which the child will secretly make of the parents if he finds
that he is not sufficiently or not at all superior. Such reproaches will become abstract at
a later stage, as I have also shown with regard to the feeling of guilt (see about neurotic
disposition in Heilen und Bilden l.c.), in a manner of speaking, they come to be used as
containers whose contents may be changed. And so it is said later that the parents were
not affectionate enough, or that they over-indulged the child, or did not pay it enough
attention, etc. In short, we observe in these formulations of an attitude towards the
parents and later towards the world a change of form that is necessary for guiding lines
that are pursuing a practical goal, and we will quite regularly see different aspects made
to fit the situation at hand. It is necessary then to trace back the route that the change in
form has taken. In doing this, our method makes use of methods of reduction,
simplification (Nietzsche)r, and abstraction.5 Besides the change in form, intensification
or attenuation of the guiding fiction plays an important role. The more insecure a
patient is feeling, the stronger will he be driven by an unconscious tendency to bring his
guiding idea to a greater intensity, to make himself dependent on it. I readily follow the
ingenious views of Vaihingers here, who asserts about the history of ideas that from a
historical point of view, they show a tendency to develop from a fiction (an untrue, but
practically useful supportive construction) into hypotheses and later into dogmas. This
change in intensity generally characterizes, in Individual Psychology, the thinking of a
normal individual (fiction as an expedient), of the neurotic (an attempt to realize the
fiction) and of the psychotic (incomplete but safeguarding anthropomorphism and
realization of the fiction: dogmatization). A very strong inner need seeks compensation
by strengthening the safeguarding guiding lines. Therefore one will frequently find
equivalents of neurotic and psychotic guiding lines and characters among normal
individuals, where they can always be corrected so that they may converge with reality
without any contradiction. If we were to reduce the manifest guiding lines of our female
patient, and to relieve them from their change in form and intensity, so that we can take
them not as the guiding lines into which they developed later, but in their original form,
then they would read: I am only a woman and I must defend myself against depreciation
(often in the form: I want to be a man!). A normal person, too, will throughout his life
act according to this formula. It helps him to become a part of our masculine culture,
indeed, it provides him with a continuous incentive towards ‘masculinization.’ But it is
there only as an aid in calculation, like the auxiliary line in a geometrical constructiont.
If the result, the higher level, valued as masculine, has been attained, it will ‘disappear
from the calculation’ (Vaihinger). As for myth, a guiding line of an entire people,
Nietzscheu deplores its ‘transformation into the fairy tale and he demands its
transformation into masculinity.’ The neurotic emphasizes this fiction, he takes it all too
literally and tries to realize it by force. His object is not the adaptation of the goal, but
the advancement of his prestige, which is for the most part unattainable in this
overstressed form, or because of internal contradictions, or because of the fear of a
threatening defeat, without the patient recognizing the importance or scope of his
largely unconscious fiction. But for him, the intensified insecurity feeling and the often
unconscious inferiority feeling are an obstacle in a correct appreciation of his own
fiction, too. The psychotic behaves as if his fiction were true. He acts under extremely
strong compulsion and delivers himself unto his self-created god, which he perceives as
real. And so he will sometimes feel himself to be a woman and a secure superman at the
same time, the latter as a reaction to an exaggerated masculine protest. The apparent
split in the personality corresponds to the psychic hermaphroditism, the change of form
is manifold, and may for instance find expression in a combination of the ideas of
persecution and grandeur, of depression and mania, while the fixation of the delusion as
a way of self-protection by means of relative insufficiency, or as absolute weakness of
the corrective paths, is made easier. If one removes the sexuality that is superfluously
brought into the Freudian equation of dementia præcox (Yearbook Bleuler-Freud
1911), and if one would cut away from both sides the superfluous factor of the libido,
then our formula of psychic hermaphroditism, which lies much deeper, will come to the
surface, against which Freud, completely unaware of its true significance, is arguing in
his work.
5In contrast, Freud’s method works by creating analogies based on an erotic scheme.

But to return to our case history, it remains to be mentioned that the patient showed
a preference for certain forms of the masculine protest, of the compulsion towards equal
value, in her feeling of depreciation. She could not, for instance, bring herself to be
tolerant of any accomplishments by men. She was capable of truly sharp criticism in
this regard, particularly when ‘one of them was too prone to self-aggrandizement.’ In
these cases one will not infrequently find that those physicians whose behavior is rather
self-confident, as indeed many of them think it is requisite in the treatment of patients,
will be resisted by the patient with neurotic intensity and means. However, she was also
guided by some kind of impulse that did not allow her to interfere with the physician’s
orders, in consideration of the purpose of her disease. It did happen from time to time,
though, that an innocent exercise of influence on the part of the physician would be
responded to with vomiting and nausea, while the patient would not miss her chance to
point out the physician’s ‘incorrect’ intervention. One should never lose one’s patience
when this type of phenomenon occurs, indeed one should point out that this reaction is a
part of the whole, a change of form of the original envy of the other, later against
anyone believed to be superior.
In addition, the patient made very extensive use of certain privileges that her
illness provided her with. Most important was that she could avoid as much as she
wanted all social responsibilities that her role as a housewife and as an important
personality in a provincial town imposed on her. She actually did receive visitors, to
whom she complained about her suffering, but she answered calls only in exceptional
cases, and in this way she ensured herself, as it happens so often in the case of
neurotics, of a favored, privileged position. Besides, this offered her an opportunity to
evade all the comparisons and examinations — in our sense, that is to say, tests — that
social meetings bring with them6. In addition, the last few years she had also been
frightened by the idea that because of her increasing years, she had been robbed of any
chance of attracting men. A lady friend of hers showed her, and at close hand, how
ridiculous society considers the youthful behavior of an aging woman. And that is how
she came to the decision to make use of the way she dressed to draw particular attention
to her age, while the bitter thought surfaced in her consciousness that a man of her age
would not by any means be placed in the corner yet.
She had at all times experienced it as a bitter fact that she had to spend her life in a
provincial town. Instinctively, she had in many ways been urging a move to Vienna.
However, she could not achieve this in an open fight with her husband, who was many
years older than she, because his inexhaustible affection and compliance in all matters
disarmed her. She quarreled very bitterly with her brother and arranged an incredible
anxiety about meeting him in the small town. As if this was not yet enough, she
developed an insurmountable insomnia, for which she held the nightly rattling of
carriages before the windows of her bedroom to be the principal reason. This is how she
brought about a temporary relocation to Vienna, where she went to live in a house near
that of her daughter, the heavenly peace of which she always stressed, and where she
found back her sleep.
Ever since her daughter had been living in Vienna, she had come to hate the small
provincial town more and more. In accordance with the other guiding lines, the analysis
revealed that she was intensely envious of her daughter’s privilege, to which was added
a noble title. She also wanted to live in Vienna and she would long have realized this
plan if there would not have been a new danger threatening her in Vienna, namely, to be
forced to cover her daughter’s expenses with her own means.
The rivalry with the daughter living in Vienna was entirely unconscious and
corresponded to an infantile guiding line: to surpass her pampered older sister. This
guiding line, too, proved to be an equivalent of the basic one, which led to the desire to
be more important, to be in the place of the brother.
Because of the great expenditure that she was compelled to in Vienna, a
contradiction came up in her striving towards superiority. The neurotic with his
torturing feelings of depreciation will not allow anything to be taken from him without
punishment. He will experience a further depreciation as a decrease in his feeling of
self-worth, and it depends upon his guiding line whether he will take it as a castration7,
a feminization, a sexual assault, or sometimes in the image of a pregnancy or a birth8.
In our case, the analogous feelings of a pregnancy manifested themselves in particular,
nausea, abdominal cramps and compulsive ideas about an existing gravidity asserted
themselves9. Pains in the legs represented a phlegmasia alba dolensv, while the
legitimation of her illness consisted in an obstinate obstipation in the ‘anal language.’
She herself, and the people in her environment as well, constantly had to worry about
her bowel movement. The continuous expression of suffering and the preoccupation
with it was thus given a secure foundation.
6She had been ‘exempted,’ as one would say these days.

A deeper understanding of the ways in which neurosis expresses itself seems

impossible to me without knowledge about the ‘jargon of the organs’10 that I have
discovered. Folklore shows its awareness of this fact in the expressions of popular
speech and in popular customs. Freud has misunderstood this jargon and created from
its images the pillar of his libido theory, the theory of the erogenous zones. His articles
about the ‘anal character’ and ‘anal eroticism’ in particular are full of overworked and
overstressed fantasy. The crucial point is the relative inferiority of certain organs, the
attitude of the environment towards its expressions as well as the general impression
both of them make on the child’s psyche. Neurotically disposed children attempt to
connect those characteristics that originate in their protesting feeling of self-worth,
such as obstinacy, an increased need of affection, exaggerated cleanliness, pedantry,
anxiousness, ambition, envy, revengefulness etc., with suitable expressions of their
organ inferiority, in particular with childhood defects, in order to endow themselves
with a particularly active expression. One of my psychogenic epileptics has brought
into use such a neurotic set of mutually dependent preconditions of devices — a cross-
tie — so as to strengthen his masculine protest, in that he usually let his attacks be
preceded by obstipation, in order to arouse anxious premonitions among his relatives
and so make them notice him in cases of depreciation. By the end of the suckling stage,
obstinacy and childish negativism may already be clearly developed. Their association
with anomalies of defecation, urination and eating may then result in an intensified
understanding. ‘The child who refuses to empty his bowels’ does not derive its pleasure
from a stimulation of the anus by holding back its faeces, but by the satisfaction of his
obstinacy that uses this rather dishonorable means, but occasionally it may, however,
attribute a certain quality of pleasure to rectal stimulation for quite some years, until
the obstinacy has been cured. From the mother of a nearly two year old girl, who still
suffered from bed-wetting and showed signs of increased obstinacy, negativistic and
generally independent characteristics, I heard that she had often observed that the child,
when she was awakened, would relieve herself when she was still very drowsy, but
would refuse to do this when she was fully awake. If the girl would become fully awake
towards the end of her urination, she would throw over the urinal and cry for a long
time, angry about being taken unawares; if she would remain half asleep, however, the
girl would quietly fall back asleep. A little girl, 17 months old, would regularly and
falsely express the need to relieve herself, when the mother would call for her from the
next room. And so it can be demonstrated in every case that the child’s ego-feeling
finds itself in the earliest period in an open and latent antithesis to the environment, that
it manifests itself, fighting and conquering, in the broadest sense, until finally it adds up
all these aggressive emotions (See Aggressionstrieb im Leben und in der Neurose,
Fortschritte der Medizin, Leipzig 1908; repr. in Heilen und Bilden, l.c.), arranges them
into a striving for superiority and contrasts this with the emotions of softness,
submission and weakness, which it generally experiences and fights as feminine
characteristics. And so it is that from time to time cross-ties may come into being, in
which the masculine protest emphasizes feminine symptoms, in order to revaluate them
into bugbears, or that it obstinately or cowardly fixates feminine symptoms and thus
provides access to hermaphroditic constructions, which are active in the direction of the
masculine protest, such as tears, illness, simulation and exaggeration, and childhood
defects. The combative guiding line — I want to be a superior man — is placed above
all else and will then pull all useful, hostile physical symptoms within its range, in
particular the phenomena of inferiority, towards which the patient’s own attention as
well as that of his environment is primarily directed. This is why the striving for
superiority will then use an organ language to express itself. A beautiful example, one
that frequently returns in erotic fantasies, is Leonardo da Vinci’sw childhood fantasy: a
vulture repeatedly shoved its tail into his mouth. This fantasy puts the psychic
constellation of the artist into a very accurate abstraction. Mouth fantasies can
frequently be traced back to phenomena of inferiority of the child’s gastrointestinal
tract. One of the results of this focused attention was probably Leonardo’s attempt to
come to a science of nutrition. The vulture’s tail is a phallic symbol. Adding up these
two lines will give the characteristic basic idea: I will suffer the fate of a woman. But
the strict transformation into a symbolic guiding line already draws our attention to the
fact that these and similar trends do not signify a psychic conclusion, but that they
develop, under the pressure of our masculine culture, into an intensified impulse in the
opposite direction, and inevitably must lead to an overcompensation on the masculine
side, where they work out the masculine guiding line all the more distinctly: ‘I must act
like that if I want to escape defeat.’ In my article about ‘psychic hermaphroditism in life
and neurosis’ (in Heilen und Bilden l.c.) I already emphasized that these two guiding
lines are in a contradictory relation to one another, apart from the fact that each of them
will in itself, as if it were natural, come in contradiction with reality, as far as it is taken
‘literally’ and not just as useful and corrigible in practice. This contradiction is
reflected in the fear of making decisions, the analysis of which will often reveal the
simple fact that an insecurity concerning the future sexual role existed in early
childhood, in whose psychic superstructure all later observations, emotions and
impulses are grouped, in a certain sense, as doubtful: I do not know whether I am a man
or a woman (See Disposition für Neurose. Jahrbuch Bleuler-Freud 1909; repr. in
Heilen und Bilden l.c.)
7 The process which we describe here was later taken over by Freud and his

followers as the ‘castration complex,’ but it was not understood as a modus dicendi, as
a symbol.
8That is to say: thinking does not operate on the basis of what is real, but hits upon

analogies and symbols, whose falsifying accompaniment of emotional disturbances

increases the preparedness of the neurotic to attack. This latter, however, corresponds to
the unconscious, guiding ‘opinio.’ The creation of images, symbols, analogies, these
are, as ‘multipliers,’ in the service of aggression, to which the personality ideal of the
neurotic compels. The woman as sphinx, the man as murderer, etc.
9In a ‘lactation’ neurosis I once saw a fantasy of birth being enacted in a twilight state,

quite true to nature.

10 See ‘Dialect of Organs,’ in: Heilen und Bilden, l.c.
 Our patient expresses in the ‘anal language’ the idea that she should close an
opening. A clearly feminine idea. Imagine a number of men and women, all dressed as
women, in a room in which suddenly, a mouse is turned loose. The women will
immediately betray themselves as such by drawing their dresses close to their legs, as if
they wanted to prevent the mouse from finding an entrance. Likewise, the fear of holes,
of being bitten or stung, ideas of persecution by men, or by bulls, of lying on the back,
of being pulled to the right or backwards, of being pushed, of falling and the like, reveal
the guiding line that strikes fear, the reaction to which is usually that of the
safeguarding anxiety.11 Obstipation as a neurotic symptom originates in an inborn
inferiority of the intestines, which may even, by means of ideas of birth and sexual
intercourse, lead to a neurotic closure of the sphincter. Our patient had indeed been
suffering from intestinal cattarrhs and occasional incontentia alvix in her childhood, and
later from obstipation and a fistula vaginalis ani. That the obstipation was dominated by
a guiding idea about the closure of orifices may be concluded from the fact that the
patient had been suffering from vaginismy for quite some time after her marriage. The
obstipation of the now aging woman expresses anally the same direction of the will as
her earlier vaginism: “I do not want to be a woman, I want to be a man!” Only the idea
of protest pushes itself to the surface: “I do not want to solve the task of my life!”
For both practical and theoretical reasons I must at this point reach considerably
beyond the framework of a character description, as one is indeed forced to take into
account the whole of the psyche in any discussion of psychological questions. Besides,
this case, having been analyzed to the minutest detail, offers insights of a clarity that is
often unattainable in other cases because not infrequently the dependence on the
physician, or on external circumstances, results in a cure or a discontinuance of the
treatment, before the scheme on which the patient has modeled his neurosis, has been
revealed in its entirety. And therefore I want to attempt to set down here the scheme of
this case, a widely ramifying safeguarding network against the role of women, by
classifying all her symptoms in the scheme that I obtained and by pointing out the
guardians against the outside world, and the characteristics in their synthetic relation
with it.
11 This same tendency to closure in the neurosis leads to trismus, blepharospasmus,

vaginism, sphincter cramp, globus and epiglottal cramp, which will lead, as
‘preoccupation,’ to relieve the patient of certain demands that life will make. (see
endnotes)
The patient arranged all her experiences according to this scheme (see page 110),
and when they fit in any way, sufficient cause for which is provided in any individual’s
life by symbolic apperception, overloaded with a tendentious focus, she reacted with the
corresponding manifestations of her disease. The safeguarding characteristics had been
pushed forward, as advanced outposts, and were always ready to the defense, clarifying
situations in accordance with the guiding idea, and whenever necessary they would find
support from the entire supply of convenient symptoms. Her independent expressions
were severely hindered by the tender, understanding behavior of her husband and by
wellmeaning, and considerate guiding ideas of the patient herself. And so it came about
that the basic scheme: I am nothing but a woman! — drew its influence from
impressions of the female role that had remained tendentious, in which the unconscious
mechanism of the guiding idea provided the safeguarding memento. A healthy woman
is distinguished by a more conscious attitude towards her female role, by a purposive
adaptation and a corrective approximation of the scheme to reality. Psychosis, on the
other hand, would bring out an intensification of the fictional scheme in order to
provide more security and an illogical attitude within the scheme; such a patient would
behave as if she was really pregnant. In all three cases, the fiction of pregnancy and its
manifestations in a broader sense would seem to serve as a symbol of the inferior role of
women, a representational expression for the feeling of depreciation, yet at the same
time possessed by the masculine protest, an artifice to avoid and prevent other
depreciations, as was shown above12.
12 The transformation of the masculine fiction may ultimately reach the point

where it will guide the striving for pregnancy, for motherhood, quite often in those
cases in which serious difficulties are present. Usually, the cry for a baby is then
directed against the man. A ‘phantom pregnancy’ often represents an arrangement of
this kind.
SCHEME Symptoms
Fear of society
Compulsive blushing Fear of being alone Heart palpitations
Fear of falling,
vertigo in high places
Turning away from the feminine line – the masculine protest Safeguard against
the acquisition
of love (courtship)
Sensitivity for pressure on the stomach (cecum)
Frigidity
Hypersensitivity to hear spouse’s snoring
Vaginism
Feeling of pressure on the breast
Inability to tolerate any kind of pressure, resisting the corset
Abdominal pains
Dyspnea
Nausea
Vomiting
Compulsory ideas of
Pregnancy
Occasional astatia
Fatigue
Craving for certain food
Abdominal cramp
Difficult bowel movement
Inability to tolerate lying on the back
Pain in the legs
Fiction of thrombophelitis
Tendency to protracted illness
Safeguard against the man
Safeguarding
preparations
(predispositions)
Distrust (trust with
following protest)
Devaluating man
Anxiety
Timidity
Virtuous morality
Desire to dominate
(compliance with
following protest)
Obstinacy
Stubbornness
Disputatiousness
Tendencies directed against men
Safeguard against pregnancy
Physical hypersensitivity Hypochondriac
pampering of oneself
Safeguard against birth
Safeguard against puerperal bed
Complex characteristics of
reaction so as to do away with inferiority and depreciation
Weakness in the legs,
Reminiscent of astasia and abasia
Staggering gait
Quickly fatigued by
walking
Hostile, occasionally
sadistic behavior towards children
Rapid fatigue and
impatience in the company of children
Insomnia
Exegesis of cleanliness Nocturnal aural
hypersensitivity
Extremely light sleep
Memory of leaving puerperal bed
Safeguarding against maternal duties
Greed, frugality, envy, desire for dominance, impatience, the fear of attaining
nothing, of finishing nothing, all kinds of exertions, as if the distance to being equal to a
man must be diminished no matter how.
A dream that occurred when her treatment was nearing its end shows us the
original guiding idea of the patient in connection with her actual inner conflicts. She
dreamed, ‘as if she was ill and weak, sitting on a bench in a park near the house of her
parents. She had two bathing caps on her head. Then two girls came upon her from
behind, and one of them ripped one of the caps off her head. She grabbed hold of the
girl and held her while the other disappeared, and threatened to report her to the police.
A poor, badly dressed woman passed by and told her that the girl’s name was Velicka.
After this she went to her mother in order to complain. Her mother gave her a basket
full of eggs and said they cost five guilders. She took two eggs in her hand and saw that
they were big and pretty.’
The situation on the bench, her tiredness and the bathing caps refer to a
hydropathic course of treatment that she had taken before she came to me, in particular
to get rid of her insomnia. The day before she had this dream she had been
reprimanding her daughter because the latter had taken her bathing clothes for her own
use; she also possesses two bathing caps, just as in her dream, and her daughter uses
them frequently as well. ‘Velicka’ is a slavonic word which means ‘big.’ The daughter
is carrying a slav noble title. The badly dressed woman is a noblewoman by the name of
Grand-venier. Compared to both others, she herself, a bourgeois woman, is degraded.
She was dissatisfied with the fact that her husband was not knighted, but her obstinacy
did not allow her to acknowledge her envy. She is afraid that her daughter might take
everything away. She had two daughters, and one died, disappeared. She is often
complaining about her daughter to me, that she costs so much money. She had already
given her all her jewelry. Since her childhood she had always been degraded by others.
Her mother always used to snub her, and had wanted to be paid for every trifle, even
after the patient was married. She herself, on the other hand, had always provided her
daughter with eggs, venison, milk, butter, etc. And still she needed so much money.
Before she had left for Vienna she had forgotten to settle a debt of five guilders. The
previous day she had written to her husband that he should pay this at once. She always
had to pay immediately anyway, whatever she bought13. Her mother had treated her
badly: in her dream she is recalling a forgotten debt. She had always been saving at her
expense. In her dream she receives from her mother the masculine attribute (testicles)
which her mother had withheld from her at the time of her birth.
Once again we see how in the dream, the masculine protest, from the feeling of
feminine depreciation, turns itself against possible further damage. This dream shows
us the patient’s attempt to prevent, in her mind, further depreciations and to accuse the
daughter of having taken everything away, having kept everything for herself, just as
her mother had done.
Similarly, this greed to also have everything is found in the following case history,
which shows even more clearly than the one above how, for pride, the patient will
remove this greed out of his sight, will ‘repress’ it. We will see how an apparently
insignificant change will occur, by means of the termination of repression and
transformation into an analogy according to the ‘Oedipus-scheme.’ In a similar manner,
it appears from all these cases that this greed to have everything pursues the most
absurd goals. Such patients only have eyes, sharpened by their lust for a kind of ideal
equality of rights, for everything that others in their environment possess, insofar as
they themselves are excluded from these possessions. They might even possess more
than those others and still be envious. They might grab hand over fist everything they
begrudge others, and then joylessly put it aside so as to provide their craving for
possession with new goals. And their craving will always remain stuck to the goals they
have not reached. It is easy to understand that they become incapable of love and
friendship. They often reach high levels in the art of deception, and go hunting for souls
because others, too, dominate people. They are in constant fear of depreciation and
always trying to provide security for themselves long beforehand. The love of the
parents for a brother, their jewelry, a marriage of a sister or brother, a book, the success
of an acquaintance or even a total stranger, all these fill them with rage14. The fact that a
brother or sister was born before them, successfully passed an examination, or his or her
property or social standing, may throw them into agitated fits, give them headaches, or
cause sleeplessness and stronger neurotic symptoms. Their permanent fear to be unable
to equal an older or younger brother may make them incapable for work. They will then
try to avoid all decisions and critical tests, reach a stage in which their aggression is
inhibited, and begin to withdraw from life, blaming the symptoms they themselves
create ad hoc, among which I have noticed more than once compulsory blushing,
migraines, all kinds of headaches, palpitations of the heart, stammering, agoraphobia,
trembling, compulsory sleeping, depression, weakness of memory, excessive thirst,z
polyuria,aa and psychogenic epilepsy. The arrangement is most clear in the case of
addiction to alcohol, morphine or cocaine, which will heal without leaving any trace
only if the community feeling increases and vanity decreases.
13 The fear to be curtailed even further by more expense would be close to the use

of the character-clichés of greed and frugality. She avoids these maternal characteristics,
feminine in their valuation, by paying beforehand and shows herself to be in a dominant
position to her mother by her generosity.
14Thus the approaching marriage of a girl may cause a neurotic attack to erupt in the

sister, the brother, or the father if they are neurotically disposed, or lead to an
intensification of the neurosis.
I have put particular emphasis on the case of the younger or youngest brother in
the picture I drew above, because I have come upon him most often, and because he
will be forced into rivalry most easily. This case in point is not unique. One may also
find older siblings, or only children, obviously also girls, in this role. Initially, the
rivalry may also be directed towards the father or mother, in whose image the sought-
after superiority often seems to have been concretized. In these cases, the aim of this
desire of the predisposed child is to acquire a guiding image, a guiding fiction for its
desires, and this will already happen at a time when it is not yet sexual desire that is
sought after, but the ‘also-possession’ of a person or a thing belonging to someone else.
The belief in predestination and ideas of godlikeness often develop as manifestations of
the masculine protest.
Anamnesically, one may often find kleptomania as a sign of greed, as the result of
the cooperation of susceptible ambition, envy, fear of the tasks of life, a simultaneous
fantasy of being rich and the partial suspension of the community feeling.
Sometimes the patient is unaware of his guiding line. Now and again one may
observe how he is trying to hide this guiding line and to make it unrecognizable by
occasional contrary impulses, such as generosity. The wish that draws him, for instance,
to the mother, no matter how sexual one may prove it to be, does not change anything in
the picture of the disease after it has become conscious. It is only after the patient has
come to understand and restrain his greed for the unattainable, for what belongs—by
the nature of things—to someone else, and does away with his fear for the problem of
his life, that he may recover.
The boundless pride that one finds in many of these cases prevents the patient from
easily coming to understand his envy and his jealousy. The tendency to devalue others,
on the other hand, is usually developed only too strongly and readily comes to hand.
Malice, revengefulness, a tendency for intrigue, and among the less intelligent, cruder
aggressive tendencies, such as sadistic and murderous instincts, manifest themselves as
attempts to provide security against depreciation in reality,15 as the shabby leftovers
after the useful side of life has been given up without hope. The fear of consequences,
or the lively concern for the condition and situation of relatives, imagining
punishments, arrest and misery, are the appropriate safeguards against excesses of the
masculine protest, which may be looked upon as efforts to apply the brake. The attacks
themselves may also serve as safeguarding devices, for instance, when in our case, a
psychoepileptic insult associates itself with impulses to fratricide and patricide
occurring in dreams.
15 If the fear of reality is concerned with the problem of sexuality, it may often

result in perversion. See A. Adler, The Problem of Homosexuality, l.c. – Fear of an

occupation will result in a life of idleness, vice and crime.
It is possible that the motive of scorned love regularly plays a role in these cases,
bringing about very strong impulses to hate the persons that could not be won. It may
justifiably be doubted whether love in a healthy person would be capable of such a
complete transformation. It requires the sum total of all impulses for power, the
overheated feeling of self-worth of such people, to long for the possession of the soul of
another person against that person’s will. Since the neurotic wants to possess everything
also, he will become blind to all natural restrictions and feel that his most sensitive
guiding line is hurt by the scorn for his ‘love.’ Now he is out for revenge: Acheronta
movebobb!
On occasion, if one is in doubt as to which of two persons the patient wants to lay
his personal claim to, the father or the mother, one may assume the opposite of what the
patient maintains. It would usually be too painful to acknowledge ‘scorned love.’ The
following experiment would seem to provide an exact result: one puts the patient
exactly between the two persons in question and after a short while one will notice that
he will have moved closer to the preferred person. There is truth only in movement.
This is how I was able to convince myself in the case which I am about to describe
in short that the patient felt a greater attraction towards his mother, although he seemed
to prefer his father by far when he and I were alone. Not infrequently, he would scold
his mother and not a day would pass without their quarreling. The first phase of a
child’s social attachments is always the attachment to the mother; that to the father is
always a second phase, whose onset occurs after some sort of tragedy when the child is
taken away from the mother. (Usually the birth of the next brother or sister.)
A phenomenon that may often be observed in neurosis did indeed not fail to appear
in this case, rather on the contrary, although its expression was quite special: the strong
transference of a pedantic trait of character that, like a reconnaissance regiment in the
army, took the task upon itself to come into touch with the ‘enemy.’ The enemy was
first of all the mother, and the daily fights regularly flared up because the patient’s
exaggerated, pedantic demands concerning meals, the care of his laundry and clothes,
and the preparation of his bath and bed were impossible to meet in all respects. Our
patient thus acquired a base of operations from which originated his attempts to
outflank his mother, to put her completely at his service. Once again we observe a
neurotic characteristic as a device used by the patient to perform his fifth act, to remain
as true as possible to his scheme, to dominate the mother also, in the same way as he
believes to have seen his father do. ‘And if you aren’t willing, I’ll use force!’cc This
way of thinking had taken possession of the patient in his childhood, and soon his
attitude towards his mother was one full of distrust, always looking out for slights, for
partiality to others, full of tense energy and gloomy expectation, whether he might not
even now succeed in capturing her for himself. Not because he loved or wanted to
possess her or anything, but he wanted to have her also, just as so many other things,
jewelry, chocolate creams, which he did not particularly like at all, and indeed, after
putting them in the cupboard forgot all about as soon as he could call them his own.
And similarly the possession of his mother was not an end in itself for him; his desire
was by no means libidinous or even sexual, but the mother and her distance from him
had become a symbol for him, a measure of the degree of his inferiority. And because
he wanted to establish a view of life, indeed all encounters, all relations with the
opposite sex, by using the same characteristics, distrustful, full of hypersensitivity, with
the same gloomy expectation of disappointment, all success and all satisfaction
vanished for him. He had, after all, only eyes for everything that was against him, that
spoke against his success, and whatever he attained lost all charm for him. He
responded to the problem of his life with the arrangement of his neurosis. He
considered himself badly short-changed, and the deficiency was compensated in a
symbolical way by the loss of his mother. This abundantly present state of affairs I
would like to distinguish as the ‘conflict neurosis.’ The most severe manifestations will
emerge as the result of the patient’s peculiar attitude towards his fellow creatures, which
will characterize him as a misanthrope and will lead to conflicts at his every step or
turn. The ‘conflict neurosis’ is nearly always accompanied by compulsive symptoms.
However, anxious and hysterical attacks may also come with it. Its task is to fill the
patient with tensions, to preoccupy him and make him unfit for life.
Would it have been possible to cure this patient, who was suffering from anxiety
states, migraine and depressions, for instance by giving him back his mother? By the
time the patient came to the physician, such an attempt would have been in vain. Even
the most indulgent mother—many of them are alienated from their son forever—would
not have been able to summon up that degree of patience and self-sacrifice that the
patient demands in his boundless distrust and desire for power. The past and the
memory of earlier deprivations will always remain present as an incentive that is
permanently standing by to provide new irritation and distress.16 The attempt might be
successful in early childhood, just as any pedagogic solution of this special neurotic
problem is to be found in a stepby-step clarification, in making the child independent,
and in an appropriate reassurance about the child’s future, in prophylaxis. It is
insecurity that confuses the prospect of the future of these children, an insecurity whose
organic and psychic origins we have already come to know.
One source of insecurity was that our patient even when he was still at the nursing
age, became frightened and panicked very easily. This fright of young babies, often
already interpreted as neurotic, is obviously organically inherited and according to my
observations it is often associated with an inherited sensitivity — inferiority — of the
auditory apparatus, so that certain sounds and tones will make these children wince
when others will remain quiet17. To us, consequently, this remarkable tendency to be
frightened is a sign of an inborn auditory hypersensitivity, a manifestation of an organ
inferiority that often corresponds to common ear diseases, but also to a greater
refinement of hearing, a sense for music. The fact that our patient, at the age of six, had
suffered from a protracted infection of the middle ear (otitis media), during the course
of which a paracentesis of the tympanic membrane proved necessary, is in perfect
harmony with the concept of the theory of organ inferiority. Likewise the development
of an excellent musical ear and a remarkably subtle auditory sensitivity, which made
him a particularly good listener. This organic refinement, with its overstressed
perceptivity, will in every case force the child towards tendencies of curiosity in the
sphere of hearing and listening, even when for other reasons the child may come to be
very insecure. The conditions for this insecurity, from which he tried to escape by
means of his curiosity, lay in a weaker development of his intellect as compared to his
older brother, who made him the defenseless subject of his teasing, and often made a
fool of him, as it happens so often, to the detriment of his upbringing. The patient also
remembers having suffered for a while from the kind of cryptorchis in which one
testicle occasionally slips through an open canal in the groin into the abdominal cavity.
This fact, and the better sexual development and earlier hair growth of the older brother
gave him the idea, at an early stage, that he might even be a girl. He had been wearing
girl’s clothes until he was four years old and in this period probably developed the fear
that he was not like his brother or father, that he would not become a complete man.
The strong development of his breasts considerably reinforced his uncertainty.18 The
fact that he remained uncertain about the differences between the sexes for a long time
clearly emerges from an experience that stuck in his mind because everybody had
laughed at him when he told it. One day he had seen a girl urinate in a public park and
at home had told that he had seen a boy who made water from behind.19
16 In marriage, too, one may find the kind of conflict situation that maintains the

neurosis. It is often found as a cause of impotence, frigidity, anxiety, agoraphobia, etc.

17Hypersensitivity of the olfactory, gustatory, visual organs, and of the sense of touch as

a sign of organ inferiority and variation, will similarly often prove to be dubious gifts of
nature, because, just as a lack of sensitivity, they may make the adaption to and
participation in life more difficult.
18Attention must be paid to the inferiority of the endocrine glands as an organic

temptation to neurosis. See ‘Organic Bases of the Neurosis.’ In: Praxis und Theorie der
Individualpsychologie, l.c. Individual Psychology may claim to have established the
correlation between organ inferiority and the incitement to neurosis and psychosis.
19The original insecurity about the sexual role, as I have maintained for many years (see
‘About the Neurotic Disposition.’ In; Heilen und Bilden, l.c.; and following articles),
plays an essential role in the development of the neurotic psyche for which it will find
use
This early period in his life became normative for his attitude towards his family
and the rest of the world in a broader sense. He felt wronged, and his inferiority feeling
could not find compensation within the family. His desire, his compulsion, to equal his
brother, his father, or anyone he considered to be strong, able, powerful, grew
tremendously and guided him to a course that led him into frequent conflicts with his
parents. He became a bad, unmanageable child, which made it even more difficult to get
his parents to be tender towards him. His desires rose to boundless heights; distrustful
and with increasing fits of passion he sought to secure himself against every
depreciation and this at a time when, as nature proved, he could already rest assured
about his sexual role. But by now his position in the family had become so unfavorable,
due to the development of his characteristic traits, which caused him to make less
progress in school as well, that with his finely developed hypersensitivity he could with
good reason feel himself to be wronged. And so he had become unable to find the way
back to normality. However, it became evident from the very first of the dreams he had
during treatment that he still apperceived this feeling of depreciation on the lines of the
analogy to a feminine role. This dream was as follows: ‘It seemed to me as if I was
looking on how a monkey was breastfeeding a child.’
He was often called a monkey by his brothers, because of his strong hair growth,
which he nonetheless showed with pride. The monkey who is breastfeeding the child, a
female monkey therefore, is he himself. That is to say, he sees himself, he experiences
himself in a feminine role, in which the breast may be taken as a reference to his
gynecomastia,dd which came up in conversation during the interpretation of the dream.
This would be the feminine guiding line that I postulated for a great many dreams, and
may be interpreted in the direction of the masculine protest, in contrast to the reference
to the strong hair growth. The patient, therefore, introduces himself into treatment with
the disclosure that he feels diminished and lets us know by means of the picture he
chooses, that he considers this inferiority as feminine.
 Besides this I would like to point to the fact that the dream often chooses pictures
or modes of expression that indicate a simultaneous manifest presence of feminine and
masculine characteristics. In this case it was a monkey, whose suckling may be
considered to be feminine, but whose hair growth, at the same time, can be thought of
as masculine. These forms of expression, which I have recognized as belonging to
psychic hermaphroditism, may be traced back to two mitigating preconditions: 1. they
correspond to the infantile inability to recognize the sexes; 2. in the far-reaching
abstraction of the dream, the temporal category is entirely or nearly entirely eliminated,
as is the spatial category in other cases, so that two ideas that can be divided temporally
or spatially—in our case: I feel as if I were a woman and I want to be a man—coincide.
The insistence with which this first dream of our patient points towards his feeling of
inferiority, in a reaction, so to speak, to the beginning of the treatment,
at a later stage, as a symbol and a base of operation providing emphasis in the struggle
for neurotic superiority.
may of course also be considered as a kind of notice to the physician: my disease
originates in my inferiority feeling! My disease—fainting fits and an inability for any
profession—is a safeguard against a defeat in the fifth act. I am unable and unfit as a
child, and I long for the love—‘monkey love’—that I see in my dream. We should add,
impotent on principle, in order to be pampered like a child, which indeed he nearly
succeeds in achieving after his attacks; and unfit, in order that his livelihood will always
be taken care of, so that it will not be forgotten that he must be made secure as long as
he lives by means of affection and his legacy.
His tendency to be enormously frightened by sudden loud noises, that is to say his
hyperacusis, was particularly suited to provide the arrangement with which he could
achieve his goal. The idea of a finale that he had set himself, a striving to
overcompensate his feeling of inferiority, was, after all, to try to direct all his parents’
love, and in particular that of the mother, who was more difficult to reach, towards
himself. In this way he made use of certain actual experiences, such as becoming
frightened at hearing gunfire, as he hears it at military funeral services, at the hissing
and puffing and shrill whistle of train engines, at the sudden attacks of his brother or his
playmates, in order to influence his mother’s heart. The finale he had in mind dragged
with it a fixation of the hyperacusis that had dominated him up to the present. This
tendentious hypersensibility is thus perfectly suited, just as similar phenomena in
hysteria, to make us understand that the patient is forced by insecurity to stick out his
antennae as far as possible, as he is indeed doing with his exaggerated characteristics as
well. On the other hand, his fright was pressing on his masculine sensitivity and it gave
him a sense that it was a feminine impulse. Therefore, he attempted to prove his
courage and fearless behavior in many other respects, and he succeeded in this, too.
Bringing his desire for his mother’s love out into the open did not bring any
particular results. His attacks occurred in approximately the same intervals, but the
patient had them in bed now, if only to secure himself against the intrusions of
treatment which at this point could no longer determine the reasons for the outbreaks of
his fainting fits as easy as it could at the beginning of the treatment. For previously they
had always occurred in connection with experiences that degraded the patient’s feeling
of self-worth; however, now I found myself forced to reconstruct these experiences
from sudden notions and dreams of the patient. The patient, of course, made a virtue out
of this necessity and brought forward that this change was an improvement as a result
of the treatment, expecting that he would in this way get my sympathy, something that
he himself, like the love he did not get from his environment, experienced as a feeling
of power. His desire to achieve this feeling of power made him a very sociable and
charming fellow in his contact with strangers.
Now, one might remark that the Oedipus complex does not manifest itself very
clearly in my fundamentally different conception, not so clearly, as Freud himself, for
instance, has brought it to expression. I would have to deny this most vehemently. This
case in particular was suited like few others to bring to view, at all costs, the striving for
the mother in a sexual disguise, and the patient never hesitated to represent his often
undisguised Oedipal dreams as so many proofs of his sexual desires. There were many
of these dreams. He dreamed the following for instance:
‘I am walking with a lady from our rendezvous towards an alley.’ The lady
represented his mother, as certain details indicated. The alley indicated prostitution. The
‘rendezvous,’ however, was a part of an actual memory he had of a certain day, and
concerned a girl who refused to see him again, which refusal made him equal her to his
mother. He had no influence on this girl and so had lost, in his own opinion, his
masculine feeling of power, and so, in his protest, he degraded his mother as well as the
girl, but in a broader sense all women, whom he actually feared, to prostitutes, and in
correspondence with his inferiority feeling he actually sought out the sphere of
prostitution.20
Just as clearly, the ‘Oedipus complex’ came to light in other dreams, where it was
only the insertion into the psychic constellation which made it possible to recognize the
sexual as a jargon, as a manner of speaking. He dreamed for instance:
‘I am sitting at a plain table of brown wood. A girl brings me a large vessel of
beer.’
The table reminds him of a subterranean cellar in Nuremberg; he had gone there for a
scientific project which had led him into the Germanic Museum. His thoughts were
guided in a similar direction—that of Germanity—by the large vessel of beer. It is easy
to understand immediately that the extraordinarily musical patient arrived in Nuremberg
and was strongly reminded of Wagner’s Der Meistersinger.ee When he mentioned this,
he began looking for a scene from one of Wagner’s operas in which someone is having
a drink. At first he thinks of Tristan, then of Siegfried’s arrival at Gunter’s palace. In
both scenes the hero drinks a love potion. Thus the patient felt the enigmatical attraction
to his mother as something conjured up by his mother’s magic. Eventually he thought
of Siegmund, who compassionately hands his sister Sieglinde a horn filled with mead.
The meaning of this dream, therefore, is this: the voice of the blood has spoken, the
mother compassionately espouses him, he is the hero who has taken away the woman
from the man (the father). With his eye on the prospect of incest, just as in Wagner, the
patient, as if he were drunk, is lusting after his mother.
But the patient’s psychic situation had developed into the ‘feminine.’ His older brother
came home from a journey and was received with much love. How different this had
been when he himself had returned from a journey to Germany only a little while ago!
The idea, ‘I am degraded!’ was strengthened enormously by his brother’s reception, and
in a dream he tried to save himself by crossing over to the masculine line. It was an
attempt that must fail—and should! That same night he had an attack.
The attack served the purpose of drawing the mother’s affection and compassion to the
patient. This was easy enough with the father. But the mother, too, forgot his jealous,
often cruel attacks of rage as soon as he lay unconscious, and she sat at his bedside for a
while. In this way he satisfied his desire to have everything, to have everything like his
brother, like his father. His original fiction—‘I will not be a complete man’—had now
transformed itself into the idea, ‘I also want to have the mother, possess her like the
father, like the brother.’ In order to be able to proceed with the necessary energy, he
needed a deeply-felt conviction concerning his feeling for his mother: and so he
simulated one.
The deepest aim of his yearning attitude towards his mother was uncovered by further
analysis, which laid bare a decisive point in his feelings of insecurity. As his mother
withdrew herself more and more from him when he was a child, he developed the idea,
as so many children in similar circumstances do, that he was not a child of this family.
The fairy tales about ‘Snow White’ and ‘Cinderella’ may frequently provide guiding
ideas in these children’s fantasies. When his older brother once fell ill, the mother never
left his side. Since then, our patient was constantly tempted to test his parents,
particularly the mother, with serious fainting attacks, in order to see whether the voice
of the blood would speak up. These tests he undertook with true neurotic insatiablity,
and so in this case we can once again see the full complexity of the Oedipus complex,
its very essence as that of an arranged fiction, its dependence as a means of expression
on the masculine protest against a feeling of insecurity and inferiority, its dependence
on the neurotic safeguarding tendency of the ‘desire-to-have-everything.’
The internal contradiction that often asserts itself in this form of the masculine protest,
the moral condemnation of conduct on the basis of the ‘desireto-have-everything,’ but
also the greater realization of the impossibility of fulfillment, or the fear of making a
decision which may turn out against the patient, often make a compromise necessary.
One might best put this into words as ‘half and half!’ The patient seeks an escape from
the dilemma and on his way he encounters the: divide et impera! Once in a while this
road can be traveled— because of a possible gratification of the desire for dominance.
Often this leads to strong cultural, but also utopian developments of feelings of equality
and love of justice.
20See ‘Individual Psychology of Prostitution’ in Praxis u. Theorie der

Individualpsychologie, l.c.
Endnotes for Practical Part II-I
a Ibsen, Henrik

(1828 Skien – 1906 Oslo): Norwegian author of ballads and plays who wanted to
tear off the mask of the christian-bourgeois façade of his time. In his play ‘The Wild
Duck’, the daughter kills herself because G. Werles has doubts about her conjugal
origins.
b stammering

See: Appelt, Alfred, Fortschritte der Stotterbehandlung. Heilen und Bilden 1914.
 c La Rochefoucauld, François, Count of
(1613 – 1680): Plotted against Richelieu and after the military nobility had been
stripped of its power in 1635 he devoted himself entirely to literary activities. His
‘Maxims’, of which there are about 500, are considered the high point of the kind of
morality whose aim is a philosophical style of life and analysis of humanity by means
of
a critical observation of motives. For La Rochefoucauld, the strongest of motives is
selflove (amour-propre); any disinterested virtue is unmasked as assertive ambition and
socially necessary hypocrisy, a product of rational control and free decision. His
influence stretched from Voltaire and Nietzsche to the present day.
d Sophocles

(495 – 406 BC Athens): In his play ‘King Œdipus’ (430 BC), Oedipus kills his
father and marries his mother — both without being aware of it. It is particularly the
chorus in this play which represents the ‘commands of the gods’. Contrary to Freud’s
opinion in his interpretation of the ‘Œdipus complex’, the original theme probably was
the potentially threatening over-concentration of power in the city of Thebes.
e sophists ‘in utramque partem dicere’

The word ‘sophist’ derives from the Greek ‘sofoi’, wise men. They were itinerant
teachers in the period before Socrates (5th and 4th centuries BC) when Greek
philosophy went through its phase of ‘enlightenment’. They emphasized, occasionally
for money, the right of the individual to self-realization against the whole world.
Besides their relativism (‘the ability to state the opposite of any statement’), they earned
credit in rhetoricalpractical education. Plato’s criticism, such as in the dialogs
‘Protagoras’, ‘Gorgias’ and ‘Hippias’, for example, gave ‘sophistry’ the reputation of
pseudo-philosophy or ‘dialectics’ in a derogatory sense.
f Lombroso

See endnote on page 28.

g ‘Vater Kronos’

Poem by Goethe. Its theme are the Titans from Greek mythology, one of whom is
Cronos, the youngest son of Uranos and Gaia. He castrated his father with a sickle and
took over his supremacy. There was a prophecy that said he, too, would lose his throne,
and so he devoured all his children except for Zeus, who subsequently threw him into
Tartarus and afterwards made him the ruler of the island of the blessed. He is also the
god of time, because his name and the Greek word for time are identical.
h ‘Happiness is where you are not!’

‘Dort, wo du nicht bist, dort is das Glück!’ A line from Schubert’s Lied ‘Der
Wanderer’ (1816), after the poem ‘Des Fremdlings Abendlied’ (1808) by Georg
Schmidt
von Lübeck (1766 – 1849).
i the masculine climacteric

‘climacterium virile’: ‘One of the complaints similar to the syndrome of the

female climacteric among men in their late fifties or early sixties, probably also a result
of subnormal functioning of the gonad.’ (W. Guttmann). The concept was introduced by
Kurt Mendel (1910), who had, however, found the term ‘climacteric disease’ already in
Halford (1831) and referred to corresponding phenomena in men with anxiety neuroses
as a result of remarks by Freud, Adler and Stekel. Confirmed by Mathilde Vaerting
(1918) and, somewhat more reservedly, Max Marcuse (1916), it was dismissed by Karel
Frederick Wenckebach (1915) and Alfred E. Hoch (1928). The Berlin homeopath Ernst
Lutze had defined the term in identical fashion as early as 1910.
j Mendel, Kurt

(1874 – ?): He was a son of the Berlin psychiatrist and neurologist Emmanuel
Mendel (1839 – 1907) and a member of parliament for the liberal party. He showed an
early interest in the social aspects of psychiatry and the development of neurotic
disorders from accidents. From 1907 he was a neurologist in Berlin, where he had his
own outpatients’ clinic, between 1932-39 he was the managing physician of the
sanatorium for neurotic disorders and convalescents in Berlin-Lichterfelde.
k the masculine climacteric See endnote above.
l Michaelis, Karin

Das gefährliche Alter. Tagebuchaufzeichnungen und Briefe. Berlin 1910.

m Kisch, Enoch Heinrich

(1841 – 1918): In 1863 he became resident doctor at the spa of Marienbad (now
Marianske Lazne in the Czech Republic), and was largely responsible for the spa’s rise
to
international fame as a health resort. In 1867, private lecturer of balneology (the science
of the medical effects of health baths) at the university of Prague, professor in 1884.
Adler probably refers to his work on female sterility (Die Sterilität des Weibes, ihre
Ursachen und ihre Behandlung, 1895) and female sexuality (Das Geschlechtsleben des
Weibes in physiologischer, pathologischer und hygienischer Beziehung, 1904; English
transl. 1910).
n molimina menstrualia

Complaints in connection with menstruation (Lat. molimen: strain)

o hysterectomy

Lat. exstirpatio uteri

p perimetrical deformities

Deformities of the peritoneum cover of the uterus.

q Bossi, Luigi Maria

(1859 – 1919): Director of the school for midwives in Novara (Italy) from 1894,
1904-19 professor of obstetrics in Genova. Founder and editor of the magazine ‘La
ginecologia moderna’, he conducted an international polemic with psychiatrists
between
1911-13, supported the castration of mentally ill patients and was the victim of an
assassination. Adler seems to refer to Bossi’s controversy (1911) with the psychiatrists,
which was carried on in public in Vienna, among other cities.
r Nietzsche: simplification

See ‘Beyond Good and Evil’: ‘O sancta simplicitas! How singular the
simplification and falsification in which man lives! [...] here and there we understand
and laugh about how even the greatest science at its very best wants to tie us up to this
world, simplified, artificial through and through, and composed-and-falsified-to-
measure, how it involuntarily-voluntarily loves the error because, being alive itself it
loves life!’
s Vaihinger: ideas, hypotheses, dogmas

Adler is referring to ‘The Law of Ideational Shifts’ (in: The Philosophy of ‘As
If’), which distinguishes the three stages fiction-hypotheses-dogma or
dogmahypotheses-fiction and applies them to the psychic stabilization of
representations.
t Vaihinger: auxiliary line in a geometrical construction

From The Philosophy of ‘As If’: fictitious foundations of mathematics.

u Nietzsche: myths, fairy tales See ‘The Birth of Tragedy’.
v phlegmasia alba dolens

A white, painful infection of the cell tissue of women in childbed, a pale swelling of the
limbs, particularly the thighs.
(footnote 8) opinio
Lat: opinion; compare the quotation from Seneca at the beginning of the
‘Theoretical Part’. The concept of ‘opinion’ has a long tradition in the history of ideas.
As the opposite of objective knowledge, ‘opinion’ (doxa) has been devalued since
Plato, followed by the Latin-scholastic tradition (opinio) from the Stoa up to Kant.
‘Opinion’ is thrown into the realm of the subjective and acquires the meaning
‘prejudice’. The origin of ‘opinion’ does not follow from any order of truth but from
social habits (Plato, Descartes). In the psychologic use of the term, ‘opinion’ is a verbal
expression usually accompanied by a value judgement which is limited and of short
duration or subject to fluctuation. At this point, however, Adler is rather following the
epistemological tradition which defines ‘opinio’ as subjective knowledge (guiding line,
fiction), distinct from rational knowledge.
w Leonardo da Vinci: childhood fantasy

See: S. Freud, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci.

x incontinentia alvi

Also incontinentia faecalis. Loss of control over the movement of the bowels,
involuntary emptying of the bowels, such as for instance in case of paralysis of the
sphincter muscle.
y vaginism

An abnormally increased sensititivy of the vagina, often in connection with

spasmodic contractions of the musculus bulbospongiosus, occasionally also of other
muscles in the lower pelvis or the upper thighs. First described in 1861 by James
Marion Simms (1813 – 1883).
(footnote 11) trismus
Lockjaw, caused by tonic contraction of the digastric muscles.
(footnote 11) blepharospasmus
Paroxysm of the eyelid; closure of the eyelid caused by cramp of the musculus
orbicularis oculi.
(footnote 11) globus
A feeling sometimes found among hysteric people, as if a heavy, oppressive body rises
from the area of the stomach to the neck, then sticks in the throat.
(footnote 11) epiglottal cramp
Lat. spasmus laryngus sive glottidis, laryngospasmus. A spasmodic closure of the
glottis, impeding the production of sound and occasionally breathing.
z excessive thirst

Lat. polydipsia.
aa polyuria

Pathological increase in the amount of urine.

bb Acheronta movebo!

Vergil, Aeneid 7, 312: ‘Flectere si negueo superos, Acheronta movebo.’: ‘If

powerless to bend heaven, I’ll stir up hell.’ (transl. Rhoades, 1893). The Latin quotation
is the motto on the title page of Freud’s ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ (1900).
cc ‘And if you aren’t willing, I’ll use force!’

From Goethe’s Ballad ‘Erlkönig’ (1872): ‘Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch’ ich
Gewalt.’
dd gynacomastia

A full development of the breast glands in men (as normally only in women).
ee Wagner, Richard: Meistersinger, Tristan

(1813 – 1883): ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Oper in drei Aufzügen’ (1867),
‘Tristan und Isolde’ (1864), ‘Ring der Nibelungen: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre,
Siegfried, Götterdämmerung’ (1850-1860).
Practical Part II - II
The Neurotic Extension of Limitations through Ascesis, Love, Travel Mania,
Crime — Simulation and Neurosis — Inferiority Feeling of the Female Sex — Purpose
of the Ideal — Doubt as an Expression of Psychic Hermaphroditism — Masturbation
and Neurosis —The ‘Incest-Complex’ as a Symbol of the Desire for Power — The
Nature of Delusions
An observation which must now be brought to attention attempts to show how the
compensatory guiding idea — ‘the desire to have everything’ — may deviate from its
straight course in order to stimulate exceptional neurotic and criminal, yet also creative,
achievements in order to eventually reach its goal and succeed in elevating the feeling
of self-worth in one way or another, or at least, and the neurosis will remain productive
for so long, to prevent it from being depreciated. The sheer parsimoniousness, penury
and ascesis of many neurotics show us the kind of detour that the patient lets himself be
forced to follow, as if it were the only way for him to be immune from danger. He will
then behave strictly in accordance to these fictional guiding lines, believe in them, and
in cases of extreme insecurity he will elevate his abnormal existence to the level of
psychosis. In melancholia, when fantasies about poverty are preponderant, the patient
will anticipate a situation that he fears, and similar to what takes place in hypochondria,
in order to avoid real danger he will attempt to realize a fiction, underscore his
inferiority feeling and use his suffering to safeguard his feeling of self-worth. Sudden
attacks of compulsive buying, fetishism, a neurotic mania for collecting, as well as
kleptomania also manifest themselves as expressions of this craving to possess
everything. Without exception, one will observe an inclination to break through the
limits set by reality by following a fictional guiding line so as to escape a feeling of
depreciation. Invariably, apperception will appear to be in accordance with the strict
metaphorical antithesis ‘above—below,’ and it will frequently lead the patient to take
up certain accents and emphases in order to prove that he is a man. For this purpose, the
symbolism of sexuality is particularly well suited to serve as a means of expression, and
its analysis may sometimes show the curious deviations followed by the exaggerated
masculine directing line. This is where neurotic lying, boasting, and fraud come into
play, as well attempts to play with fire, with love, to daringly move close to the edge of
the abyss, thus extending existing limits as far as possible. A more harmless
manifestation is that of frenzied travel, whose degenerated expression is to be found in
the running away, the fugue of neurotic and psychotic people.1 Frequently, there exists
in the guiding picture of these neurotics a personality ideal whose top they try to reach
by imitation or by obstinate, negativistic behavior. A similar tendency, that of extending
masculine ability to extreme limits, forms the basis of the continuous inclination to read
and hear about, to see and commit horrible, appalling acts. Often, telepathic, spiritistic
inclinations manifest themselves, as well as superstitious tendencies and a disposition to
believe in miracles.
The stronger this striving to acquire useless possessions manifests itself, the more
he will falsify normal inclinations and evaluations. It is somewhat like the kind of
simulated love of nature that is shown off exaggeratedly by the tourist who wants to
have every peak marked on his walking stick. Leporello’s lista shows us this desire in
connection with love, and to Don Juanb we may equal Messalinac, the nymphomaniac
who always imagines herself to be unsatisfied and degraded because genuine
opportunities for satisfaction are inadequate. Fettering and degrading the partner is a
real possibility, and also the fear of the single, apparently dominant partner.
‘Dear soul, would there be a place where I have never been?’ is the answer of
Immerman’s Münchhausend to the question whether he was familiar with a certain
distant place. The genuine satisfaction in active games, riding, driving, racing, and
aviation fundamentally originate from the greed for possession, from getting one’s
hands on something. This is why every child wants to be a coachman, a conductor, an
engine driver, an aviator, but also, to no less a degree, an emperor or teacher, in order to
dominate others, and create a visual, concrete expression for its dominance, to be a
doctor, to banish death and extend life’s limitations, a general to lead the army, an
admiral to command the sea.
Lies, thefts, and other crimes of children prove to be attempts on the useless side
of life to extend this kind of limitation. In most cases this will remain limited to
fantasies and daydreams. An inquiry I held in a high school for girls showed that all 25
girls remembered small thefts.2 I was able to include even the teacher. On closer
examination, the motive of this striving to reach a higher level will invariably prove to
be an intolerable state of stimulation originating in the child’s inferiority feeling. Under
this pressure, the child will often become curious, picky, anxious to learn, and will try
to recognize his faults and create room to develop his personality. Deficiency, disease,
and the feeling of insecurity and inferiority often also force a turbulent development of
the psychic superstructure, analogous to the compensatory tendency on the organic
level. Jatgeir, in Ibsen’s Pretenders to the Crowne, remarks: ‘I received the gift of pain
and so I became a skald.’ In a number of cases, one may easily prove that a particularly
strong inferiority feeling sets off an impulse to investigate, or that the ‘initial chord in
an artist’s life—later to become an exemplary instance of the serene harmony between
art and life—sets out with a harsh dissonance.’ (B. Litzmann, Clara Schumann) Clara
Schumannf suffered from tone deafness until she was eight years old.
1 I nearly always find that the fundamental tendency of the fugue, of the vagrancy

of neurotic and neglected young people is: “They should pay more attention to me!”
The result is dissatisfaction and pressure on the environment.
2I am grateful to my colleague Dr. Wexberg for the communication about an imaginary

theft that obviously represents the subjugation of the father. (see endnote)
I have described another way in which children often appear to be superior to their
parents in the Psychische Behandlung der Trigeminus-Neuralgia.3 It consists of the
following: in remembering earlier or in imitating unknown deficiencies, a state of
apparent stupidity, blindness, deafness, limping, stammering, enuresis, messing with
excrement, awkwardness, lack of appetite, nausea, laziness and negligence is
maintained in the fight for superiority or as if to take revenge. Gradually, the psyche
will form from these preparatory psychic gestures with which the child responds to the
feeling of depreciation; psychic predispositions that create a directing line in the
neurosis in accordance with the picture of the symptoms: act as if you are forced to
provide security, the feeling of superiority, by means of this deficiency, by means of one
of these needs. The goal of this manner of drawing attention to oneself by unpleasant
behavior is clearly the gratification of vanity and it will frequently put the patience of
the environment to the test. It is also active as a form of revenge when equality is being
denied. Often, the only difference with malingering as such is that the superiority does
not always evoke the phenomenon at first, but that the ready predisposition for the
symptoms is incorporated into the untouchable stock of memories as an automatic
safeguard against the fear of depreciation, more or less as the dexterity of a virtuoso is
always at the ready to react to appropriate demands.4 The entire host of neurotic
symptoms—blushing, headaches, migraine, fainting, pain, tremor, depression,
exaltation, etc.—can be traced back to these ready-to-use psychic attitudes.
In the case of a normal direction of the goal, too, certain demands are not always
met by thoughts and speech, but with a certain frequency also by body parts, the blood
circulation, the respiratory organs, etc. Laughing, crying, facial expression, the ‘wide
open eyes and mouth’ in case of surprise, are some examples. In the well known jocular
questions: ‘What is compact?’ ‘What is a spiral staircase?’ ‘What is a church spire?’
one may see an entire complex of movement being played out. This is not different in
the failures mentioned above, the system there is just more extended and veiled.
One of the facts which my method of observation enabled me to establish is
concerned with the more or less conscious inferiority feeling of all girls and women,
which is brought about by their ‘femininity’ towards men. This alters their psychic
existence to such an extent that they will always betray certain characteristics of the
‘masculine protest,’ most often in a circuitous form following apparently feminine,
inferior traits as they were depicted in the previous group. Education as well as the
necessary preparations for the future force them to express their superiority, their
‘masculine protest,’ by following devious ways, usually in a resigned manner. In all
cases the characteristics of ‘emotionality’ (Heymans) are clear enough, a desire to
dominate, greed, envy, coquetry, an inclination to cruelty, etc., are often so conspicuous
that they can easily be unmasked as compensatory masculine characteristics, arranged
according to a masculine directing line. After me, Parkes Weberg (Lancet 1911) has
found the foundation of hysteric phenomena in this type of security against
depreciation.
3 See Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c.
4It follows from this that if some kind of malingering is established, the analogous

neurotic situation of preparedness in the earlier history must be excluded.

The predisposition for crime may also be understood as an attack of the masculine
protest among persons whose compensatory ideal demands a fictional directing line in
which life, health, and the possessions of one’s fellow man are devalued. In the case of
greater insecurity, deprivations, depreciations, threatened loss of the feeling of self-
worth, and also in more strenuous attempts to be ‘above,’ to secure their superiority,
such persons, whose inferiority feeling has sought compensation in emotional
predisposition, in a fundamental pursuit of their directing line, proceeding by
abstraction from reality, will try to approach their personality ideal by means of some
crime. In the Archives of Criminal Anthropology 1911, Dr. A. Jassnyh has given an
excellent analysis of this mechanism among female criminals, in whom it manifests
itself most clearly in emotional crimes, habitual crimes, and negligence. It should be
added that the road to crime exposes the criminal’s great insecurity in his efforts to
make his importance felt on the useful side of life, in harmony with the community
feeling.5
A consequence of the immense importance of love relations in the life of human
beings is that the neurotic greed to possess everything may regularly interfere in the
relationship between man and woman and develop a disturbing tendency there by
imposing a disregard for reality and enforcing attempts which aim at an elevation of the
feeling of self-worth. It lies in the nature of the neurotic that he wants to weaken his
inferiority feeling by continuous proofs of his superiority. A person he loves should
give up any personality, should be absorbed entirely by him or by her, should become a
means by which one’s own feeling of self-worth can be elevated. It would be a good
touchstone of true love, free from neurotic tendencies, whether one human being can
endure the other’s maintaining his or her own value, indeed, even support him or her in
this. This is rarely the case. In the relation between the sexes in particular, a tendency
will almost regularly develop to put to the test, to pry, to distrust, to be obstinate and
selfish, constantly disturbing a loving co-existence. An incessant wish to take instead of
to give. Fundamental demands are the order of the day, and one necessarily connected
set is followed by the next in such a way that their extremity may easily be recognized.
It is as if both were confronted with a riddle whose solution they want to push through
by every possible means. The analysis will frequently reveal fear of the sexual partner
as a result of the feeling of inferiority, and with it a struggle for superiority. Love and
marriage, however, are not suitable for this wrestling match. They have their own logic,
and strange demands and the struggle for power will blow them up.
5See A. Adler, ‘Crime and Neurosis.’ In Vol. II of: Praxis und Theorie der
Individualpsychologie.
We have already come to know this struggle in a concealed manner for some part
in cases with an elevated inferiority feeling, in inborn organ inferiority, among
pampered or hated children.6 It is secured by a number of neurotic dispositions, and
certain characteristics are emphatically pushed to the fore in order to keep in touch
‘with the enemy.’ The most important characteristics from a social point of view are,
perhaps, distrust and envy, often appearing in coordination with the desire to dominate
and disputatiousness. Depending on the patient’s earlier history, on the preparatory
exercises that he has at his disposal and his memories in his tendentious evaluation, it
will now be this, then another characteristic that will be the more clearly prominent.
They are all under pressure from the fictional final goal, and will break through most
powerfully when the feeling of self-worth is threatened to suffer a loss, or will prove
themselves to be still active when pride forces them back into the unconscious. In all
cases they have at their disposal the neurotic dispositions which will, sometimes as
depression, sometimes as fear of being alone, as agoraphobia, as insomnia, and in
hundreds of other symptoms, force the ‘opponent’ to capitulate. The strongest moral
principles, such as a fanatical desire for the truth, have the same value as, for instance,
coquetry and adultery as an act of revenge, when the feeling of depreciation demands
the reinstatement of equality or the defeat of the other. If the superiority feeling is
falling short, protest is expressed by the husband’s revengefulness, usually in a rather
straightforward way, in the form of ‘playing the wild man,’ in amorous escapades, and a
rejection of love, but it may also manifest itself in impotence, an extraordinary
protective attitude towards the children or doubts about their legitimacy, often also in an
avoidance of all family life, an increased consumption of alcohol or the pursuit of
pleasure. The purpose of this behavior is usually so obvious that it is readily
understood. For it only fulfills its purpose if it makes the wife feel degraded. The
frequent jealous delusions of the alcoholic are not based on the resulting impotence, but
alcoholism, impotence and increased jealousy are, for those who are predisposed to
them, a coordinated neurotic form of expression of an increased inferiority feeling.
Such individuals are trying to blame alcoholism for not being first and foremost, while
they are simultaneously crying for revenge against someone. Just as other neurotics,
they, too, suffer from the neurotic apperception by means of which they measure the
distance between reality and a tendentiously increased ideal. It is, however, one of the
most effective attitudes of the neurotic to measure, pollice versoi so to say, a real
human being by the standard of an ideal, since one may thus devalue him as one
pleases. The revengefulness of the rejected, degraded wife preferably uses neurotic
symptoms, among which frigidity plays a prominent role. The purpose of this is to
challenge the husband’s masculinity, to demonstrate to him, even when they are on
good terms, the limits of his influence, and by doing so, to secure a considerable degree
of invincibility. There is no cooperation at all.
6 It is amazing that Kretschmer, who has made such a valuable contribution to the

theory of organ inferiority, in particular with his assertion of the schizothyme, could
possibly fail to notice the systematic arrangement in neuroses and psychoses revealed
here, and that he does not make allowance for the gap between humoral influences and
the psyche.
That this powerful construction is the result of original feelings of depreciation
demanding compensation becomes apparent in more thorough analyses. Occasionally,
the apperception of a depreciation or of an analogous anxiety or some such desire will
take place according to the picture of the antithesis between man and woman, as a result
of which the elevation of the feeling of self-worth is experienced and valued as
masculine, a depreciation as feminine. Or in fantasies and dreams the idea of castration
(feminine) replaces the feeling of depreciation. Very often indeed the masculine guiding
line, which already played an important role in the previous history, penetrates into the
neurosis as a dominant or secondary component, and accentuates masculine
characteristics as soon as the feeling of self-worth is called into doubt, which as a rule is
very striking in women. Simultaneously, a retreat from society and the useful side of life
will take place.
Apart from the disposition to jealousy, one may find among female neurotics a
number of other symptoms that develop from the attachment to the masculine guiding
line. They are generally averse to love, more in particular to sexual relations, and may
come up with a great many reasons for this, if not the true one, which is their
dissatisfaction with the female role and the fear of defeat, and they will attempt to carry
through an act of ‘masculinization’ as far as possible. This aversion to love and
marriage will either continue throughout life, or this change of form of the masculine
guiding line may develop through the years an inner contradiction—the fear to be
unable to hold on to the husband will press on the feeling of self-worth and produce, in
constant fluctuations, neurotic erotic impulses. These fluctuations are caused because
the new directing line—to win a husband and by doing so, to elevate the feeling of self-
worth—already carries within itself its contradiction: decrease of the feeling of self-
worth by means of feminization. In these cases, the symptom of neurotic skepticism will
often be roused, extending itself even to the most banal areas, until one finds out the
hermaphroditic substance of the actual situation from which the inclination to waiver
and doubt issues forth. Every decision calls forth a counter-impulse in the counter-
consciousness (Lippsj), which is then experienced and valued according to the antithesis
‘masculine-feminine’ so that the female patient is playing a feminine as well as a
masculine role, either simultaneously or successively. The following case may serve as
an illustration of this condition:
A thirty year old woman, who is earning her living by teaching, introduces herself
complaining about restlessness, constant doubt, insomnia, and ideas of suicide. Since
the death of her father she has been taking care of the entire family, representing,
therefore, the man, the bread-winner, and in her fantasies and dreams, she is a beast of
burden, the horse pulling all the load. She works until she is exhausted and sacrifices
everything for her brother and sister. As far as she can remember, she always wanted to
be man. As a child she had rough, boyish characteristics and in her fifteenth year she
was still taken for a boy when bathing.
In his work on the status thymico-lymphaticusk, Neusserl has drawn attention to
physical characteristics of the opposite sex that occur in the case of this constitutional
anomaly. In my own work concerned with neurology, I have also drawn attention to the
occurrence of physical characteristics of the opposite sex and I was able to prove that
the neurosis makes frequent use of them, either to emphasize the inferiority due to
feminine influence or the masculine protest. The earlier observations of Fließ, who has,
with Halban, drawn my attention to this field, are not concerned with the psychic
mechanism as I understand it. Exaggerated, untenable suppositions of a physical,
opposite sexuality are very frequent indeed and mistakenly presuppose the presence of a
psychic opposite sexuality.
In a variation that is also quite common, the patient reveals her masculine protest
immediately, on the very first day, by emphatically refusing free treatment. She
emphasizes several times in succession that she does not want things to be given to her,
and subsequently explains this in a way already familiar to me, namely, that it would be
unmanly to receive gifts. That is why she had always refused them. On the other hand,
she herself likes to give, and, particularly in her fatherly role within the family, she
often does.
I want to stress one fact from the history of her disease as important, namely that
an uncle made an attempt to rape her when she was nine years old. In her terror she had
remained passive, but she had never mentioned the attack. After her neurosis had
developed somewhat, she forced herself to think that she had been a sensual creature
even when she was still a child, and capable of giving herself to anyone. And things had
remained like that until the present. Thus, we see the practical application of a memory
for the purpose of security with which we are already familiar; for the result of her
reasoning had been that until her thirtieth year she had avoided all men.
From her tenth year until five years ago she had been masturbating eagerly, she
said. She developed an extremely strong feeling of guilt because of this, strengthening
the conviction of her sensuality, and she concluded that she had made herself unworthy
to marriage forever. This conviction was bound to influence further the attitude she
adopted to men.
The usual role of masturbation in the neurosis is that security in the relationship
with the partner is effectuated by an arrangement of a feeling of guilt,7 and
simultaneously by its consequence that one may dispense with the partner. The analogy
with cases that undertake to find a similar security by means of accentuating a
childhood disease, enuresis, or stammering, or by neurotic symptoms is obvious. The
original inferiority feeling remains in the background, as a container that fills itself with
fantasies of depreciation and feelings of guilt, and forces the patient to circuitously
reach the masculine directing point. The behavior of our patient is constructed
according to the guiding line: “I want to be a superior man, I do not want to play an
inferior feminine role.”
7 The primary problems of conscience with masturbation are the consequences for,

and at the same time the safeguards of the insulted feeling of self-worth. In the neurosis,
these safeguards, often while maintaining masturbation, are accentuated and
purposefully arranged within the plan of life: auto-eroticism thus develops into the
symbol of the plan of life from which a compulsive character then derives. The
compulsion establishes itself as the result of the elimination of the normal erotic goal.
The plan of life, however, is as follows: isolation, dismissal of the community feeling,
and elimination of any capacity to
 A number of years ago, a compulsive idea took hold of her that clearly reflects our
ideas of neurosis. The patient believes that she had by masturbating lost a protruding
part of the genitals, which, in her description, resembled a penis. Now she had become
completely unfit for marriage for she could never survive if her husband would hear of
her vice. The safeguard, therefore, seems to be very successful and one can clearly see
how she opposes her fictional, masculine guiding image to her actual femininity,
accentuating the latter, and experiencing it as inferior, and yet by this very expedient
she safeguards herself from an actual feminine role in reality.
Among the auxiliary lines of her characteristic tendencies, ambition and an
inclination to depreciation were particularly noteworthy, the former within her family,
in her art and towards her female friends, the latter in the rather rare contacts she
maintained with men. Both these characteristics, at any rate, aided her in keeping free
from any social obligation, and to concentrate herself entirely on the family, which is
nearly a regular phenomenon in women developing a fear of men in their masculine
protest.
Yet in the course of time even this safeguard, as strong as it may seem, could not
satisfy our patient’s personality ideal. Her female friends left her to marry, and when her
younger sister, too, became engaged, her guiding line had became untenable, because
her ambition also strove for ‘domination of men.’ Basically, she decided, as neurotic
women with an increased feeling of insecurity usually do, to take the first man who
would come round. She went to a masked ball where she met a respectable man who
wanted to become her husband after a short friendship. During a trip she gave herself to
him because, as she said, she feared that when he would touch her he would become
aware of her deficiency and consequently of her disgrace. And she would rather let
anything else happen to her. When later the man insisted in a friendly way that she
could freely tell him whether he had been her first lover, and why she had become so
cold, she cruelly disappointed the well-meaning man by telling him the lie that she had
already had a relation with another man. After this, the man had broken off the affair.
It is easy to figure out what happened next. The patient, constantly grieving about
another loss, that of her masculinity, once more considered herself
devotion—while the striving for power finds assimilation into the community an
obstacle. Contact with the community maintains language, sexuality and love,
professional occupation and the willingness to act most strongly. The neurosis will
come into destructive action at these points. Every neurotic possesses the type of
eroticism that corresponds to his neurotic plan of life.
degraded and deprived of her triumph. She retracted her lie, which, she afterwards
tried to explain to me, she had told to hurt the man and to punish him for the defeat he
had made her suffer, to devalue him, to deprive him of his triumph. She explained all
this to him as well, but he withdrew entirely, largely because he feared further discord if
he would marry such a neurotic woman. As a result, our patient fell desperately in love
with him and made him into a god, spending her nights lying awake and thinking of
him, swearing an oath to have this man or no man as a husband. However, in saying
this she clearly expressed that she would have no one, for this marriage was to all
human probability lost forever. And so, by various expedients of her neurosis, she had
eventually returned to her old guiding line, had acquired a fictional ideal, but as yet
rejected the feminine role by the time she began her treatment.
In psychotherapeutic treatment, particular attention should be paid to prevent
oneself from becoming a victim of the patient’s depreciating tendency in its unseeing
activity, which will often use the condition of the disease to rob the psychotherapist of
his value. The patient may do this by following the ordinary course of his disease,
though in sharper distinctions, by accentuating symptoms, or letting new ones come to
the surface, by trying to create tense relations, not infrequently situations of love and
friendship, always, however, with the intention guided by his neurotic goal of gaining
mastery over the physician, to degrade him, force him into an ‘inferior’ role, and
destroy his value. The tactical and pedagogic expedients needed to take the force out of
this fight of the patient’s against his physician, to make it understandable and so use it
in order to demonstrate the neurotic behavior of the patient in all its aspects, will
become the most important element in the recovery. Yet one should not underestimate
the silent protest of the neurotic either, and expect its occurrence even to the very end of
the treatment, and particularly towards the end one should stress it quietly, objectively,
as the self-evident aggression and power policy of the patient and identical to his
neurosis by furnishing neurotic predispositions and characteristics. Freud’s hypothesis
of the transference of love will have to be discussed at a later stage. It is nothing but an
expedient of the patient to rob the physician of his factual superiority. Bezzolam and
others as well have described the circuitous ways in which neurotic patients attempt to
degrade the physician. Without exception, the neurotic guiding line that must assure the
patient of his superiority will be revealed. The neurotic will find the most obvious
manner to deploy his aggressive impulse in holding on to his symptoms, because these
are themselves part of his aggressive tendency. An extract from a female patient’s
medical history, shortly before treatment would finish, demonstrates that this
devaluation, directed to the physician in the form of a hostile attack, is one of the
psychic predispositions of her masculine protest. The patient was treated for anxiety
and crying out during the night. She was a virgin and 36 years old. I want to begin the
description of this neurotic picture with the following dream:
“I am lying at your feet and reach out with my hand to grasp the fabric of your silk
clothes. You make a lascivious gesture. Then I say laughingly: you are no better than
other men after all! You confirm this by nodding.”
Those who would place the sexual wish-motive in the foreground by following
Freud’s interpretation of dreams will not be at a loss for interpretation; it would not be
at all difficult to satisfy the demand for a sexual basis for this dream. Similarly, it would
be quite easy to satisfy oneself, as indeed the patient herself had already done before, by
bringing out a reminiscence from her childhood in which she had been courting her
father in an identical manner; after all, her neurotic safeguarding tendency had long
before already collected all cautionary experiences with exaggerated care, in order to
preclude a repetition ‘anaphylactically.’ Indeed, one might easily get the patient’s assent
to put down the occurence of memories of identical alignment and present experiences
to her actual ‘repressed’ impulse of the will. For her neurotic psyche is trying to find
such exaggerations or even real reminiscences and turn them into an operational base
by establishing the conviction of the patient’s inferiority, of her guilt, of her depravity,
of her too great femininity, in order to fight with even greater vehemence for her
masculinity and increase her caution. This increased masculine protest, however,
flowing forth from the deficient, careful perspective of the patient, can of course only
increase the neurosis. The destruction of this perspective at first, of the foundation of
the neurotic apperception, and the obstruction of the fictional influx into the masculine
protest, and finally an alert understanding for the superstitious belief in an abstract
guiding line and its idolization, are the levers which must be put in motion to do away
with the neurosis.
Our patient had started a relationship with a married man about the time of this
dream. As he forced himself on her and invited her to his home when his wife was on a
trip to the seaside, she had many reservations, which I strengthened considerably.
Notwithstanding this she kept up the relationship and was playing with fire because, as
she said, the impatient writhing of the man amused her. Her behavior was, moreover, a
hostile action directed against her relatives and also against me, the cautious
admonisher. Her own view could be interpreted as a cheap excuse. However, the
patient’s earlier history, her behavior during the twenty years of her disease and during
treatment clearly showed that she was under very strong influence of the masculine
protest, and that although she might be demanding the subjugation of the man, she was
compelled to dismiss a feminine role with anxiety and terror—she was suffering from
states of anxiety and crying out in terror at night. The essential point of her psychic
behavior consisted in the fear of the man to whom she believed she was not equal, a fear
that she sought to compensate by her own masculine behavior and the depreciation of
men in general.
We may now proceed, perhaps, to attempt an interpretation of the dream. She is
exaggerating her psychic dependence on me and establishes this conviction by
incorporating it in a dream image, an expedient particularly suited for the purpose. ‘As
if I were lying at your feet.’ This ‘being below’ is taken as an operational base, and we
are justified in our expectation that the construction of a fictional feminine role follows
the masculine impulse as may indeed be demonstrated in any dream. She reaches
upward with her hand. The sequel proves my emasculation, the transformation into a
woman: I am wearing silk clothes. An identical psychic mechanism of devaluation is
woven into the rest of the dream. I have warned the patient—in the dream I make the
lascivious gesture that her seducer had been guilty of, that is to say, I am on the same
level, ‘I am no better than other men after all.’8 What is more, I have to be silent in the
dream and make an affirmative gesture. The opposite idea, that I might be better, is
unbearable by the patient, because by giving me a kind of superiority it gives rise to the
obviating and securing dream-fiction, constructed on the neurotic perspective. The
patient can feel secure only when all men are in principle equally bad. Then she is back
to her old guiding line and feels superior. Her superiority is reflected in her smile, and
in my silence as well. It is an essential factor in my interpretation of dreams to point out
to the patient how she is falsifying, making up arguments from thin air. This is in no
way different from what she does when she is awake.
Attention should be paid to the circumstance that she began this first dangerous
relationship with a married man. In all such cases, one can prove that such a
relationship is a safeguard against marriage, usually against sexual intercourse as well.
The masculine guiding line is preserved but reality asserts itself by the infusion of
feminine inclinations and emotions; it is, as I have so often pointed out, a masculine
protest by feminine means, which reminds us of the facts in the case of psychic
hermaphroditism. Finally, the superiority over the lawful wife makes itself felt in the
triangle, which immensely increases the driving force in all analogous cases.
Now, if we proceed on the lines of a comparative psychology and wish to bring the
components of this patient’s apperceptive basis to conscious expression, if we ask
ourselves the question: where did the patient get this predisposition, this psychic
preparation, to emasculate the man with the feminine instrument of her impulse to love,
and in doing so, simultaneously to elevate her masculine feeling of self-worth and
surpass a woman?—then the answer is: from her relation to her father and mother.
There she has received the preparation to approach the father as a concrete guiding
image with love and esteem, learned how to control him and thus had shown herself to
be superior to the mother. By abstracting from the masculine protest of the neurotic
child and by putting these events into the analogy of a sexual scheme oneself, as the
neurotic does so often, the ‘incest complex’ will result. One may now, as I have shown
in my earlier work, extract from the ‘incest complex’ what the masculine guiding line
has brought into it, namely, the safeguarding of the feeling of self-worth as a condition
for love. In psychoanalytical literature, the assertion keeps cropping up that the
neurotic’s libido is fixated on the father or on the mother, as a result of which he is
seeking similar conditions for love, actually the one parent that he loved. The only real
condition for love in the neurotic is provided by the ‘will to power and appearance.’
And this guiding point is what the neurotic is seeking with as much caution as possible,
but yet immutably, with all his well-developed, preventive preparations, created to be
inflexible and of exclusive validity by the safeguarding tendency and resisting any
change. The significance of the conditions for love is no other than that of the
safeguarding of the feeling of self-worth, the exclusive effect of which betrays even
more clearly that the driving force should be sought in the masculine protest, which has
already created the appearance of an incest constellation as well. Where, as in many
cases, the fixation on one of the parents comes to light very clearly, it has been
purposefully9 construed, arranged in order to avoid a decision concerning other
partners, to evade love and marriage. For the neurotic has usually destroyed, or at least
left undeveloped, the predisposition to love and marriage as being inconsistent with his
not very social final goal.
8 Generalization is an expedient of the neurotic that may regularly be found, after

all, he is constantly straining after the ‘secure’ fictitious guiding line. Without
generalization, his outlook on life and the neurotic, basic attitude that originates from it,
would collapse on itself in the face of the many forms in which life manifests itself.
The most original of triangular relationships, however, the ‘incest situation,’ will,
on closer examination, resolve itself into an asexual affair forced by the ‘megalomania
of the child,’ an affair that will even at this stage reveal all neurotic characteristics of
the predisposed child: envy, stubbornness, insatiability, precocity, desire for dominance,
and lack of community feeling. The motivation to maintain suitable memories, to falsify
them, to exaggerate traces of reminiscences, is furnished by the fear of a defeat in life.
And when the sexual impulse has really made itself felt, when the child had been
confronted with the possibility of incest, the memory will be preserved as a terrifying
mark, as a memento. The neurotic psyche is guided not by memories and
reminiscences, but by the fictional final goal, which has drawn all useful applications in
its favor into the form of predispositions and characteristics. It hardly makes any
difference when these reminiscences are ‘repressed’ by the feeling of self-worth,
pushed into the unconscious, as long as the synchronous attitude remains. In any case
the neurotic character and all the other psychic gestures with their unconscious
mechanism are opposed to becoming a part of the community.
This was also the case with our patient. She could indicate by example that she
wanted to bring the father over to her side, that indeed she had succeeded by carefully
reacting to his way of thinking and his wishes. To tear him away from her mother had
been easy for her. When she was fourteen she began to avoid his kisses because they
gave her a strange, erotic feeling. In order to clarify this arrangement I add here that the
patient had been showing traces of neurosis since her twelfth year. The situation she
was in at the time permits us to understand the reason for this safeguard by means of the
construction of erotic preparations. She had always been an unruly, boyish creature,
who had by then already learned to feel the power of the sexual stimulus, and had been
practicing masturbation for quite some time. Around this time, too, men began to make
advances to her, to which she reacted with extreme anxiety. For some years the
safeguarding tendency had been manifesting itself to such an extent that the patient had
strengthened her anxiety predisposition, which in its turn had been built up from
original, genuine feelings of anxiety, and now she could, whenever she feared a
depreciation in the sense that she had to play a feminine role, carefully observing every
possible cause, evoke in herself a state of anxiety by hallucination, could predetermine
it so to say, for example, a state corresponding to that of an eventual pregnancy. This
anticipation and hallucinatory evocation of symptoms, corresponding to the fear of a
future defeat, are the work of the preparatory safeguarding tendency and they constitute,
as I have shown before,10 the essence of hypochondria, phobia, and numerous
neurasthenic and hysteric symptoms. I want to briefly mention here that the essence of
delusion is also founded on a comparable dogmatic, anticipatory representation of a fear
or a wish, offered by the safeguarding tendency in order to improve verification in a
phase of great insecurity, and strongly dependent on the fictional guiding line for the
protection of the feeling of self-worth. When our patient, in her state of anxiety,
preemptively foresaw that a potential loss of prestige was to be expected, she found
herself to be safeguarded best by holding on to that state in an hallucinatory way.
Occasionally, the hallucinatory stimulation needed a further intensifaction: and so the
patient came to the safeguarding obsession that she had killed a newborn baby. During
the analysis this fear of men, occasionally degenerating to agoraphobia, appeared to be
connected to certain admonitions of her mother. This means that the patient even went
so far as to pick out from her memories words of the mother she was always fighting in
so far as these were suitable for providing security.11
9According to the plan of life, the finale.

In this preparatory act an event occurred that threateningly demanded the hurried
extension of the safeguarding predisposition: one of her cousins gave birth to a child
out of wedlock, a fact that brought out great disappointment in this respectable middle-
class family, particularly as the seducer made himself scarce. Our growing
understanding of this woman allows us to understand why this event inevitably
precipitated the extension of the neurosis, and how it came about that the words of the
mother, whom she held in low esteem, were imparted with a higher value. The patient
had been a wild, unruly girl of great physical strength ever since her earliest childhood,
always preferring to play boys’ games and despising with extreme distaste anything
feminine. She can still actually remember how violently she refused to take part in
playing with dolls or doing needlework. The personality of her father towered over that
of the mother to a remarkable degree. An unmarried aunt who lived with the family of
our patient took pleasure in her masculine manners, showed some growth of beard and
had a man’s voice. To these strong and constantly recurring memories, one was added
from later years that gave the tendency that had dominated our patient since her
childhood—the wish to become a man—sufficient resonance, namely the memory of
how a female student she had known for many years in school, a pseudohermaphrodite,
had changed into a man. These and similar communications, a special interest in
hermaphroditism, for instance, are sufficient in my experience to come to the
preliminary conclusion that such patients wish to strip off their apparent femininity and
that it is of no consequence whether they are male or female; they want to adopt
masculine characteristics as if they fully believed that they were capable of a
metamorphosis, and they are continuously attempting to push forward into the
masculine role they consider to be higher. Among these attempts—corriger la fortunen
—two are of particular interest to us: the construction of the neurotic character and the
neurotic preparations in the form of the neurosis and their symptoms.
10 See ‘Syphilidophobie.’ In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c.
11Incidentally, the mother was not supposed to be right with her apodictic threats, she

had mainly caused bad things. One of my patients was always picked up from school
when he was a child. As so many children, he experienced this patronizing treatment as
degrading. When his escort failed to come one day, he waited outside the school
building for five hours, until his terrified parents found him. Similarly, the little
Nietzsche repudiated his educator by calmly walking home through the pouring rain,
step by step, and then replied to his frightened mother’s reproaches: I was taught that
good children must walk home properly, without running or romping. (See endnote ‘n’
on page 146.)
Among such patients, quite a common characteristic that I would like to bring
forward is that they often demonstrate an inclination to be naked and frivolous,
particularly in their childhood or in later life, in dreams, in fantasy, or in the neurotic
attack, when they tear the clothes off their body, or in psychosis, when they undress, as
if they could dispense with the shamefulness that they value as feminine. One may see
from these instances that one perversion, that of exhibitionism, does not arise from from
a ‘congenital sexual constitution,’ but that the neurosis, safeguarding the feeling of self-
worth, is striving to suppress, to repress inferiority feelings, because the burning desire
to be a complete man, to be of higher value, finds expression in this neurosis. The
sexual jargon in this is nothing but a form of expression, an ‘as-if,’ and the sexual
contents of ideas or facts only a symbol of the plan of life. The feminine, exaggerated
shamefulness of such patients is also an expedient in the opposite direction, in order to
obscure the lack of masculinity.12 In these cases, shamelessness is a substitute for the
desired masculinity, it is masculine protest, whereas a marked increase in shamefulness
frequently points to painful lines of reasoning about resignation, and therefore will
often generate feelings of protest of a masculine type, which are notably strengthened
by the lines of ambition, of the desire to be above, of the desire to have everything, of
obstinacy. In the further development of the neurosis, the inclination to conquer and the
desire to overpower as well as the tendency to devalue others may also assert
themselves in the form of hostile fantasies of castration and their rationalizations.
Tendencies to make the partner helpless, to experience the proof of superiority, which
regularly constitutes the essential content of the exhibitionism, may often be found.
Occasionally, one may interpret the lack of tidiness and indecency in girls as a sign of
the surfacing fiction: I want to be a man! Originally, however, these deficiencies are
signs of pampering.
12 A. Adler, ‘Männliche Einstellung bei weiblichen Neurotikern (Venus Dream).’

In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c. In the ‘masculine’ substitute
activities that appear at this point, and pointing beyond them, the feeling of their
insufficiency is clearly visible. In very serious neuroses and psychoses (melancholy,
dementia praecox and paranoia), the sense of hopelessness that is felt, the lack of faith
in the eventual triumph of the egocentric ego, will lead to a revolt against all of life and
against the community. Similarly, this is so in the case of suicide.
All of these characteristics, however contradictory their origins may seem from
time to time, were active in one direction towards the fictional final goal of this patient.
It was not difficult to discover, as a prerequisite for her masculine attitude, a stage of
insecurity in her early childhood in which she cherished the hope, with a lack of
understanding but guided by a certain streak of character and her compensatory
ambition of transforming herself at some point into a man. This final goal, to develop
from a hermaphroditic condition (Dessoiro) into a man, is easy to perceive if one
interprets her boyish behavior as a preparation for her fictional expectation. Her
inclination to put on boys’ clothes also belongs here, a phenomenon that, as with
Hirschfeld’sp transvestites, originates in the psychic dynamics as we have just described
them. Her guiding image became particularly clear in the childish fantasies and
daydreams of her childhood. Under the influence of fairy tales and myths (Dwarf Nose,
A Thousand and One Nights, etc.) she imagined that she underwent the most varied
transformations, sometimes believing she had been changed into a nix or a mermaid,
the lower part of whose body ends in a fishtail—as if this referred to a particular
meaning. In connection with this, a clearer neurotic symbol began to set in at this time
as well. Occasionally she was unable to walk, as if she had a fishtail instead of legs.
Added to this was a shoe fetishism that also points towards the masculine direction and
that developed in such a way that she had to wear big shoes, we might call them men’s
shoes, because otherwise her feet would hurt. From Ovid’sq Metamorphoses, that in her
fanaticism for reading she laid hands on very early, she borrowed another image which
she allowed to pop up in her dreams even during treatment: that she changed in such a
way that the lower part of her body ended in a deeply rooted trunk. In this and similar
ways she gave herself the answer to the question concerning her future sexual role,13
the transformation of which she wanted to be brought about, as do all neurotics in their
cowardice for life, by a miracle, a magic charm, not by her own power.
It will not surprise us to find in this and similar cases that her masculine final goal
also influenced her attitude towards women. In her preparations for the future, love and
sexual relations must also have their place, and so we soon find our patient as the ideal
masculine protector of a younger and weaker sister. Particularly noteworthy,
furthermore, were the sadistic acts that she committed against little girls and servant
girls, but also against weak, girlish boys. In this way we find in our patient’s masculine
guiding line an interlocking of secondary characteristics, supporting auxiliary lines of
homosexuality14 and of (masculine) sadism, whose arrangement is the result of the
expansion of the masculine arrangement of predispositions, and which were chosen as
the only possible substitute of masculine sexuality by its neurotic, tendentious
apperception from those of life’s impressions that provided sufficient basis. These two
perversions, as is still to be shown, are also deviations and neurotic expedients,
secondary guiding lines, that have developed from the exaggerated masculine protest.
The question concerning the constitutional basis of perversions is entirely irrelevant,
since the safeguarding neurosis, choosing its material tendentiously, may link up to the
most innocuous relations, furnishing them at the same time with a dimension and a
significance that may become limitless, whipping them up and lending them extreme
value if this is necessary for the neurosis.
13In one of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, by the way, a nymph of Apollo desires to be

changed into a man as a reward for love.

One day, when a man on the stairs made advances to the patient, who was by now
fourteen years old, a delusion developed from this constellation, the foundation of
which may be easily understood. For several months, she imagined herself to be Hugo
Schenk, the killer of servant girls, and thus, by means of very strong abstractions,
introduced for safeguarding reasons, she brought about an interlocking of her
masculine, her homosexual and her sadistic fictions as she brought them into sharper
expression, at the same time anticipating an event that she feared. The following three
conditions form the foundation on which every delusion is built: in the first place, a
very strong abstraction from reality; in the second place, an intensification of the
masculine guiding line—leading to ‘above;’ and in the third place, an anticipation of
the guiding image, usually in a concretized disguise. The role of endogenous and
exogenous poisons in many cases is that they evoke a feeling of heightened insecurity
and the dismissal of the community feeling, which obstructs the policy of power and
which may also be accomplished by psychic consequences and emotional disturbances.
Invariably, however, the neurotic safeguarding tendency, which becomes stronger
naturally in the case of heightened insecurity, is the active original cause of the
construction of the delusion. It will then also draw the neurotic method of apperception
more strongly into its sphere of power, and so it realizes a barricade. The use of female
domestic servants in the delusionary construction of our patient simultaneously gives
expression to the devaluating tendency directed towards the female sex. Within her
delusionary construction, anxiety is toweringly present, clearly recognizable as a
safeguard against men and so brought in coordination with the purpose of her delusion,
a second expression of her sharpened masculine protest.15
 14 Moll has drawn attention to the frequent association of homosexuality and
exhibitionism with great acuteness. Our discussion establishes the internal relation.
Both perverse inclinations are forms of expression of the masculine protest in insecure
men who have dismissed (switched off) the norm.
15The strengthening of the fictitious guiding line in the neurotic who has become

insecure makes it necessary for him to begin using stronger means: anxiety instead of
other people’s morality — hypochondria where other people use caution. Our patient
had, at
A further direction of our patient’s perversions, one of which she was only dimly
aware, consisted in a fellatio fantasy. The actual facts available concerning this, which
were applied in the neurotic activity of her fantasy, were exactly known to her. She had
always had a very sweet tooth and even as a child she had been a slave to this addiction.
Even today this characteristic often asserts itself. However, it had happened not
infrequently that she had taken revolting things into her mouth without any disgust. In
her flight from the feminine role,16 our patient attempted temporarily to imagine that
this perverse situation was possible, since it was in particular the actual event of birth
that seemed to her unacceptable and specifically feminine, as appeared from several
details from her case history. The suggestion came from a conversation that she had
overheard. The perversion was asserted by an unmarried female neighbor who was
living comfortably on her own. Put off by men at an early stage, the patient nevertheless
tried on occasion to keep in touch with reality and found the way to this perverse
fantasy in the avoidance of the act of birth, supported by her readiness for disgusting
procedures, experienced and trained in an exaggerated way. But even this was opposed
by her masculine protest. When she cried out at night it was usually because of
tentatively arranged dream situations of this kind, and with this masculine protest of
crying and of safeguarding anxiety she reacted to the unreasonable demand of a
feminine-perverse role that she put on herself.
The psychic attitude of the patient as we described it initially shows the essential
difference. There were, however, still some remains of her fear for men and her
masculine protest present, which after a short while made room for normal behavior.
What might set one thinking was the inception of a difficult, socially inferior situation
that could only be put aside by further interference. Yet, could there possibly be a much
more favorable solution to the problem of this patient, who is no longer young, without
means, and has been robbed of all social connections by the continous neurosis?
However great the force and obstinacy inherent to neurotic symptoms and the
neurotic character may be, they also often show the kind of changeability and frailty
that made them catch the eye of many authors. The character of fickleness, moodiness,
suggestibility and impressionability (Janetr, Strümpells, Raimannt, and others) was not
unjustifiably pointed out as an important sign of a psychogenic affection. However,
attention should be drawn to the fact that in psychic phenomena, which—as we have
demonstrated—represent only means, means of expression and purposive dispositions,
variability itself must often be preserved, since after all it may appear as an auxiliary
line and serve the fictional final goal, the elevation of the feeling of self-worth. The
neurotic self-assessment will certainly take this vacillation as the starting point for
reflection once again, and by means of the purposive strengthening of suggestibility it
will exaggerate opinion by means of its own weaknesses, support it with far-fetched,
usually falsely evaluated memories in order to gain by neurotic means an increased
impetus. This is demonstrated in the following case. In Vienna, a short while ago, a
physician demonstrated in a public session examples of suggestion in a waking state,
which were indeed successful with a certain lady on a number of evenings. When this
same lady was expected to come forward for a demonstration once again, she
responded, as if she wanted to take revenge, with an attack of hysteria that was so
strong that the physician was forbidden by the police to hold further lectures. In
psychotherapeutic treatment one must expect the patient to increase his masculine
protest, his dispostion to attacks, at any time, and one is forced above all to obviate this
reaction. The patient will experience any improvement in his condition as coercion and
defeat, and often a deterioration will follow for no other reason than that improvement
has taken place previously. The manifold, ambivalent (Bleuleru) traits, arranged in polar
fashion, of the neurotic and the psychotic build themselves up on the hermaphroditic
split of the neurotic psyche and obey only the personality ideal, safeguarded as it is by
hypersensitivity and great caution. Their coherence, if perceived correctly, will
invariably disclose an image of psychic unity, for instance on these lines: ‘because I am
weak, irresponsible, tender-hearted and inclined to submit, I must act as if I were
strong, cautious, hard, and dominant,’ in which certain parts of this ‘ambivalence’ will
always, depending on their particular nature, manifest themselves more distinctly. The
compensating other parts will then remain hidden in the background.
the same time, delusion and anxiety where other girls still manage with morality
and caution. The same is valid for hallucinations and delusions instead of caution, fears,
and consolation.
16See The Problem of Homosexuality, l.c.

Endnotes for Practical Part II-II

a Leporello’s list

The long list of Don Giovanni’s lovers, which is kept by his servant Leporello in
Mozart’s opera.
b Don Juan

A figure in European literature, the symbol of unsatiable sensual lust. He first

appears in a work of Tirso de Molina (1613), and subsequently in work by Molière
(1665), Mozart (1787), Lord Byron (1819-24), E. T. A. Hoffmann (1813), Pushkin
(1830), Lenau (1844), G. B. Shaw (1903) and Max Frisch (1953), to name but a few of
the better known artists.
c Messalina, Valeria

(25 – 48 BC): Roman empress, the third wife of the emperor Claudius, whom she
controlled completely. She is well-known for her plotting and scheming and putting
people she disliked out of her way, as for instance Seneca; eventually she was executed
herself.
d Immermann, Karl: Münchhausen: Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von

Münchhausen
 (1720 Bodenwerder an der Weser – 1797): Officer and landowner, nicknamed the
‘lying count’ because he was well-known for the stories he made up about his
adventures in ‘Baron Münchhausen’ (1786, enlarged in 1788). Karl Immermann (1796 -
1840) adapted these stories into a novel, under the title ‘Münchhausen. Eine Geschichte
in Arabesken’ (1838-39).
(footnote 2 ) Wexberg, Erwin
(1889 Vienna – 1957 Washington D.C.): M.D., psychiatrist and one of the first
members of the Association for Individual Psychology, he was one of its most
productive
collaborators in Vienna. He was a go-between for the socialist wing and in opposition to
the later, ‘metaphysical’ Adler. He stressed the importance of the medical-biological
basis. In 1934 he emigrated to the USA where he was active as a psychiatrist.
e Ibsen, Henrik: Pretenders to the Crown

See endnote on page 121. ‘Pretenders to the Crown’ (1864) is a historical drama in
five acts, about the struggle for the Norwegian throne between Hakon and Skule in the
13th century. Skule eventually must admit that by his attempt to seize power he has
destroyed his own and his family’s happiness, and he allows himself to be killed
without resisting.
f Schumann, Clara

(1819 Leipzig – 1896 Frankfurt am Main): A gifted pianist and composer since
early childhood, who in 1840 married Robert Schumann.
g Weber, Frederick Parkes

(1863 – 1963): He was connected to the German Hospital in London for over
fifty years (from 1894), and in 1921 became the first Mitchell Lecturer at the Royal
College of Physicians in London. A clinician, he occupied himself with several fringe
areas, such as medical problems in life insurance, balneology and climatology. Adler is
referringto his publications of 1911-12 (The association of hysteria with malingering:
the
phylogenetic aspect of hysteria as pathological exaggeration or disorder of tertiary
phylogenetic aspect of hysteria as pathological exaggeration or disorder of tertiary

36).
h
Jassny, A.
Refers to his ‘Zur Psychologie der Verbrecherin’, in: Archiv für Kriminal
Anthropologie und Kriminalistik 42, 1911, 90-107.
i pollice verso

‘thumbs backward’ (actually, pointing towards the breast), referring to the

gesture in the amphitheaters of antiquity, meaning that the people wanted to see the
gladiator killed.
(footnote 6) Kretschmer
See endnote on page xiv.
j Lipps, Theodor: counter-consciousness

(1851 Wallhalten – 1914 Munich): German philosopher and psychologist who

regarded affective ‘empathy’ (German ‘Einfühlung’), as the central concept of
psychology, instead of an intellectual subject-object-relation. Psychology itself is for
him
the ‘theory of consciousness and of conscious experiences’ (1900).
k status thymico-lymphaticus

See endnote on page 21.

l Neusser, Edmund von

(1852 – 1912 Vienna): Departmental head of the hospital of the ‘Rudolfstiftung’

in Vienna (1889) and between 1893-1912 professor and director of the II. Medizinische
Klinik in Vienna. He was a general clinician, who published little. He was occupied
intensively with research of and the fight against pellagra, an internal-neurological-
social
fringe area. Adler refers to his work on the diagnosis of status thymico-lymphaticus
(1910).
m Bezzola, Dumeng

(1868 – 1936) — Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He studied in Zurich

where he met Auguste Forel (see endnote ‘f’ on page xxi), and became an assistant
physician at the mental hospital and sanatorium in Chur; in 1901, leader of the hospital
for alcoholics Schloß Hard under Ludwig Frank, from 1908 in Engadin (Sankt Moritz,
later Celerina). With L. Frank, he supported J. Bleuler’s theory of ‘psycho-catharsis’,
and
was dismissive of actual psychoanalysis, which around 1907 led to a conflict with E.
Bleuler and C. G. Jung in Zurich. At the first International Congress for Psychiatry and
Neurology in Amsterdam (1907), he declared during a discussion that he accepted the
older Bleuler-Freudian theory, but not Freud’s more recent psychoanalytic theory. He
later called his own method ‘psycho-synthesis’; in 1909 he became a member of the
‘International Association for Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy’, founded in
Salzburg by A. Forel and H. von Hattingberg.
n corriger la fortune

‘set your luck right’. From Lessing’s ‘Minna von Barnhelm’, where the
cardsharp Riccaut uses it to justify himself. Occurs first in the Fifth Satire of Boileau
(1636 – 1711).
(footnote 11) Nietzsche: good children Based on a story by his sister.
o Dessoir

See endnote on page 81.

p Hirschfeld, Magnus

(1868 Kolberg – 1935 Nizza): Physician, sexologist and sexual reformer,

particularly in the struggle to decriminalize homosexuality, for which he founded the
‘Scientific-Humanitarian Committee’ (German: Wissenschaftlich-Humanitäres
Komitee,
known as WHK). Between 1899-1923 he published the ‘Yearbook of Sexual
Intermediates’ (Jahrbuch sexueller Zwischenstufen), in 1919 he founded in Berlin an
‘Institute for the Science of Sexuality’ (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) in order to do
research and give advice concerning problems of a sexual or sexual-pathological nature.
He was founder and co-founder of several organizations for sexual reform (‘Berliner
Ärztliche Gesellschaft für Sexualwissenschaft und Eugenik’ [‘Medical Association for
Sexology and Eugenics’] in 1913, ‘Weltliga für Sexualreform’ [‘World League for
Sexual Reform’] in 1928, publisher of the ‘Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft’ (1908).
Hirschfeld was largely opposed by most academic sexologists. He had contacts with
psychoanalysis between 1905-1911, and for a short while he even was a member of the
Psychoanalytische Verein. He was a guest of the Individualpsychologische Verein on
January 31st 1914. He also maintained indirect contact with Individual Psychology
through Arthur Kronfeld. When he was on a trip around the world in 1930 he did not
return to Germany, and his institute was destroyed in 1933. Besides his contributions to
the ‘Yearbook’ he wrote a wide range of scientific and popular books, He considered
homosexuality a congenital form of a ‘sexual intermediate’, or a ‘third sex’ with female
characteristics of men and male characteristics of women.
q Ovid (43 BC – 18 AD): Full name Publius Ovidius Naso. At first a lawyer, then

a poet,
he was banished by the emperor August, officially for his ‘Ars amatoria’ (The Art of
Love), but it seems probable that the disputes around the emperor’s succession had
something to do with it. His ‘Metamorphoses’ — the alteration of creation as a poetical
principle — relates the history of the world in fifteen books, from chaos to its
apotheosis
in Julius Cæsar, connecting literature, didactics, epos, and the teachings of the Stoics
and
Pythagoreans.
(footnote 14) Moll, Albert
(1862 Lissa – 1939 Berlin): Professor, neurologist and sexologist, one of the
‘classics’ of sexualpathology, who occupied himself with hypnotism and the
unconscious. In a wider sense he was a member of the ‘Nancy School’ (hypnosis
therapy
of Liébeault, Bernheim). The broader definition of the term ‘libido’ as a ‘sexual
impulse
in an evolutionary sense’ goes back to him (1897/98). He extended Dessoir’s (see
endnote ‘dd’ on page 81) ideas about the two evolutionary stages of the sexual impulse
(differentiated and undifferentiated). He opposed Hirschfeld’s (see earlier note) theory
about homosexuality and was a keen enemy of Freud. In 1926 he organized the
International Congress for Sexual Research in Berlin, where Adler also read a paper.
r Janet: suggestibility

See endnote on page xxi.

s Strümpell

See endnote on page 19.

t Raimann, Emil

(1872 Troppau/Austrian Silesia – 1948 Vienna): Private lecturer of psychiatry and

neurology (1905), from 1909 the editor of the ‘Yearbook of Psychiatry and Neurology’
(Jahrbuch für Psychiatrie und Neurologie), the organ of the Viennese Association for
Psychiatry and Neurology and the only Austrian professional journal. Extraordinary
professor between 1913-34 and a regular assessor in psychiatric faculty decisions, he
was an expert witness for the prosecution—beside Freud—in the war crimes process
against J. Wagner-Jauregg in 1920. As early as 1904 he was a vehement, occasionally
ambivalent opponent of Freud’s psychoanalysis.
u Bleuler: ambivalent traits

See endnote on page xxi.

Practical Part II - III
Neurotic Principles — Compassion, Coquetry, Narcissism — Psychic
Hermaphroditism — Hallucinatory Safeguarding — Virtue, Conscience, Pedantry,
Fanaticism for Truth
In our ongoing research we had the opportunity to observe the manifold attempts,
preparations and dispositions of a female patient, all of which were determined by her
masculine attitude. The resulting fear of men was so great that it prevented the
establishment of any love relationship whatsoever, until treatment made it possible. In a
great many cases one may see that the masculine protest finds expression in an
apparently opposite way: the female patients are continually entering into new relations,
but these wither easily and are threatened by the most peculiar, disastrous whims of
fate. They are also capable of getting married once or more than once, and of ending
these marriages as well. Very often the most vehement amorous passions break through,
strong enough to overcome any obstacles, which will indeed usually only intensify
them. Identical phenomena may be observed in male neurotics. On closer examination
one may find once again the familiar traits of the neurotic — first among which is his
desire for dominance — that, just as other characteristics, make use of love
relationships as a vehicle to demonstrate that they can assert themselves. The yearning
to possess everything expresses itself in such a way here that all men, sometimes all
human beings, are made into objects of conquest, in which coquetry and the need for
tenderness, and dissatisfaction with one’s fate as it is, will grow to great height. The
neurotic set of mutually dependent preconditions with difficulties is often remarkable. A
small woman prefers only big men, or love manifests itself only when the parents forbid
it, while what is attainable is treated with open disdain and hostility. In the
conversations and deliberations of such women the little limiting word ‘only’ constantly
crops up. They only want an educated, only a rich, only a masculine man, only platonic
love, only a marriage without children, only a husband who puts no controls on them,
etc. One will often see that the tendency to depreciate is so active that eventually hardly
a single man remains who could satisfy the demands. They usually have a readymade,
though often unconscious, ideal, to which have been added certain characteristics of the
father, a brother, a figure from a fairy tale, a literary or an historical personality. The
more one familiarizes oneself with these ideals, the more we are convinced that they are
set up as a fictional standard, to be used to devalue reality by comparison. The psychic
direction, with the accompanying features of an ‘unwomanly’ nature, often giving rise
to the masculine traits of sexual liberty, unfaithfulness and unchastity, is clearly aiming
for the guiding image of equality to men. Analysis will often show original organic
inferiorities, an exaggerated inferiority feeling, a remarkable initial higher estimation of
the male, on whose heels depreciation follows as a safeguard. Other safeguards support
the opinion we have formed. Basic ideas, such as: all men are rough, tyrannical, smell
bad, are infected, etc., show the influence of the tendentious apperception. Among male
neurotics one will find fundamental ideas of distrust that represent all women as
vicious, insatiable, frivolous, physiologically weakminded, and abandoned to their
sexuality without restraint. Our teachers— philosophers and poets—who shape the
guiding images of the times for us, as a ‘secret emperor’ (Simmela), are not infrequently
subject to identical fictions. The neurotic will, therefore, eagerly seize upon them, in
order to gain a safeguarding line in the restlessness of life. For the neurotic tendency
mentioned above, Schopenhauerb, Strindbergc, Moebiusd, and Weiningere, as well as
the religious teachers and the fathers of the church, have created the most popular
clichés. The learned disputations of the clerics whether a woman has a soul,f whether
she is a human being, were followed by the Malleus malificariumg and the outrage of
the burning of witches. The eroticism that fits in here is perverse, or consists of
masturbation and increasing nocturnal emissions with their deeper intention: without a
female partner as the shabby remainder, left over after the norm has been suspended.
One will easily come to see that the tabulations of so many authors, and particularly
Freud, of phases of sexual development are concerned, not with a natural, but with an
artificial ‘transformation of the libido,’ influenced by our culture. Especially the idea of
an innate perversion, of perverse components, will collapse completely in this regard.
The safeguarding schematic fictions of neurotic girls are taken from a childish level of
perception—since art is still nearly exclusively the work of men and the neurotic
apperception offers less suited material to women, and therefore it is even more difficult
to bring them into harmony with reality.
If reality, however, can influence the neurotic fiction of girls, it will usually call
forth characteristics and tendencies that will still manifest themselves clearly enough in
the masculine inclination to overpower men, or, in case of very strong safeguards also
in a homosexual direction, or it may result in seeking the love of, or marriage to a
depreciated man, one less capable of resistance. The expression of sympathy may then
often conceal the true state of affairs, and love becomes free when the man is powerless,
weakened, a cripple, elderly. In fantasies, dreams, hallucinations, in which the man is
castrated, transformed into a woman, a corpse, is ‘below,’ but especially in the tendency
to see the man defenseless, small, humiliated, the compulsion of the masculine guiding
fiction expresses itself, finding its most elevated expression in necrophilia.1
As we have already noted, another route leads to neurotic coquetry by crossing the
line of ‘wanting to have everything.’ The masculine protest in this case is expressed as
follows: in the first place, in the tendency to compensate an original feeling of
inferiority, of depreciation, by dominating many or all men; and in the second place, by
refusing a feminine role in a sexual relation or within marriage. In place of this role,
which is considered degrading, one finds expedients dictated by the masculine guiding
line, such as sexual anesthesia and perversions of all kinds, predominant among which
is the sadistic degradation of men. Blochh has correctly emphasized the dominance of
the coquette when he says (Beiträge zur Ätiologie der psychopathia sexualis2):
‘Coquetry, which one might define as the effort of women to capture men and bring
them under their dominance, preferably makes use of purely sensual means to reach its
goal and is, in this respect, an expression of the true gynecocratic instinct.’ We can only
add that this ‘gynecocratic instinct’ is constructed on the model of resemblance to men,
and therefore proves itself to be dependent on the masculine personality ideal, even if
by some expedient only feminine means are used because these are the only ones
available and most active. The attention and interest of these neurotics (among whom
the male coquette neurotics are remarkable because they attempt to achieve, by
feminine means, their triumph, which is evaluated as masculine) is intensely directed
towards making an impression and forcing others into their service. Connected to this
characteristic trait is the fact that the neurotic strengthening of this secondary guiding
line will often lead to an overestimation of oneself, and thus also to increased
characteristics of the desire for domination, of pride and the depreciation of others. We
should, therefore, not be at all surprised that the object of desire in such cases seems, as
a rule, overvalued or eliminated by the patient’s narcissismi (Naeckej). This
overvaluation is rather a prerequisite in the construction of the relationship and the
patient’s exaggerated sense of his own importance is reflected in it.3 In
psychotherapeutic treatment these cases in particular may appear to ‘be in love with the
physician.’ It is, however, easy to understand that this ‘transfer of love’ only
corresponds to one of the many predispositions that may be used to break the resistance
and with it the superiority of the man, of the male physician. And it is easy to see how
their feeling of depreciation, called forth by this curious and complex form of the
masculine protest, springs from the feeling of their femininity, which they subsequently
experience as an inferiority.
1Eulenburg has emphasized the close relationship between active algolagnia (v.

Schrenck-Notzing) and necrophilia in identical fashion.

No matter how far the coquette neurotic may go, however, her goal can never be
compatible with subjection to the man. Sooner or later it will lead to depreciation of the
man, and this is invariably when the neurotic patient finds that the situation is becoming
‘too feminine.’ This moment may also arrive at different stages, but as a rule it is an
intimate touch, a kiss, the expectation of sexual intercourse or the fear of pregnancy and
childbirth that causes the increased safeguarding tendencies to emerge and the outbreak
of what is usually called neurosis or psychosis. The stronger abstraction of reality will
then come into its own, the fictions of the struggle for power will manifest themselves
more clearly, the required devaluation of the man demands actions and deeds that seem
to have lost all meaning, and the hostile dispositions of the stimulated aggressive drive
and, simultaneously, the neurotic characteristics become more visible.
2 Iwan Bloch, Beiträge zur Ätiologie der Psychopathia sexualis. 2 vol. Dresden:

Dohrn
1902-1903.
3The faith in one’s own charm is so strong that all resistance will lead to new efforts.

See also Das Problem der Homosexualität, l.c.

Every neurotic possesses this narcissistic coquetry to some degree; after all, it
originates in his hypostasized idea of his personality and is based like that idea on an
original feeling of inferiority. As such, it is in fact egoism as a result of the safeguarding
tendency of someone who feels weak. This characteristic is in harmony with the fact
that every neurotic, but in particular the kind we just described, finds it so hard to
separate himself from persons or things. The separation from an apparently hardly
familiar person, let alone from one apparently loved, may bring out the most severe
neurotic symptoms, neuraligic attacks, depression, insomnia, convulsive sobbing, etc.
On the other hand, threats of desertion or separation are not uncommon and intended to
bring proof of influence over the other.
A number of phenomena prove the dominance of the masculine protest in neurotic
coquetry. The strong disinclination to a feminine role has been stressed before. In these
cases, as we have shown, it may call forth a remarkable picture, the appearance of a
double life, of a split of consciousness, of ambivalence (Bleulerk). At the same time,
more proof for the striving to be equal to men will invariably result from the patient’s
analysis. Dreams, fantasies, hallucinations, the onset of psychoses show very clearly the
striving to be a man, or one of its many equivalents, such as fear of a feminine destiny
or of very active courting. A strong tendency to degrade men originating in the struggle
for equality and in sexual affairs, will give rise to the fiction of a masculine role that is
expressed in frigidity and in situations that force the man into a slavish, debasing
position.
The onset of the neurosis is often calculated from the moment when the fear of a
decision, of a test, of marriage, of a public appearance, or agoraphobia, requires medical
treatment. This fear arises when a contradiction emerges in the masculine protest, when
a depreciation, a feminine destiny, a defeat and with it the necessity of admitting
imperfection are threatening in the pursuit of the goal of power.
This was the case with one of my patients, who several years ago, shortly before
her first public appearance, became ill with piano player’s cramp. This neurosis
provided a good excuse to escape a defeat that was feared. Closer examination of the
conditions of this illness showed a neurotic illusion in which the patient, by looking at
the notes of her music, was reminded of male genitals. No interpretation would seem
more obvious than that of an increased but repressed sexuality whose counterpart was
to be sought in the ‘piano player’s cramp,’ in the ‘repression of inclinations to
masturbation.’ The outcome, however, proved to be entirely different from this
insinuation. The triumph in public was supposed to indicate an appreciation equal to
that of men, equality with men. This fiction was in contradiction with reality, with the
feeling to be ‘just’ a woman, so that a public appearance—and many talented girls and
women fail for identical reasons—came to be equal to a final balancing of the facts. The
patient’s sense of reality, confronted with the facts, did not allow that, and it arranged a
fictional obstacle by means of a symbolic interpretation of the heads and tails of the
notes, reminding her at the same time of her own femininity and thus developing into a
signal of retreat.4
The contradiction within this patient’s masculine protest was a consequence, as
indeed it is quite regularly in neurosis, of the unrealizability of the fiction, particularly
when a decision is to be made and the possibility of a defeat looms up—a common
phenomenon that needs no explanation. At that point the characteristic traits of anxiety,
of shyness, and of stage-fright are strengthened and they will either furnish pretexts
themselves, or provide similarly directed preparations and predispositions, as in our
case by means of sympathetic understanding and the cramped clenching of the hands,
pain and a difficulty of movement, and these will divert attention from the threat to the
masculine protest.
 However, in this case yet again the power of the masculine guiding line is
astonishing, as it creates a masculine predisposition to fight even from the patient’s
flight into illness. This woman had entered on the career path of the virtuoso against her
own will, under pressure from her unrelenting mother. The failure of her mother’s
ambitious plans signified a victory for the daughter, which partly compensated her.
What her obstinacy, her masculine rebellion, failed to accomplish, succeeded by means
of illness, as soon as the heads of her musical notes, as a threatening memento, called
out to her: you are an incapable woman, pay attention, don’t let your mother force you
into a submissive role—defeat your mother!
A further construction, an excuse to obtain an operational base against the mother,
lay in the heightened feeling of depreciation she had because her older sister was given
preference. This way of reasoning, as well as her struggle to acquire exclusive
possession of every person, of her mother, of all members of the family, of all people in
her environment, a dog even, is reflected in the strengthened characteristic of her
coquetry and was clearly expressed, for example, in one of her last dreams concerning
the physician. The dream was as follows:
‘I am sitting opposite to you and ask if you like other patients as much as me. You
answer: yes, all of them, and my four children, too. Suddenly you are changed into a
woman and go to sleep. A woman is paying attention to the black notes.’
The erotic disposition of this patient cannot endure a rival. She needs the certainty
of her victory in order to feel her superiority. I, the physician who gives her to
understand that he treats all patients with the same interest and who loves his children
besides, therefore becomes the point of attack of her lust for power, as had been her
mother and the man she had married a short while ago, indeed as all persons in her
environment, servants, shopkeepers, tradesmen, teachers, etc., had been before. Her
egocentric nature has no need to ‘transfer,’ for she is bringing into treatment nothing but
ready-made, rigid predispositions that she brings into play from the very first moment
of her meeting with the physician. However, the new situation comes with difficulties
and obstacles which prevent the desire to dominate through love from fully developing
itself. Understandably, my wife is left out of the dream. It is this omission that is the
pivot of the situation: my wife has definitely been done away with. The feminine means
extend up to this point, characterizing the feminine line that the patient is following.
Now the masculine protest is clearly stretching further. I am emasculated: the patient’s
safeguarding illusion, the notes as a protecting symbol of male genitals, comes into its
own right. She herself ‘pays attention,’ secures herself, in order not to lower her
masculine feeling of self-worth, not to suffer defeat.
4 Similarly, sexual hyper-excitabilities that are related to inevitable situations such

as rides on streetcars, society, theaters, etc., provide suitable signposts to retreat from
society. The increased sympathetic understanding for the saving fiction will then show
the ‘real’ symptoms.
The fact that I fall asleep in the dream assigns me to a position identical to that of
her husband. The patient feels it as a strong depreciation that her husband, a much
overworked manufacturer, often goes to sleep before she does. The emasculation of the
man is her response to this, as well as prolonged insomnia, whose constructive
significance lies in the fact that it allows the patient to operate against her husband.
Now she can refuse him his right as a husband and turn him out of the bedroom, at first
in the middle of the night, later permanently. For he ‘snores, and makes it impossible
for her to go to sleep.’ Our patient would easily have found another argument if this
would not have been available, and it would be a serious mistake to exclude a neurotic
construction, for example, because the neurotic happens to be right. In order to prove
that he is ultimately right, the patient will often argue persuasively; the neurotic stigma,
however, rather lies in the tendency to make his superiority visible by all possible
means. Litigious paranoia for instance, demonstrates this mechanism even more
clearly. Our patient’s neurosis, moreover, continues to develop more safeguards. In
order to put her insomnia on a firmer basis, it adds a hypersensitivity of hearing. Its
mechanism consists in a tendentious overcharging of the attentiveness of her auditory
functions, so that we might say: in order that even the slightest sound will wake up the
patient, as soon as she falls asleep. This allows her, still awake in the morning, to sleep
far into the day and so to avoid the feminine household duties, just as she had escaped
her mother’s dominance by stage fright and cramp in her fingers.5
This and similar cases also taught me how suggestibility is in the service of the
safeguarding tendency, either to allow the patient to obtain from mere details the
conviction of his weakness, in order to be ready to resist at critical moments, or to adapt
himself with surprising flexibility in order to conquer the other.6 The more direct efforts
of the desire for power will then be in such contrast that on superficial observation the
idea of a split consciousness seems apparent enough. Similarly, vanity, pride, and self-
admiration will lead him in many cases to identical goals, while he will conduct
himself, by way of an expedient, modestly, simply and negligently, as far as behavior
and dress are concerned. In most cases the effect, outward looks and physical attitude, is
carefully thought out. One will often find narcissistic characteristics whose essential
constructive foundation represents attempts to prove the equality with men by means of
circuitous ways, and so to compensate for the feeling of depreciation. In the memoirs of
Baschkirzewal and of Helena Rakowizam, literature furnishes us with representations of
all these attempts of the masculine protest in their most refined form.
5‘About Insomnia.’ In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c.

Analyses of a series of cases in which these remarkable impressions from

childhood had been preserved in a purer form than in other cases, provided me with
interesting verification of the theory I had formulated about the doubt about the future
sexual role of the neurotic child. Some remembered very clearly that they had been in
some doubt about whether they were male or female until they were twelve or fourteen
years old. It cannot have been a coincidence that these patients were male. At times, the
thought crossed their mind whether they might not be hermaphrodite, so that I am
inclined to think that, in other cases, the thought of hermaphrodites that came to the
surface very clearly and importunately in the memory of patients, and that was brought
forward spontaneously, is a final expression of the doubt about the patient’s own sex. In
literature as well I have often come across this significant trace in the case histories of
neurotics and psychotics, without the authors realizing the fundamental significance of
this doubt about the sexual role. Mescheden has described a suggestive case of
compulsive questioning, and Freud one of dementia based on Schreber’s biography, in
which the starting point of the psychic hermaphroditism with its limitless struggle for
power and its subsequent failure can easily be discerned. I disregarded whether this
interest of the patient was explained by pictures on placards, by the lexicon, by reading,
by exhibitions or incidents, just as I disregarded the scientific interpretation, which
seemed to concentrate its interest on the masculine periods, on the male climacteric, on
the examination of the masculine and feminine share in the individual or other such
things. For me, the permanent impression that asserted itself in an obvious emphasis on
the relation and reciprocal relation of masculine-feminine, was decisive. In recent years
I have often asked myself, since I have detected these fundamental phenomena of
neurosis, whether in my own development as a child a similar doubt might not also
have predominated, although the problem of hermaphroditism only attracted my interest
as a critic, that is to say, apparently in a secondary manner and at a remarkably late
stage. I would also use my rejection of biological hermaphroditism as a cause of
neurosis (Fließo) as a counter-argument, if I were not familiar with the fact that
negation, too, is often the result of an old, misinterpreted interest. For all that, my view
of the world shows me that I must have mastered any old, childhood antagonism fairly
well, whereas an exaggerated masculine protest has not developed. For in life as well as
in science I have rejected with objective calm, after an initial over-estimation of an
abstract masculine principle, the flood of arguments concerning the original inferiority
of women. I am, however, confident in taking the way in which former critics of the
masculine protest attack me, and their stubborn misunderstanding, as proof of the fact
that the exaggerated savageness of their attack, in a strictly scientific debate, nearly as
much as the fear of the concept ‘hermaphroditism,’ can be traced back to an old
impression from childhood which has conjured up, in a terrifying way, a strongly
emphasized femininity or hermaphroditism. It is not my intention in saying this,
however, to deter anyone from scientific criticism.
6 This latter mechanism also seems to be the basis of passive homosexuality, and

both attitudes may appear as the structure of masochism (or rather, therefore,
pseudomasochism).
For the rest, there is not a better way of judging the reaction of the neurotic psyche
than the question concerning the evaluation of the opposite sex. It will become apparent
that any strong denial of the equality of the sexes, any noticeable devaluation or over-
estimation of the opposite sex, is invariably connected with neurotic dispositions and
neurotic characteristics. They are all dependent on the neurotic safeguarding tendency,
they all show clear traces of the active masculine protest, and are evidence of the basic,
abstract attachment to a guiding fiction. They are altogether expedients of human
thought in order to elevate the own feeling of self-worth. At a later stage more will have
to be said about the fundamental importance of a timely recognition of the
unchangeable sexual role. At this point only this: whoever has a low estimation of
women, be it man or woman, will be punished with neurosis.
It follows from the argument of my psychology of neuroses that children, whether
they have a masculine or a feminine disposition, look forward with feelings of anxiety
and fear to a life as a woman, to be the subject of a man in the future, to give birth to
children, to play a subordinate role in life, to be forced to be obedient, to remain
backward in knowledge, abilities, power and intelligence, to be weak, to menstruate, to
sacrifice oneself to a husband, to children, and finally to become an old neglected
woman. I have described above how this fear of the future stirs up egotistic
characteristics. I described a typical case in point concerning a little girl in the
‘Disposition zur Neurose’ (see Heilen und Bilden l.c.). The most serious cases of
neuroses and psychoses often manifest themselves in those cases where dissatisfaction
with the sexual role, considered unmasculine, does not offer any possibility for true
compensation. A complete disassociation with life will give form to characteristics such
as permanent dissatisfaction, an inclination for conflict, ruthlessness and a withdrawal
from life. Memories of childhood questions, such as why there are only two sexes, are
not infrequent and they betray the original dissatisfaction.
A number of cases of so-called ‘lactopsychosis,’ which usually have a
schizophrenic character, show a formal departure of marriage and the blessings of
childhood. This is the case when a female patient is constantly longing to return to her
brothers and sisters. Or when, in the expectation of becoming blind or of turning into a
snake, all female duties are refused. After more thorough research, one will find that
these patients could only fulfill their duties with great exertion even at a much earlier
stage.
At this point I can bring forward the case of a female patient suffering from a
gastric neurosis in order to illustrate a certain conduct which may regularly be observed
in the psychic development of neurotic patients. It concerns the anticipatory thinking, as
well as the anticipatory feeling and guessing about disadvantages that might be
expected to occur. It is an inclination that one may already observe in the earliest years
of childhood, when, in the case of organ inferiorities and the ailments they cause, it is
strongly stimulated. Very often the feeling occurs shortly before going to bed, and it is
therefore not particularly remarkable when some image in a dream further develops this
attempt of anticipatory thinking, often in a terrifying way. Just as the neurosis, the
dream will, however, be accompanied by a condition of feeling, of emotion—similar to
that of hallucination—that signifies anticipatory feeling, parallel to anticipatory
thinking in waking condition. The hallucinatory excitability, as I have already
emphasized in the Studie über Minderwertigkeit von Organen (l.c.), is an extended
capacity of the brain which is overstrained and overtrained for purposes of
compensation, It serves the neurotic safeguarding tendency, owing its ability for
representation in the consciousness to the tendentious memory and the neurotic,
cautious line of apperception. The childish, undeveloped psychic life will at the most
show rudimentary beginnings of hallucinatory feelings, which should be regarded as
fictional preparations for a certain goal, as anticipations in a period of uncertainty.
Some instances are laughing in sleep, pleasant sensations in the anticipatory search for
organic satisfaction or safeguards.
Hallucinatory excitement in neuroses and psychoses serves without exception the
guiding fiction of the personality ideal. The significance of the hallucinations of pain
and anxiety for the image of neurotic diseases should be taken into account as well.
Closer study of the mechanism of the hallucination teaches us unequivocally that it is
composed of tendencies to abstraction and anticipation, and that it derives its
significance as an increased fiction or as a memento by inciting the safeguarding of the
feeling of self-worth. The fact that it is linked with traces of memory, that it is
‘regressive,’ does not make any essential difference. The psyche invariably works with
the contents of consciousness and sensations provided by experience and originating in
the past. The significance of the psyche and of the neurotic psyche in particular lies in
the special choice of these memory traces from experience and in their tendentious
connection with the neurotic apperception. The nervously whipped up safeguarding
tendency, therefore, makes use of a specially developed function of anticipatory
thinking, of the hallucination, in which a scene unrolls in an abstract, pictorial manner,
a preliminary finale, an anticipated conclusion, either stimulating, so that the
hallucinating individual will forge the link, or frightening, so that he will choose other
ways of behavior. Similarly to other preliminary attempts of the psyche, the
hallucination, as well as the dream, are intended to trace the way that is needed to
elevate or maintain the feeling of self-worth. The confidence, the hopes, the opinions or
fears of the patient are reflected in it.
The patient I mentioned above was soon to be married when her gastric neurosis
began. She was suffering from pains in the stomach area, belching, vomiting, a lack of
appetite and obstipation. One evening, shortly before going to bed, she clearly heard the
word ‘Eskadambra.’ The formation of apparantly meaningless words is one of the well-
known activities of neurotics. They mostly prove to be constructed according to a
certain scheme, just as children invent languages in order to acquire a feeling of
superiority. Pfisterp was able to construct interpretations of the word pictures that
originated in the fascinations of ‘speakers in tongues.’ In some cases I found ringing in
the ears as a terrifying memory of the roaring of the sea and its dangers, as a symbol of
life, just as Homer compares the agonaq with the foaming and seething sea.7 In
paranoia, mania and dementia præcox, the inclinations that lead to superiority will
partially assume the form of hallucinations and safeguard the psychotic scheme by
means of acoustic or visual complements.
As far as the above mentioned complementation of a psychic movement in an
auditory hallucination is concerned we may also assume that a strong inner need has led
to a greater exertion of the safeguarding tendency, for which the word ‘Eskadambra,’
since it is incomprehensible and useless to the patient, can only be a standard and
signal.8 The expectation is, however, justified that a thorough understanding of the
word in question will allow us to recognize a meaning that will make us understand the
psychic condition of the woman. As a rule, it is easy to come to an understanding of this
type of hallucination, or at least not more difficult than it is to understand short
fragments of dreams. When she was asked about her impression of the newly formed
word, the patient indicates that it reminds her of ‘Alhambra.’ She had indeed been
interested in this for many years; once it had been magnificent, but now it had fallen in
decay, a mere ruin. The beginning of the word, ‘Esk,’ can be found in the word
‘Eskimo,’ and in ‘E(tru)sker,’ too, these letters can be found. The tribe of the ‘Basques’
also occurred to her; in this word again most of the sound ‘esk’ appears. The patient
thus indicates the way she followed in coining this new word, she has joined a fragment
of the names of certain tribes with a fragment of the name of a ruined city. Finally,
‘Eskadambra’ in itself carried the meaning of ‘fragment’ to her, and so we may suspect
that the idea of being broken, made smaller, made shorter would emerge in the search
for a meaning of the hallucination. The letters ‘skad,’ as the patient easily discovers,
belong to the word ‘cascade.’ She is quite certain of this, since in connection with her
recent menstruation period she had used the expression ‘whole cascades.’
7 On another occasion I found ringing in the ears as a memory of the singing of the

telegraph wires: this singing reminded the patient of his isolation in a drab childhood
when he often, all alone with his hopes for the future, stood waiting in a small train
station, embracing the whole world, just as the telegraph. The implication of a
‘preoccupation’ can always be found in this, allowing the patient to postpone the
solution of the problems of his life and to occupy ‘himself with himself.’
8One should also assume this of dreams, which usually consist of the reflection of a

psychic movement in the consciousness without conveying anything intelligible to the

dreamer.
If we take into account that this patient is about to be married, then one will easily
understand the relation between this newly formed word and her psychic situation. She
does not want to marry as a result of her neurosis, which is providing her with a
serviceable obstacle.9 Within the hallucination there is an incoherent sketch of the
following trains of thought, more or less: the beauty of my virginity will be destroyed. I
have to give birth to a new race. I will have to sacrifice whole cascades of blood.
When I had reached this point in the interpretation the patient helped me further by
telling me that when she was eight years old she had heard that a woman she knew had
died in childbirth from loss of blood. Since then, she had never been able to shake off
her fear of giving birth.
Now, what is the significance of this hallucination? Would it be characterized,
even approximately, by the word ‘wish fulfillment’ or even ‘death wish’? The entire
context is against it. The meaning of this newly formed word is the anticipatory
interpretation in the direction of a danger that may be expected, of a depreciation, or
the fear of becoming a ruin, as she had often called her mother, or the fear of dying like
the woman in her chilhood memory.
This tendency against feminine functions—and the patient is after all resisting
marriage consciously as well—is, however, even older, originating as it does in the
earliest years of childhood, when it was incorporated in the wish to be ‘above,’ healthy
and strong as the father, not weak, oppressed and sickly as the mother. This was then
elevated to the fictional guiding line and filled with a logical content which was
arranged around a guiding masculine personality ideal, and with an identically directed
fear of the feminine role. The compensating goal that was the logical result from this
was to stop short of marriage. Additional material enabled the patient to gradually
clarify the significance of her stomach neurosis: they were hallucinatory excitements
intended to reflect the difficulties of a pregnancy, so that the patient would avoid one.
While awake, and in dreams, hallucinations, and neurosis, this was accordingly in
agreement with the safeguarding tendency: do not be a woman, do not submit yourself,
be a man! This woman showed a certain roughness, a resoluteness in her behavior and
quarreled with everyone. The flames of her ambition were blazing and made her
intolerant. From her fiancé, whom she treated very badly, she demanded unconditional
submission and she often dissolved all relations. Yet when one day he turned his
attention to another woman, she offered him everything in order to hold him. She
allowed herself to go that far. One of the daydreams of her childhood consisted in the
fantasy that the whole human race had perished and she alone had remained, an analogy
to the myth of the biblical Flood in which the egocentric, hostile being of the patient,
her lack of community feeling, can clearly be discerned. As a way of causing stomach
problems, and a very usual one in such cases, she would—hardly consciously—swallow
air.
9 As was mentioned before, the expectation of marriage forms one of the most

frequent pathogene causes of the intensification of the neurosis and the outbreak of
psychoses. Such patients’ expressions to the contrary, such as that ‘they would like to
be married very much!’ always prove to be platonic.
Among many patients who show the characteristics of ‘wanting to have
everything’ very obviously, as in the case of the woman above, one will also find
characteristics of an opposite nature. These patients are often so obtrusively honest,
modest and content that the particular emphasis is in itself already enough to raise
suspicion of a special arrangement. They will voice their ‘conscience’ in everything,
and their feeling of guilt10 is always quick to react to the slightest of occasions. The
solution of this, one of the oldest enigmas of mankind, is provided by an understanding
of the safeguarding tendency, which breaks through the direct, aggressive guiding lines
in the interest of the community feeling, putting an end to the inclinations toward
punishable greed and immoderation as soon as these form a threat to the feeling of self-
worth. The safeguarding tendency will then set up an intermediary guiding fiction,
namely, the conscience, and its anticipatory elevated form, the abstract feeling of guilt
—authorities by means of which all established actions and preparations are
transformed in such a way that they appear to become harmless to the will to power,
while simultaneously allowing a high self-evaluation to be maintained as well. At this
point we notice the opposite of the original inferiority feeling as the moral expression of
the compensation of the insecurity feeling. Now the neurotic can safely exclude a
number of possibilities in his striving for power that might degrade him.
In other respects, too, the activity of the safeguarding tendency may be discerned
in morals, in religion, in superstition, in stirrings of conscience and the feelings of guilt.
They all create rigid formulas and principles, of the kind the insecure neurotic loves.
And he can begin practicing in small things, test his moral readiness on mere nothings
and more in particular—principiis obstar!— safeguard himself against difficulties and a
moral downfall, both of which he will strongly exaggerate beforehand, by feeling the
moral defeat in anticipation. This latter, hallucinatory expedient, resembles the
safeguard by means of neurotic anxiety, just as in the neurosis, indeed, conscience, a
sense of guilt and anxiety often complement each other, and often alternate with each
other. This knowledge is very important for the psychotherapist in understanding the
relationship between masturbation and neurosis, from which ensues the safeguarding
significance of the feeling of guilt which is constructed from the fact of onanism. If this
feeling of guilt is brought in conjunction with masturbation in order to function as a
brake against the force of sexuality, then both will at a later stage form the operational
base the patient will use to expand his neurotic preparations in order to defend himself
against a depreciation of his feeling of self-worth. As a rule, both are used—usually
with the assistance of anticipated ‘result’ such as impotence, tabes, paralysis,
forgetfulness—as an excuse to avoid decisions, and also, without exception, in order to
deepen the fear of the sexual partner. I have frequently described connections of this
type in this and previous works. In most cases, however, the feeling of guilt in the
neurosis is an attempt to recognize one’s moral duty in a cheap way. The feeling of
superiority will in these cases originate in the strongly accentuated illusion of one’s own
power and understanding. Simultaneously, the width of this illusion is so large that it is
an obstacle to activity on the useful side of life.
10A. Adler, ‘Über neurotische Dispositon.’ In: Heilen und Bilden, l.c.; und Furtmüller,

Ethik und Individualpsychologie. (See endnote on page 165.)

Honesty and conscientiousness in neurosis clearly verge on pedantry. And it will
therefore not come as a surprise to us how often these preferences draw their true value
from the disposition—which they themselves construct—to degrade others, to get into
conflict with them, to elevate themselves above them and put them into their service.
Particularly the neurotic whose desire for dominance maintains the scheme ‘to want to
have it all,’ will not often preserve memories of sins, will carefully try to prevent his
secret from being exposed, since it would bring him certain defeat. He will rather try to
keep up an appearance, even if it is painful and making him anxious. He will blush with
anxiety when he picks up his own wallet from the floor, or will try to avoid being alone
in a room so that he will not be suspected of theft just in case anything should be
missing. Similarly I found an obstinate wish to pay in advance, to owe nothing, among
patients who considered every expenditure a further depreciation of their feeling of self-
worth. They preferred an end in terror to terror without end, but at the same time they
had a feeling of superiority over the receiver of the money or those who did not pay,
and filled their time with futilities.
The fanatacism for the truth of many neurotics reveals itself in a similar manner —
think of the prototype, the ‘enfant terrible’ — as a rule as an act of revenge of the
weaker against superior power. From the previous history of a catatonic patient I
learned that he was oppressed and humiliated by his wife. One night he broke out
sobbing and admitted to his wife that he had deceived her by having an affair with a
servant girl. His masculine protest made use of the expedient of adultery, in order to
enable him to openly admit it, once more in the form of the neurotic conjunction we
know already. It soon emerged that the woman not only possessed the stronger will, but
had control over the money as well. The patient himself, a weak man who was trying to
keep up appearances, was obliged to live from her income, which the wife and her
family made the source of numerous insults. In order to protect himself against the
superiority of his wife and not to submit himself entirely to her influence, he arranged a
psychic impotence, while already engaged in the struggle for masculine dominance.
The wife, on the other hand, singled out this element of impotence and publicly
humiliated her husband. His flirtation with the servant girl was the beginning of his
revenge. The elevating effect of this, however, could only come about when he
confessed his adultery, as a real man would. Therefore he turned to his love for the
truth, which had served him as a medium for many mischievous acts before. Tearfully
confessing his mistake was, on the one hand, in keeping with his fear in the face of a
decision, yet, on the other hand, it made his message, painful as it was for his wife,
easier for him to tell. Subsequent development was not in favor of the psychic
hermaphrodite: his wife went even further in her aggression and complained to her
relatives, who in their turn reproached him severely. With an increasing safeguarding
tendency he now fell into apathy, and wishing to undo his useless false step because it
had not brought him the masculine triumph, he found a solution in the fiction of a
purifying miracle that God had wrought in him. Now he was once more on top of
things, his predestination fantasy broke through, he stood in communication with God,
received orders and commands from him, and he set up an illusionary system in which
he wandered on earth as a prophet. He also designated masturbation, which he openly
practiced from time to time, as a miracle, in order to avoid the feeling of depreciation.
Stereotypical behavior consisted, among others, in an occasional upright position of the
body and by throwing the head upwards, a movement which, in another masculine
hysteric, I had been able to explain as a masculine attitude.
‘To tell someone a bitter truth!’ This expression contains the essence of the
interpretation presented above. The neurotic uses the truth to hurt others. One will never
hear agreeable truths from neurotic patients without the reaction, usually an aggravation
of the suffering, manifesting itself soon. Every feeling of love, experienced as feminine,
as submissive, will be followed by a feeling of hate disguised as truth—‘an honest man
is as good as his word.’ In this case of schizophrenia, too, we will find a stage in which
the doubt of the neurotic about his own masculinity will be built over by certain
expedients and by the tightening of the guiding fiction within the masculine protest.
This is a stage in which the compensatory safeguarding tendency urges that a guiding
symbol be taken literally (as if one were a teacher, emperor, savior) and an arrangement
be made.
Other traits, such as moodiness and unsociability, may be recognized as
anticipatory dispositions, always prepared to annihilate the superiority of others and
make it impossible for them to carry out their will. The neurotic is the typical eccentric
and kill-joy; his ideal of greatness will lead him into a state of extreme insecurity and he
is always busy hypostasizing and deifying his own guiding lines and thwarting those of
others. These characteristics are also capable of more extended use. The neurotic
regards his intractability, his disturbing attacks, as proof of the fact that others are out to
injure him and to protect himself he will raise the wall of his principles, within which
his feeling of authority can unfold. At this point, certain tendencies will emerge, such as
a longing to be alone, sometimes to be buried even, or certain images, such as to be
buried alive or to be sheltered within the mother’s body (Grüners). From time to time I
have also found as a fulfillment of this desire to dominate in solitude, the habit of
remaining on the toilet for a long time. The neurotic will be led in an identical direction
of gaining dominance by his exaggerated compliance and an adaptability, which he
values as feminine. The patient is always on the watch, however, in that he will try in
this manner, too, to captivate any stronger person, to deviate towards the line of
superiority and enjoy his open triumph.
The neurotic’s tendency to be fastidious ensures him an identical readiness to fight.
Moreover, this enables him to devalue anyone and anything, to safeguard himself
against decisions and lay claim to his prerogative, like a pampered child that is being
difficult about eating. He will be fastidious wherever it is most in accordance with his
tendencies, and when he can bring off the most profitable attacks against others. In
eating, in the choice of friends, in amorous relations and in social intercourse, he will
thus secure for himself a disturbing superiority. Everyone must take him into
consideration, since he is ill, nervous. This characteristic trait will accomplish great
feats, as soon as it is used by the fear of the sexual partner, of marriage. No woman, no
man will then be good for anything and an empty ideal will furnish support for him in
this devaluation of everyone. At other times, and in another context, this trait will
manifest itself as an arrangement, as the caution of an individual who has not yet
conquered the weak point of his inferiority feeling: he may also be easily satisfied
‘when the wind blows from the north-northwest,’ when his will to power desires it. One
would have to be blind to overlook in such cases the arrogance and presumption with
which another world, other people, other relations between the sexes are demanded, or
how all problems of life remain unsolved in this way.
One of the methods to calm down children when they are somehow dissatisfied,
which probably can be found anywhere, is the well-known comforting reference to the
future, when the child will be bigger, grown up. Children can often be heard to say:
‘Later, when I’m grown up, I will...’ The problem of growth engages children’s
attention to an extraordinary degree and in the course of their development they are
constantly reminded of it. It is also this way concerning the size of the body, the growth
of hair and teeth, and as soon as the child begins to speculate about the sexual organs,
also concerning the growth of pubic hair and the genitals. The attitude of the child in his
or her masculine role, of which we have frequently spoken, requires a clear growth in
size of the child’s own person and body parts. Where this is denied—and once again we
encounter the basis of organ inferiority, particularly thymus anomalies, anomalies of
the thyroid, of the sperm glands, of the hypophysis, etc. the child will, by his desire for
masculine value, come into the position of masculine protest. Then the child will
acquire the accentuated impulse to jealousy, envy, bragging, greed, activity, together
with an accentuated feeling for proportions, and will always be comparing himself with
others, in particular with the important persons in his environment, and eventually with
the heroes from fairy tales and stories as well. Thus the child comes to wishful
contemplations about the future, and fantasy, roused by the safeguarding tendency,
fulfills all wishes; reality and community, on the other hand, will retreat into the
background. And so every neurosis will also imply an immense waste of time.
Endnotes for Practical Part II-III
a Simmel, Georg

(1858 Berlin – 1918 Strasburg): Important German sociologist, from 1914

professor in Strasburg; his work is concerned with the history of art, epistemological
criticism and the science of history.
b Schopenhauer

See endnote on page 82.

c Strindberg, August

(1849 – 1912 Stockholm): His work ‘To Damascus’ offers a recognition, if

perhaps somewhat hesitatingly, of female superiority. Other naturalistic novels dealing
with the ‘female theme’: Miss Julie, Marriage, Twelve Stories from a Marriage, The
Crown Bride, Confession of a Fool, The Stronger, Son of a Virgin.
 d Moebius, Paul Julius
(1853 – 1907 Leipzig): Studied philosophy and theology, later medicine.
Between 1883-86 he was an assistant of Strümpell’s at the neurology department of the
outpatients’ clinic of the university Leipzig. Later he led the neurology outpatients’
clinic
of the ‘Albertverein’, in 1883 became private lecturer of neurology in Leipzig, which he
gave up because his academic promotion did not materialize. Between 1886-1907 he
published ‘Schmidts Jahrbücher der in- und ausländischen gesamten Medizin’ and
occupied himself—inspired by Charcot and Magnan—particularly with functional
neurotic disorders (hysteria, neurasthenia, migraines), with physical and mental
differences between the sexes as well as with philosophical and literary themes (so-
called
‘pathographies’, which were supposed to explain an author’s thinking by means of his
hereditary background, his constitution and life history. Adler is referring to his
infamous
publication ‘Über den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes (1900) [‘Concerning
the
Physiological Oligophrenia of Women’].
e Weininger

See endnote on page 82.

f The learned disputations of the clerics whether a woman has a soul

In Saint Ambrose, for example, we find a theological ‘anti-feminist’ typology such

as: Adam equals Soul, Eve equals Body. Also in Saint Thomas Aquinas the idea that a
woman is a ‘maimed, incomplete man’, which goes back to Aristotle.
g Malleus malificarium

‘The hammer of witches’. A comprehensive work on witches and witchcraft by

the Dominicans Heinrich Institoris (lived around 1430-1505) and Jakob Sprenger
(1436/38, died after 1494), published in 1487. The work went through many editions
and
until the 17th century served as the legal and theological basis for the witch-hunts.
(footnote 1) Eulenburg, Albert
(1840 – 1917): In 1866 he became private lecturer on neurotic complaints in
Berlin, between 1874-82 he was professor of pharmacology in Greifswald, 1900
became
extraordinary professor. Between 1895-1917 he published, together with Julius
Schwalbe, the ‘Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift’, between 1914-17, with Iwan
Bloch, the ‘Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft’.
(footnote 1) algolagnia
From Greek algos, pain and lagneia, lust; a word coined in 1892 by Schrenck
Notzing (see following note) as a common term for both sadism and masochism.
Accepted by A. Eulenburg, Havelock Ellis and Iwan Bloch, it was rejected by von
Krafft
Ebbing.
 (footnote 1) Schrenck-Notzing, Albert Freiherr von
(1862 -1929): From 1889 he was a medical practicioner in Munich, and the first
psycho-therapist of Southern Germany. He coccupied himself with medical psychology,
criminal psychology, hypnotism, occult phenomena, telepathy, clairvoyance,
chiromancy
and telekinesis. In his time he was the leading personality in German parapsychology.
h Bloch, Iwan

(1872 Delmenhorst – 1922 Berlin): Physician and sexologist in Berlin, co

founder of sexology and a pioneer of sexual reform, in 1913 he was one of the founding
members of the ‘Berliner Ärztliche Gesellschaft für Sexualwissenschaft und Eugenik’
[‘Berlin Medical Association for Sexology and Eugenics’] (with Haeckel, Fliess,
Hirschfeld and Eulenburg). He was a friend of M. Hirschfeld (see endnote ‘p’ on page
147) and had contacts with the Berlin Psychoanalytic Association. In his ‘Beiträge’ he
represented an anthropological point of view. He rejected the ‘degeneration theory’
within sexology.
i narcissism

The observation of one’s own body for erotic stimulation. Naecke and Krafft
Ebbing independently define it as self-love with or without sexual stimulation, which
differs from the specific Freudian use of the term. Named for Narcissus, from Greek
mythology, who was the son of Cephisos and Liriope, a beautiful youth who fell in love
with his own image mirrored in the water of a stream.
j Naecke, Paul

(1851 St. Petersburg – 1913 Colditz/Saxony): Between 1889 and 1912 he was
medical director of the institute for mentally ill men in Hubertusburg in Saxony, in 1912
named director of the nursing home in Colditz. He was oriented mainly on French and
Italian psychiatry and showed a wide interest in many subjects outside psychiatry,
especially in artistic and cultural fields. He postulated the existence of a masculine and
feminine libidinal center bilaterally in the brain, one part of which was supposed to
disappear in case of normal development. He rejected the psychogenic and degenerative
theory explaining homosexuality. In 1899 he introduced the expression ‘narcissism’,
and
applied it to certain forms of perversion. Naecke wrote positive reviews of Freud’s
‘Interpretation of Dreams’ and ‘Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie’ (1906).
k Bleuler

See endnote on page xxi.

l Baschkirzewa (Bashkirtseff), Marie

(1860 Gawronzi – 1884 Paris): She kept a diary from her fourteenth year to her
death, which was published at the time as ‘Journal’ (Paris 1912) and ‘Cahiers intimes’
(4
volumes, Paris 1925). By omitting sexual themes it was adapted to the contemporary
image of the ideal woman.
m Rakowiza, Helene von (née von Dönniges)

See: ‘Meine Beziehungen zu Ferdinand LaSalle’ (1879); ‘Von Anderen und mir.
Erinnerungen aller Art’ (1909).
 n Meschede, Franz
(1832 – 1909): In 1856 he became an M.D. in Greifswald, between 1857-73 he
studied at the mental hospital at Schwetz in West-Prussia, and in 1873 became director
of
the city mental institution in Königsberg. In 1875 he became private lecturer of
psychiatry in Königsberg, and was director of the newly founded psychiatric university
hospital between 1892-1903; in 1895 he became professor.
o Fliess See endnote on page 81.
p Pfister, Oskar Robert

(1873 – 1956): Theologist and psychoanalyst, he was a protestant preacher in

Zurich until 1939. He maintained a correspondance with Freud from 1909 and they
remained friends until Freud’s death.
q agona Greek: place of meeting, market place.

(footnote 10) Furtmüller, Carl

(1880 Vienna – 1951 Mariapfarr/Salzburg): Ph.D., teacher of German,
philosophy and French at a gymnasium who met Adler in the ‘Sozialwissenschaftliche
Bildungsverein’. He became a member of the ‘Wednesday Group’ on Adler’s
recommendation, in 1911 joined him when he left, and subsequently became Adler’s
most important collaborator. In the 1920’s he played a leading role in educational
reform
in the ministry and the city council for schools, was discharged in 1934 and emigrated
(1939) to Paris, later Spain and the USA. He returned to Vienna in 1948 and in 1948
became the director of the pedagogical institute of the city of Vienna.
r principiis obsta

Usually translated as ‘Avoid any beginning!’. It is quoted from Ovid, Remedia

amoris (‘remedies against love’), line 91: ‘principiis obsta sero medicina paratur’,
meaning ‘resist from the very beginning, the cure is prepared too late.’
s Grüner, Gustav

(1884 Neunkirchen/Niederösterreich — 1941, while crossing for New York): A

student of philosophy, a lover of literature and art and writer. Grüner was allowed to
join
the ‘Wednesday Group’ in 1910, left it together with Adler and so became one of the
founding members of Individual Psychology (his brother Franz followed the same
path).
The concept of ‘fantasies from the womb’ (Mutterleibsphantasien) is mentioned as one
of
his ideas in Paul Klemperer.
Practical Part II - IV
Depreciation Tendency — Obstinacy and Wildness — Sexual Relations of
Neurotics as a Metaphor — Symbolic Emasculation — Feeling of Depreciation —
Equality to Men as a Plan of Life — Simulation and Neurosis — Substitution of
Masculinity — Impatience, Dissatisfaction and Reticence
The compulsive striving of the neurotic to fulfill his personality ideal with the
masculine characteristics that he values more highly, compels him, because of the
obstacles that reality puts in his way, especially the community feeling, to change the
formula of his most important guiding lines, so that he seeks to attain a goal of equal
value by means of circuitous paths. His longing and his need to realize an unattainable
ideal are what lead him astray. Should this main line of his masculine protest be
followed by, for instance, a defeat or the anticipation of a defeat, then he will look for
this substitute goal, which he temporarily feels is of equal value, by following
circuitous paths, under an arrangement of accentuated safeguarding expedients. It is at
this point that the process of psychic transformation that we call neurosis begins,
insofar as the guiding fiction does not lead to a violation of reality, and that the patient
experiences this reality as nothing but a disturbing element, as is the case in
neurasthenia, hypochondria, anxious and compulsive neuroses, and hysteria. In the
psychosis, however, the guiding masculine fiction comes to the fore, disguised in
images and symbols originating in childhood. The patient does then no longer behave as
he did in the neurosis, that is, as if he would want to be masculine, to be above, and was
trying to achieve this by all means, by following an easier route, on the useless side, but
by the expedient of anticipation he behaves as if he already was masculine, ‘above,’
indicating only casually, usually in the beginning of treatment, by giving his reasons
(depression, ideas of persecution, of sin and poverty), that he is ‘below,’ unmanly and
weak. It is an essential feature of the psychosis that the patient will even give up ‘what
we have all in common,’ that is to say, logic, renouncing the ‘general validity of reason’
and in doing this he indicates that his community feeling, one of whose functions is
logic, has been lost.
For the sake of clarity I will now proceed to describe a number of neurotic
characteristics that either tend in a direct line towards a personality ideal fulfilled with a
masculine content, or are so closely connected to it that the impression that they are
nothing but negligible deviations of the masculine protest will force itself upon the
observer; general opinion has concluded that they are active, masculine traits, and the
neurotic can therefore appeal to this corresponding judgment. In order to attain the
masculine protest, he also uses such guiding lines as do not, to general logic, always
seem masculine, or only partly so, as there are, for instance, coquetry, deceitfulness, etc.
Special attention should be called to the following character traits in line with the
masculine protest, more direct and farther reaching than is the norm: the very often
consciously expressed tendencies to be a real man, brave, ready to attack, open, hard-
hearted and cruel, desiring to surpass everyone in strength, influence, power,
cleverness, etc. When the underlying inferiority feeling—because of a defeat that is
certainly to be anticipated, or at least suspected—demands accentuated, safeguarding
compensations, these will henceforth, often by following circuitous routes, and in an
abstract way, ensue from the accentuation of the several ways of predisposition for
conflict that are now striving—in the style of an expedient—towards the masculine
feeling of superiority by simultaneous and often contradictory traits. At that point the
neurotic may show submissiveness instead of or simultaneously with obstinacy, and
according to his needs, traits of extravagance and modesty, roughness and mildness,
courage and cowardice, a lust for power and humility, masculinity and femininity, all of
which invariably serve as his safeguards against defeats, or allow him to elevate his
feeling of self-worth by following circuitous paths, or to devaluate others. That it is
possible to conquer by weakness, humility and modesty is demonstrated by the example
of women and many instances in world history.
The dominance of self-created deities, the guiding fiction and its auxiliary lines, is
easy to recognize in any instance, and will, moreover, permeate the psychosis with
unmistakable clarity. By means of a dream of a 22-year old woman who suffered from
enuresis nocturna, and during the day often had outbursts of rage and ill humor, who
could not keep quiet with anyone but me and often had suicidal thoughts, I want to try
to demonstrate how all these phenomena, together with other traits such as a lust for
power, obstinacy, but also anxiety, were under control of the masculine protest, and how
this in its turn, however, depended on a constitutional inferiority of the urinary organs,
which in combination with ugliness and a fundamental retardation in mental
development in a status thymicolymphaticus forced the compensating construction of
an exaggerated masculine guiding line. In order to make the case brief and completely
understandable, I mention beforehand that the patient uses the realities of her childhood
in the safeguarding neurosis, that she had developed the enuresis into a predisposition
and intervened with this symptom every time when her feeling of self-worth suffered a
humiliation. In this case, once again, the colossal power of the depreciation tendency
manifested itself within the arrangement of the attack, which was so trying that it drove
the mother to powerless despair, at the same time taking the generally malicious form of
allusions that the patient uses to shift all blame from her own shoulders to another
person’s, thus degrading him or her. The following dream illustrates this kind of remark
particularly clearly:
‘My mother showed my female friend the dirty bedcover. We began to quarrel. I
say: The cover is yours—and begin to cry violently. I wake up flooded in tears.’
Shortly before she had told that she often woke up from sleep weeping, without
knowing the reason for her weeping.1 From the correlation of the genesis of the disease,
which was lucid even then, it appeared that the weeping was of significance in relation
to the mother, that it represented a very common childish predisposition to attack, to
diminish the superiority of the mother and make her feel weak. After she had told the
dream she remarks: ‘You will surely believe that you are right in your opinion about my
weeping.’ One regularly hears these and similar remarks during psychotherapeutic
treatment, and one should not overlook the concealed criticism in them as a
predisposition of the depreciation tendency that is directed against everybody. The
rather measured expression on this occasion of the latter led me to expect that the cure
of the enuresis was on its way, since more intense reactions had failed to appear.
Previously, she had asserted sharply and passionately that I was completely wrong, or
she had left such dreams and thoughts, so meaningful for me, unmentioned or
apparently had forgotten them. My assumption was confirmed by the information that
after the dream, the patient had taken off the only slightly soiled bed-linen and secretly
cleaned it, something that never happened before because the sight of the dirty linen
was intended for her mother.
In explanation of her dream she related the following: she was firmly convinced
that her mother told all her acquaintances about her enuresis. All her relatives seemed to
know about her suffering. Once an uncle had told her, obviously to comfort her, that
both he and another brother had wet their beds for a long time. In the dream she
reproaches her mother by letting her know: the origin of this suffering is in your family,
you are to blame when I soil the bed, ‘The soiled cover is yours!’ She went on to relate
that in changing the linen she often took a blanket-slip instead of a cover; the one is
closed, the other is open, she added, and one can easily mistake the one for the other in
the closet.
Behind these ideas lies the problem of ‘open and closed’ which may easily be
recognized as an expression of the oppositeness between the sexes. She blames the
mother for her illness, but is at the same time casting, so to speak, a sidelong glance at
the original reason and driving force of her suffering, the femininity for which her
mother is to blame, and in the masculine protest in her dream she betrays to us how
little she values the difference between man and woman. In a similar vein, George
Sanda declared that there was only one sex. Quarreling and weeping is the most
prevalent attitude of her aggression against her mother, whose attachment she tries to
strengthen in this way, and also by holding on to the enuresis. That she is presently also
operating against men with her enuretic predisposition, and is trying to avoid marriage
and thus the ‘dominance of man,’ follows from other perspectives of her neurotic
psyche.
1 The processes within the psyche during sleep are guided, just as they are in the

waking state, by the guiding final goal. The patient, during sleep, experiences a
turnaround, away from unsolved, pressing questions towards a finale. The dream image
will show part of this turnaround in the form of an analogy, and it will also show how
arguments are plucked from thin air at random in order to attain the predestined attitude
towards life. See, among others, ‘Traum und Traumdeutung’ in: Praxis und Theorie der
Individualpsychologie, l.c. In the dream under consideration, the preparation for the
conflict with the mother is undertaken by means of a preoccupation with memories of
insults. Pavor nocturnus, speaking and crying in sleep are unmistakable signs, as is
bedwetting, of a child striving to be pampered.
As an illustration of the change of form that the guiding fiction may undergo,
consider the following. Originally, it was: I want to be a man. When treatment had
reached the stage described above it had changed to: I want to be superior to my mother
just like a man. Towards the end of the treatment it might approximately be described
by the following words: I want to depreciate the mother—by feminine means. In a
dream, that is to say, an anticipatory attempt, a tentative scheme, this guiding line finds
stronger expression, in accordance with what we maintained. It is as follows:
‘I am lying in a burning bed. All around me are crying. I laugh loudly.’
Discussions and considerations about ‘free love’ had preceded this dream.
According to the patient’s interpretation, the burning bed represents the pleasures of
love. We translate, in accordance with our understanding of dreams: how would it be if
I would practice free love? Then my mother would be humiliated, but I would laugh at
her, would be superior to her. One should also pay attention to the expression ‘burning,’
which originates, as so often, in the psychic superstructure of the urinary functions, in
contrast to ‘water’ (enuresis),2 and the allegorical representation that is based on this
‘urine language.’ The ‘laughing’ in this dream is equivalent to the ‘crying’ in the first
dream. Both show the direction of the aggression which is supposed to lead to a feeling
of dominance over the mother. In this case, too, one may easily perceive that the
assumption of a split in the personality is untenable. It would be equally erroneous to
assume a genuine sexual wish. This would only be an adequate expedient if it would
depreciate the mother, that is to say, if she could play the dominant part.
The guiding fiction of being equal to a man finds expression in one way or another
in every girl and woman. As I was able to demonstrate in the above case, it is the
change of form demanded by reality which brings about the disguise of the masculine
protest. It is of equal importance, in the analysis of neurotic female patients, to discover
the particular point in their psychic life at which they protest against their feeling of
femininity. One will always find such a point, for the urge to elevate the feeling of self-
worth necessitates the construction of safeguarding directing lines, which are
constructed in opposition to the idea of what is ‘feminine.’ Usually, among normal girls
and women, cultural or non-cultural ideas of emancipation, aggressive impulses against
men and their privileges, will come to light. Wherever possible, they will try to make
the distance smaller, in dress and habits, as well as legally and in their outlook on life.
The masculine protest of the neurotic increases in all these directions. In dress, there is
a preference for glaring, yet also masculine, simple fashions, often for the lengthening
of certain parts of dress and for considerably heightened shoes. Or they avoid all those
kinds of dress that are particularly feminine. There is often a particularly strong
resistance to the corset, directed against the idea of being shackled, although it may also
serve other purposes, as when it is used to avoid seeing company, and is usually
directed against the mother; but it has now gone out of fashion. The attitude and habits
of neurotic women are often so clearly masculine that they strike one from the very first
moment. Crossed legs and arms may occasionally be indications, as is the tendency to
take the left side, which is normally the place of the man, or not to allow anyone to
stand in front of them (as for instance in dancing), etc. In the world view of a female
neurotic the regular, ideal overestimation of masculine qualities is abundantly
compensated by the practical devaluation of men. In sexual relations, anasthesia
prevails. Masculine variations, or those that depreciate men, are preferred.
2A.Adler, Studie über Minderwertigkeit von Organen, l.c. Anhang. — Before me, Freud

has touched on the correlation of fire and water in dreams.

The neurotic psyche of men offers similar characteristics. They base their schemes
on a fictional feminine feeling, in order to arrive at a feeling of perfect masculinity. One
of my patients, who suffered from asthma nervosum, expressed this dynamic very
distinctively. He had been a weak child and had suffered from exsudative diathesisb—a
connection pointed out by Strümpellc. His frequent catarrhs gave him an early
opportunity to put his mother into his service. She kept him close to her, took care of
him in her own bedroom, and yielded to his wishes. At an early age, he was placed
under the care of a strict governess, to whom he was no match despite his violent
attacks and headstrong intractability. He felt weak towards her and so he found out the
ways of childish cunning which he used to escape from the strict governess, that is to
say, he simulated and exaggerated his catarrhal complaints by an arrangement of
coughing and initially random irritation of the mucous membranes of the larynx and
bronchial tubes by means of a peculiar method of forced breathing, and by an asthmatic
phenomenon that he brought about by exerting pressure on his abdomen and a forceful
closure of the glottis, modeled on the kind of pressure he needed to exert when his
defecation was difficult. He soon came to realize that these phenomena gave him access
to his mother’s bedroom and over the years he set up an asthmatic predisposition that he
could activate unconsciously whenever he wanted to rise, because of his exaggerated
fictional goal, to the position of lord of the house, and also, therefore, of the governess.
He soon achieved that the governess was forbidden to treat him severely, or to beat him.
We see how his personality ideal from now on had at its disposal a truly neurotic
weapon that allowed him to avoid a defeat, to escape the emerging feeling of his
original inferiority, by using a circuitous route, that is to say, he attempted to be on top
no longer by means of obstinacy, irascibility, courage and manliness but by some kind
of underhanded trick, by cunning, unmanly behavior, cowardice and leaning on his
mother. This subterfuge, hypostasized and transformed into an unconsciously active
mechanism of predisposition, gave him the security he needed in his life. His neurotic
symptom, protected and used by further auxiliary lines of his characteristic traits—i.e.
the desire to possess everything, his desire for power, his stubbornness and
disputatiousness, and at the same time by his cowardice,3 his fear of new enterprises,
fear of men and women and as a result of this, the constantly stimulated tendency of
devaluation which played such an important role within the whole of his aggressive
predispositions — furnished him with a new organ, a means of asserting himself in a
special way, to take possession of his world in that he could always desire his mother as
protection. With her he felt more secure than with any other woman, and so he was
driven by necessity to fall in love with his mother, which on closer analysis developed
into tyranny. Fantasies of pregnancy represented for him the humiliating feeling of a
feminine role and sometimes alternated with ideas of castration as well as fantasies of
being a woman. His urge to masturbate shows an attempt to emancipate himself
victoriously from women, to avoid a defeat, to behave himself in a masculine way, and
continued in similarly directed fantasies of greatness, both of which were forms of
expression of his masculine protest. The imagined smallness of his genital organs,
which impressed him in an exaggerated way, served as an illustration and a form of
perception of his inferiority and feminine inclination. From his childhood on he had
been attempting to arrange all his failed efforts and his defeats within the image of the
small penis which caused everything, apperceiving all his experiences and grouping
them according to this direction and the related antithetical intuitive form of ‘male-
female.’ The ‘small penis’ was, for him, the graphic illustration of the boundary
between male and female and appeared to be constructed, just as the patient’s attitude,
on the idea of a physical and psychic hermaphroditism and its tragedy. It is no wonder
that in the psychological analysis of these cases with the male-female manner of
apperception, which is a fundamental part of the neurotic psyche, one always
encounters sexual relations. They should all be understood as a modus dicendi, as
jargon and metaphorical expressions, to be resolved accordingly, expressing force,
victory and triumph in masculine sexual symbolism, defeats in feminine symbolism and
neurotic artifices in both at once, usually in perverse or hermaphroditic symbolism as
well. Within the context it is easy to infer from the latter the tendency to conquer the
opponent.
It was easy to find out that our patient, besides the sexual mode of expression,
possessed yet another manner of perception, based on the antithetical concept of
breathing in and out, which was instigated by the inferiority of his respiratory organs,
including the nose. The language that serves to our mutual understanding uses this kind
of images as well, and a sigh of relief from an oppressed breast may very well be
adapted into an image of recapturing one’s breath. Remembering a boyhood running
match, the patient was also able to represent, in ‘pantomime’ form, a chase after first
place, the desire to be at the goal first, by means of panting and gasping. In a dream
from the later part of his treatment he makes use of the ability to whistle, which should
be understood in a metaphorical sense, as a means of stressing his masculinity in a
‘respiratory manner.’ The dream is as follows:
3The neurosis is always initiated by discouragement.

‘It seemed to me that four people were whistling. I notice that I can whistle just as
well as they.’ Shortly before he had begun a relation with a governess who was
employed in the family of his married brother, and he had asked her whether his brother
often visited his wife during the night. The girl replied in the negative. Being able to
whistle is the ideal of all small boys, and girls also will often make an effort to bring
this masculine attitude to expression. In this dream he is undertaking a tentative
comparison to see whether he is a match for the male members of his family, and from
this line, originating in his feelings of femininity, he arrives at the masculine protest: he
is equal to all four.
In this case I once again found confirmation of my observation that the neurotic
individual experiences, and may also represent, his sexual libido according to the
manner and size required by his fictional final goal, so that any psychological
interpretation that views the factor of the libido as a constitutional fact of a certain
definite dimension and that considers its changes and fortunes as the essence of
neurosis, becomes untenable. Sexual desires and impulses in particular are easy to
arrange and always subordinated to the masculine protest in one way or another. The
identification of masculinity with sexuality is realized in the neurosis by means of
abstraction, symbolization and metaphorical organlanguage, and this falsifying device
of the neurotic fills the contents of his thought with sexual images, more in particular
because in love, too, he seeks to subjugate the other.4
Disputatiousness and hidden contentiousness, which stand in close contact with
the depreciating tendency, present the psychotherapist with difficult tactical and
pedagogic problems. They betray the weak point in every case, the patient’s inferiority
feeling, which impels him to compensation. A simple manner of observation provides
us with a means to uncover the patient’s neurotic aggression in every case. Imagine that
the neurotic feels that he has entirely lost his full value, that he feels depreciated, and
then observe by which means he will try to carry out his supplementation or
overcompensation. His verbal presentation and the accentuation of what he ‘wants,’ in
particular, should not be taken too seriously. One should rather behave as Ulyssesd did
with the Sirens and keep one’s ears plugged even for those pronouncements that are
entirely sincere. Good intentions must be seen, not heard. And one will acquire
magnificent insights by acting as if one is watching a pantomime. One will then easily
find a number of predispositions, characters, syndromes and symptoms, which may
represent an ‘ideal organ,’ but one should be prepared to act as if one is confronted
with a riddle that must be deciphered first. For this ‘ideal organ,’ that is to say, the
neurosis or psychosis, is undoubtedly of masculine origin and has for its goal to prevent
the feeling of self-worth from lowering, and to actually bring its goal of superiority
closer. Harsh reality, however, denies itself the acquisition of this fiction to such an
extent that the most peculiar circuitous ways have to be sought out, and that useless
partial and illusionary results are striven after, nearly always without the patient getting
any nearer his final goal.5 And time and again the help of the psychotherapist, who may
only occasionally be substituted by life's fortunes, will, in case of failure, elevate this
'will to seem' and intensify the abstract, fundamental lines of the old guiding fiction.
One of the most essential circuitous routes that this ‘ideal organ’—actually the
masculine protest—uses, is the depreciation tendency. This has been mentioned so often
because it attracts attention to itself in the presence of a physician and is so easy for him
to detect, and will always give expression to the strength of the neurotic impulse. It is
also the ever-present point of contact that may furnish the patient with some
understanding of himself, and it is the fundamental basis of all those phenomena that
Freud has described as resistance and erroneously supposed to be the result of the
repression of sexual impulses. The devaluation tendency is what the patient brings with
him to the physician, and it is what he carries out, as does the ‘normal person,’ in
considerably weaker form, when he returns home after treatment. Then, however, his
increased insight in himself will stand as a guardian in front of its expressions, and so
force the patient to find useful routes for his longing towards the ‘above,’ and to subdue
it.
4The psychoanalysts appear to be unable to settle the matter. With enormous passion

they point out that I insist on finding the aggressive drive even in love.
One should not shrink back from seizing on any expression of doubt, forgetfulness,
tardiness, all kinds of demands of the patient, relapses after initial improvement,
persistent silence and a tight adherence to symptoms, as effective means of the
depreciation tendency, which is also directed against the psychotherapist. One will
rarely, if ever, be mistaken in this interpretation, and usually be justified by the
coincidence and comparison of similarly directed phenomena. The expressions
concerned are often of the most subtle nature. Should I add that the widest experience
with and knowledge of the depreciation tendency is only barely sufficient to prevent
being taken by surprise, and that a great deal of tact, renunciation of authority,
invariable, constant friendliness, watchful interest, and the discreet realization of being
in the presence of a sick person with whom one should not fight, though he will start to
do so over and over again, are absolutely indispensable to get good results?
I once found that it was necessary to explain to a stuttering patient the position of
the larynx by means of a drawing. Instead of taking the drawing home with him to give
it some more consideration, as he intended, he left it with me on the table. The next day
he was fifteen minutes late, first went to the toilet, told me about some other patient
who had complained about me, and after he had been silent for a while, he told me a
dream that ran as follows:
‘It seemed to me as if I had been looking at a drawing. A cylinder extended from a
circle, it did not run straight but to the side.’
The interpretation showed that this was about the drawing of the larynx, one on which
the larynx was drawn straight downwards. The patient is arguing with me in his dream,
as if he wants to say: “Now how would it be if my physician were wrong?” (the
distorted cylinder)—and so he shows me his attitude of distrust, the fear of being
deceived, yet, at the same time, the depreciation tendency that is also directed against
me, and which has found expression in his unconscious measures of forgetfulness,
being late, the tendentious communication of the complaint, the silence, and finally in a
tentative attempt in the dream to put me in the wrong. One may rightly expect the
patient to use his stuttering for the same purpose, and will use it against me. Despite
many contradictions he forces me into the role of one of his former teachers, whom he
often corrected, so that he can go on using his old predispositions against me.6 This was
revealed by his remarks about this dream, and besides this from the fact that he had
seized his disease and held on to it in order to secure his superiority over his father and
so depreciate him.
I once sent a female patient, who was referred to me for treatment because of
depression, suicidal ideas, weeping fits and lesbian inclinations, for brief treatment to a
gynecologist, because I suspected a problem with her genitals. He removed a large
myoma and expected that the operation would cure the neurosis. After the operation the
patient traveled back home and from there she wrote me that she now realized that the
gynecologist’s opinion was correct. She hoped for him that in the case of a countess,
about whom she had read in the newspaper, the operation would be more succesful than
in her case. Soon afterwards she came to visit me, argued against one of my
publications that she had in some way obtained, told me that her condition was the same
as before the operation and disappeared. From the portion of the history of her disease
that she told me during treatment it appeared, among other things, that she was in a state
of war with her whole environment, that she dominated her husband completely, that
she hated the provincial town where she lived, and that sexually and psychically she
behaved as a man to one of her female friends. Her fear of the blessing of children was
immense; sexual intercourse unbearable because she thought her husband was too
heavy. When he once visited her during treatment, the day before she had dreamed the
following:
‘It seemed to me as if the whole room was enveloped by fire.’
She volunteered the information that this was a typical dream, one that returned nearly
regularly at the time of her menstruation period. But this time her period was not due
for a long time. The dream was easily recognizable as an attempt to use a feminine
situation—menstruation—for the masculine protest— refusal of sexual intercourse.
Deeper penetration, which would certainly have revealed enuresis in childhood (fire,
myoma, see Studie, appendix), was prevented by the interruption of treatment. I
received another letter that contained assurances that the patient from now on wanted to
make peace, in my sense of the word, with her surroundings. I think that this has
probably not been at all easy for her.
In identical fashion, obstinacy, wildness and unruliness may serve as the proof female
patients are after to show that they are not suited to play the feminine role. Preparations
already begin in early childhood and will gradually lead to physically and psychically
automated habits in gesture, physiognomic expression, disposition for emotional
disturbances and facial expression, while the character develops itself according to the
ideal guiding line and by preparing the ground, feeling its way ahead, it introduces the
position the patient will take. In many cases one will find these characteristics
expressed in a straight line, and they serve directly the representation of the superiority.
Alternatively, a change of form of the guiding fiction may ensue, be it because of
contradictions that surface in the guiding line, in the case of a genuine or feared defeat,
be it — and this usually coincides with it — the resistance of reality, which is valued as
insurmountable. Under the arrangement of safeguarding anxiety or a safeguarding
feeling of guilt or safeguarding characteristics (called dissociation or doubt by other
authors), the deviation toward the neurotic circuitous route will then result. But the
predispositions will persist. It is only that the neurotic caution will introduce the
deviation under safeguards such as anxiety, feeling of guilt, seizures, when the patient
would have had to answer with the dispositions originally developed to react to
emotional disturbance (anger, rage, aggression). One will often find tendentiously
grouped memories of extravagance, thoughts and memories, illusions, as if one were
boundlessly desirable, sensuous, demonic, criminal, sometimes also obviously arranged
mistakes and accidents, which point the way as mementos of caution. Or, the sudden
termination of direct (masculine) aggression invariably takes place shortly before a
decision, which is a characteristic of many neurotic love affairs and may explain them.
The deviation under the influence of the safeguarding tendency in such cases may also
take a perverse direction, or the guiding line leads to protection of the father, the
mother, God, alcoholism or an idea. Attempts to elevate oneself by feminine means, or
at least to surpass all other women, lead to excessive cleanliness, to obsessive cleaning,
to masochistic7 subjection or coquetry, to a desire to please and in female patients to
constant flirting. Moreover, one will invariably find characteristics or tell-tale traces
that reveal that in these cases, too, the masculine fiction is all-powerful and that it
attempts to reach its goal by these circuitous ways. The increased sense of sexual
stimulation in many of these cases is not to be considered as real, as a constitutionally
given fact, for instance, but shows that it is associated with the fiction and comes into
being by means of an uninterrupted tendentious attentiveness in an erotic direction. The
same is true of perversions and an apparently diminished libido, which are construed on
neurotic circuitous deviations. All sexual relations in the neurosis are only metaphors.
The fear of the superiority of men and the depreciating fight against them will often, as
a result of the antithetical neurotic perspective, assume the form of fantasies of
emasculation intended to devalue men. This is clearly visible in the dreams of these
female patients and may be proved by other, coexisting depreciations in our sense. Let
me quote one of these dreams here. The female patient came under my care shortly after
an operation for a fistula, on account of an obsessional idea and occasional attacks of
high excitement. The obsessional idea was as follows: ‘I will never be able to achieve
anything.’ When we met for the first time she already expressed doubt whether I would
achieve anything. An identical line of depreciation illuminated her dream. She dreamt:
‘In my dream, I yelled: Marie, the fistula has come back again!’
The surgeon had promised her complete recovery and he had indeed kept his word. He
is under obligation to her in several ways and did not want to take a fee. The patient
became very excited about this and felt it as a humiliation. For a while she tortured
herself with ideas about how she could pay off her debt. Marie is the name of her
servant, with whom she had never spoken about the operation. If there would be a new
outbreak of the fistula, she would immediately go to the surgeon to tell him what she
thought. Marie, a female servant, is the surgeon. The patient supposes what her
masculine feeling of self demands, namely that the physician has operated badly, and
has not kept his word; he is a woman and a servant at the same time. This is how she
could achieve everything: if things were the other way round, if only she were a man.
When one examines the published analyses of no matter which psychological school,
one will regularly find the mechanism of the neurotic protest in them. I would like to
call attention once again to this correlation by analyzing a case of migraine.
The female patient immediately told that in her childhood she had always been in
conflict with her older brothers, because she wanted to dominate them. Remnants of
memories of this kind, as soon as they are voluntarily brought forward, often lead to a
hidden struggle against masculine domination. And one will never be deceived in the
assumption that other characteristics, too, point towards this struggle to become equal to
men. Uninfluenced, our patient goes on to relate that she played nearly exclusively with
boys and was treated by them ‘as if she were one of them.’ Her manner of expression
very clearly betrays her satisfaction and a high estimation of the male sex, which brings
girls closer to their fathers, and which may easily but thoroughly mistakenly be
interpreted as a sexual love for the father and an ‘incest complex.’ My patient’s
development took the same course. She made her father into her whole ideal and,
particularly when she caught her mother in telling a lie, she was very keen to acquire
the typical characteristics of her father concerning truthfulness and punctuality.8 She
also remembers that her father had often expressed regret that she was not a boy, and
that it was his wish that she should study. In this situation a feeling of self-worth
naturally developed in which ambitious striving could not be absent. On the other hand
everybody, and she herself, too, noticed her exaggerated shyness, which brought many
of her plans to nothing. One finds this shyness with extraordinary frequency in the early
history of neurotics. It is identical with the feeling of insecurity as soon as this makes
itself felt in relations with others. Blushing, stammering, downcast eyes, avoidance of
the company of adults, excitement before examinations and stage fright often
accompany the attempts to approach or establish relations with unknown persons. One
can also usually observe reserve and dissatisfaction in such situations. Analysis shows
that this kind of insecurity, which is normally accompanied by a strong feeling of shame
or blushing, stems from a usually organically determined feeling of inferiority, or from
organic inferiorities that express themselves psychically, from childhood deficiencies,
from strong psychic oppression by the parents or siblings, and lastly, also from a real or
imagined femininity that in early stages comes into strong contrast with a male member
of the family (father, brother). The analogy according to which the child apperceives
the most diverse emotions of humiliation, depreciation and inferiority, then usually
consists of an unmasculinity which is to be understood symbolically, and of thoughts of
castration and ideas of a female role in sexual intercourse, of conception and
pregnancy, but also of being pursued, stabbed or wounded, falling and being down. All
of these fictions appear in daydreams, hallucinations, and dreams, as long as they are
not wholly supplanted by the fictions of the masculine protest, and they express a
feeling of depreciation which breaks forth in the idea: ‘I am female!’ while the feeling
of self-worth is pressing towards the ‘above’ and so forces the establishment of the
masculine protest.
All we hear from our female patient is that she had some notion of sexual intercourse at
an early age, at a time when she did not yet, as a result of her lack of experience, take
into account the definitiveness of the sexual role. In such cases we should always expect
shyness, shame and doubt, and in later life a fear of tests and decisions in any form,
characteristics which resolve themselves psychologically in the idea that people might
notice deficiencies or the lack of higher values. Normally one will find this
characteristic desire for equality to men at an early stage, and this desire is very active
and prominent, while in many cases a tinge of hopelessness makes the ‘inborn color of
decision’ look sickly. Since the direct route to masculinity is closed, or seems closed,
circuitous or escapist ways are sought out. On one of these ways of escape lie the useful
efforts for the social emancipation of women, on another her private expression, the
neurosis of women, the construction of a ‘mental’ male organ. In serious cases, the
result will be complete withdrawal and isolation, at times identical to moving into a
mental hospital.
In the case of this particular patient it was easy to see that in her childhood she had
aspired to dominate men, the brother and the father, as it seemed she had had very little
trouble in dealing with her mother. Her father came entirely under her influence.
Concerning the tendency of her neurotic symptoms , a little practice easily allows us to
conclude the following: her headaches and migraines were intended, ever since her
marriage, to represent means to dominate her husband.
5See ‘Das Problem der Distanz’. In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c.
6 Necessary connection between me and the teacher because of a tendentious,

depreciating expression of emotional disturbance. Mark that this is not transferred but
generalized: all are judged alike.
7 I have always maintained that there is really no such thing as masochistic in the

sense of other authors! This conclusion may perhaps become clearer if I add that the
masochist experiences his superiority in that he forces a certain behavior on the
partner.
8 What is called the imitative instinct or identification by other authors is

invariably the assumption of a model for the purpose of elevating the feeling of self-
worth. Only those things that seem useful within the striving for power are imitated.
In this domination she sought a substitute for the masculinity which she believed to
have lost.
I know the objection that will be raised at this point. How is this, the severe
suffering of a neurosis, the terrible pain of a trigeminusneuralgia, insomnia, loss of
consciousness, paralysis, all this is supposed to be taken into the bargain just to attain
some goal, because of the impossibility of equality to men? For a long time I myself
fought against this conviction as it thrust itself on me. However, is it really so much
different if people endure a lifetime of pain because of some other insignificant bauble?
Is the ‘will to seem’ (Nietzschee) not alive in us all, and doesn’t it allow us to bear all
kinds of misfortune? And furthermore, on this neurotic circuitous route to masculinity,
as I demonstrated before, also lie crime, prostitution, psychosis and suicide! Besides
referring to the unconsciousness of psychic mechanisms in the human soul, this is what
I can bring forward to support my views. My observation of the exaggerated valuation
of a final goal that appears to be more elevated, however, is without doubt the keystone
of the psychic therapy of neurosis. And as regards my patients, I draw a practical
application from this objection in that I make an effort to demonstrate to them how,
when they had to make a choice between a role in accordance with nature and one of
neurotic masculine protest, they chose the greater of the two evils.
From the earlier history of our patient, the fact may be remarked upon that she had
always had a distaste for playing with dolls, and furthermore that until her marriage she
had taken most pleasure in gymnastics and sports. That these efforts are also serving as
a substitute for masculinity is shown not so much by their presence in themselves but
rather by their connection with other ‘masculine’ traits, more particularly a kind of
insistence with which the patient spoke about them. She had also used to have a passion
for going on tours, but after the birth of her child, which she definitely wished and
expected to be male, all that was left was a strong desire for travel.
One should avoid making the mistake, however, of assuming that the
characteristics described here, brought forward by the patient herself, are isolated
islands in the wide space that is a woman’s psyche. One should rather assume that these
masculine traits have come about under the pressure of a dominating tendency, that they
originate in a plan of life and came to clear expression because they had the opportunity
to do so, while all around these characteristics there exists an unclear masculine desire,
which manifests itself only occasionally and is used largely for the prevention and
transformation of apparently feminine impulses, before it makes itself independent. In
this struggle between male and female traits, the feeling of self-worth throws itself
entirely on the side of masculinity, using, for instance, persistently emerging feminine
impulses, among which is the female’s sexual drive, in order to group them together as
humiliating and dangerous,9 to enlarge and emphasize them, but at the same time to
surround them with guard posts so that they are robbed of their influence. These guard
posts—safeguards—usually extend far beyond the range of feminine impulses. One will
invariably find that these safeguards and protective preparations— among which are
symptoms of disease—do not just fulfill their task of preventing defeat, but that they
poison the patients with a general cautiousness to such an extent that they eventually
become incapable of anything. Only then is the primary insecurity, which may be
equaled to the fear of a female role, brought to an end, yet by then it has permeated the
patient’s whole life and forces him out of all social relationships. We find that all of our
patients are following this line of retreat, and their symptoms form their safeguards, so
that they will not have to return to life’s hustle and bustle. From this, then, there will
develop an image of the neurotic which often reveals a reduction to simpler, more
childlike conditions and relations, a reduction which may occur only after some initial
development has taken, or because it did not allow any development to take place at all.
Many things are once again as they used to be in the nursery. Relations with the family
are tremendously emphasized, or instead of a child’s love for the parents the old
childish obstinacy develops itself further, and both attitudes are used as guiding images,
as if the patient is searching for the father or the mother in all persons. Although he will
come into conflict with reality because of this fiction, he will hold on to it because he
found security in the situation in the nursery. Kiplingf tells about a person in the throes
of death, whom he observed until the expected cry for the mother came from his lips. In
order to understand this longing for security one only has to listen to the small boys in
the streets who will cry out for their mother immediately only when they think they
might be in trouble. This same longing for security has crept into the worship of the
Mother of God.10 Among girls one will usually find the longing for security more
pronounced, in analogy to an asexual relation with the father. The ‘fantasy of the
womb,’ emphasized by C. Grünerg, I have also found employed by neurotics only when
they wanted to express that rest could be found only by the mother, or when they had
ideas of suicide, desires to return to the time before they were born. (the hermaphroditic
‘advance backwards.’11)
9The emphasis on these emotional disturbances will always be derived from a

tendentious conjunction of several elements: female role and abyss, drowning, dying,
being run over,
Our patient, as a child and girl, also sought this dependence on her father, who
spoiled her not a little. The mother was more devoted to the girl’s brothers, as mothers
unfortunately often are. This is another characteristic that in the end proves to be
determined by the exaggerated estimation of the masculine principle, of which the
father, as a man, may free himself more easily. More in particular, our patient soon
found out that her father’s care for her increased considerably as soon as she felt
unwell. She therefore also developed a particular preference for being ill, which brought
her more pampering, love, and sweets. This must have signified for her the most
appropriate substitute for the masculinity she believed to have lost, because as soon as
she felt ill, she became the absolute ruler of the house, and she could satisfy every wish
and avoid unpleasant encounters in school and in society at large. Indeed, for her the
uttermost satisfying power of her security feeling was reached as soon as her father
believed she was ill. And from time to time she deliberately acted as if she were ill, that
is to say, she simulated or exaggerated.
or crushed to death. Any impulse to love, any closer approach, therefore, may form
the onset of a safeguarding neurosis, but will never lead to an attachment.
10In an hallucinatory psychosis I observed how the real mother was replaced by the

Mother of God with the intention to depreciate the real mother.

11At present, Freud has become the victim of a ‘pars pro toto’ with the establishment of

the ‘death wish’ described here. (see endnotes)

This fact of simulation in childhood is found with unusual frequency in the
anamneses of neurotics.12 I have extensively drawn attention to this phenomenon (in the
Psychischen Behandlung der Trigeminusneuralgia in Praxis und Theorie der
Individualpsychologie l.c.), and I have mentioned how children may pretend to be deaf,
blind, dumb, crazy, etc. E. Jonesh also mentions this fact in his Hamletstudie and calls
attention to the analogy between Hamlet’s pretense to be mad and that in childhood.
There are many historical examples, among others Sauli, Claudiusj and Ulysses for
example, and they show us the problem in its purest form. Its dominating idea
invariably is: how can I make myself secure against danger, how can I prevent a defeat?
It is clear that the neurotic, in his apperception according to the ‘male-female’ analogy,
perceives a masculine equivalent in the domination of a situation, a substitute and
protection for the threatening loss of masculinity. And the technique of simulation
consists in the fact that the individual sets up a fiction and behaves accordingly, as if he
had the corresponding defect, while he knows and maintains that he does not have such
a defect. We maintain that the psychically conditioned neurotic symptom develops in
identical fashion, with the exception that the fiction is not recognized as fiction, but is
taken to be true, to be real.13 As so often, we can obtain the best insight in this
correlation not from the neurotic symptom, but from a borderline case, one that lies in
the middle of both phenomena. We mean the psychology of sympathy. We are forced to
feel another person’s suffering in such a way, as if it concerned our own physical
sphere. Yes, we can even anticipate feeling someone else’s suffering before it has
actually occurred. Well-known examples are the aching, anxious feelings many people
have when they see others, servant girls for instance, or roof tilers or circus artists, in
dangerous situations, or even just by thinking about such things. These symptoms
usually affect people who suffer from a fear of heights, and when they see others in
danger, they behave exactly as if they themselves were standing at a window or a rock.
They move away because they feel anxious, placing a safe distance between themselves
and the usually not dangerous place, or in short, they experience a feeling that they
would feel when they would be in danger themselves. These are invariably people who
believe to be ‘above,’ who maintain as their most important principle in life not ‘to fall
down.’ In this psychic tension the contrast ‘above-below’ manifests itself, as well as
their strong inferiority feeling: ‘I am not secure!’ Here the exaggerated caution and
sympathetic understanding become very apparent, which are so strong in neurotics that
they will not even cross a bridge for fear of falling in the water or that it might collapse.
I have found similar mechanisms of caution in all cases of agoraphobia, and they show
us that we are dealing with a patient who wants to avoid deciding whether he is able to
cope with some situation that we must find out first and that usually involves a choice
of career or a sexual partner. As I have shown in my discussion of syphilidophobia (see
Praxis und Theorie), in all other phobias, too, this ‘sympathetic understanding’ (Lippsk)
of a situation that has not yet come about but may with some probability be expected to
occur, will create the characteristic symptoms and manifest itself as an extremely well
suited device of the safeguarding tendency, in many cases even replacing the character
of morality, which is not invincible. Careful examination shows that there is such a type
of sympathetic understanding for reasons of security at the basis of every characteristic,
as the formula in Kant’sl categorical imperative clearly demonstrates for the whole
character, when this philosopher wants to suggest that the action of every individual is
guided by this point of view, namely as if it should be made into a universal maxim.14
12 In 1916 Jolowitz correctly established its existence in cases of shell-shock, but

Oppenheim disputed this; see, ‘Shell-shock’. In: Praxis und Theorie der
Individualpsychologie, l.c. (see endnotes)
13See in the Theoretical Part: III, the accentuated fiction ff.

Corresponding to the safeguarding fictions of the simulator15 there occur, then, in

all people but particularly among more neurotically disposed children, fictions, maxims,
guiding principles, destined to accomplish a greater security, corresponding to the
stronger inferiority feeling of these children. And brought back to their essence, all
these formulas are as follows: act as if you were or wanted to be superior! The contents
of this behavior, which often develops into a substitute for a desire for masculinity, is
predetermined by the child’s experiences or by the nature of the organ inferiority, to
become a directing goal, but because of the particular circumstances of the child’s
neurotically evaluated experiences, it will undergo special modifications which must be
recognized as changes of form.
Organ inferiority determines, by means of the psychic phenomena of repugnance
that accompany it, the direction of the images of desire and in this manner it introduces
the compensatory process in the psychic superstructure. Here once more we see the
safeguarding tendency at work (Adler, Studie, l.c.) and usually in such a purposeful
manner that it uses a safeguarding coefficient, thus giving rise to overcompensation. (J.
Reichm, Kunst und Auge, Öst. Rundschau 1909) In the development of the stammerer
Demosthenesn into the greatest orator of Greece, for instance, or of Clara Schumann,o
who was tone deaf, into an accomplished musician, of the near-sighted G. Freytag,p of
many writers and painters with eye anomalies, into visually talented artists, and of
many musicians with hearing anomalies we perceive how the compensatory
safeguarding tendency establishes itself by way of increased attention, intensified
training and acquired artistic skill. We see this also in every weak child who wants to be
a hero, in the clumsy child with a weak thyroid gland who wants to be a sprinter, and
later is always trying to be first.
 14 Vaihinger, Die Philosophie des Als Ob.
15Simulation can be diagnosed only after a comparison has been made between the

previous history of the individual accused, which should be free of the neurotic fear of
making decisions, and the actual situation; besides, it should be taken into consideration
that the neurotic, too, may simulate. Shell-shock (tremor, astasia, abasia, mutism, etc.)
has posed an unsolvable problem for neurologists, badly acquainted as they are with
psychology. In their insecurity they grasped a fiction, diagnosed neurosis, but treated it
as if it was simulation. This is how electric torture and similar sadistic exercises got
their tragic fame. See ‘Shell-shock’. In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie,
l.c.
But the direction of the safeguarding tendency, in order to do justice to its goal,
must depend on examples. And here the man offers greater attraction to the child’s
feeling of self-worth than the woman. Indeed it would seem that a female example can
only be imitated after an inital struggle, and only when according to the child’s feeling
it is able to secure superiority.
This was also the case with our patient, as so often in cases of migraine. Her
mother suffered from migraine. Many authors have stressed the fact that it is so often
possible to find that such a migraine is ‘inherited’ from the mother. We must abandon
the idea that migraine can be inherited, just as we have to give up the idea of organic
predisposition or inheritance in the case of neuroses and psychoses.16 I have already
explained the essence of this question once before, using the case of a seven year old
girl (Neurotische Disposition, see Heilen und Bilden, l.c.), and have often before been
convinced that the attack of migraine is preceded by a feeling of insecurity, and that the
purpose of the attack, usually following the example of the mother, is to put the whole
household into one’s own service. The husband, the father, the brothers and sisters
suffer no less from the attack than the patient. And thus migraine can be placed in the
series of neurotic diseases that serve to secure dominance in the house, in the family.
That this dominance is intended as masculine, and can often be reduced to the wish to
be a man, will become clear from further analysis. However, a short consideration
concerning the migraine that appears during the period of menstruation shows us that in
this particular case the dissatisfaction with the female role may yet again be established.
I have often found that it is connected with epilepsy, sciatica, and trigeminusneuralgia.
In my cases it regularly came to light that these latter diseases were often psychogenic
in nature and manifested themselves when stronger safguards became necessary.
Instead of heredity it is, therefore, the family atmosphere that may be said to poison the
child at an early stage. I often found neuroses, headaches, migraine,
trigeminusneuralgia and certain epileptic attacks within a psychic situation when a fit of
anger might sooner have been expected.
16 Individual Psychology denies the hereditary transmission of neuroses and

psychoses. The established facts of inherited organ inferiority and its effects on the
psyche, the inferiority feeling, do not by any means imply a compulsion, or an
obligation to neurosis, although in our culture of power they do constitute an immense
enticement and temptation to psychic disease.
 The only sphere of influence left for our patient was that of the father, whom she
had vanquished completely but whose conquest could still never entirely satisfy her
own goal, so that she could be seen to express, as is usual in neuroses, a ‘More, even
more!’ which wanted to establish more concrete proof of her dominance over the father.
Her mother suffered from migraine, and the period of her attacks was, as is usual with
patients suffering from migraine, a time of absolute power for her. And so our patient,
who had already understood the value of the disease, pretended as if she, too, suffered
from migraine.17 And she succeeded in doing what primitive men, what savages
succeeded in doing when they created gods for themselves, which they then filled with
terror: an original creation, the self-created migraine. The eventual goal, this fiction of
general superiority, became independent, so that the patient could evoke pain and grief
whenever she needed them. The dramatic performance was such a success that the
patient no longer saw through the fiction because of its tendentious value. Indeed it
furnished her with a feeling of superiority and security against her husband as it
previously had against her father, on those occasions when this security broke down.
That was the bright side of her suffering, which she never enjoyed while she and those
close to her always seemed preoccupied with the dark side. The masculine sensibility
she had towards the marriage was also directed towards the acquisition of control over
the man and an increase of his submission. Since there always remained an ‘and yet,’
further substitutes had to be brought in. And the most important of these substitute
formations was never to bear any more children. It had become a common
understanding in the household, as so often in these cases, (one of which I described in
the ‘Männliche Einstellung weiblicher Neurotiker,’ in Praxis und Theorie, l.c.) that a
woman who suffered such headaches should not have any more children. Insomnia, the
inability to get back to sleep after some accidental disturbance, remarks about the
inconveniences of the house, various protective measures and pampering of the only
child completed the safeguard18.
That these phenomena were nothing but a new aspect of the old desire of equality
to men was immediately proven by her first dream:
‘I was at the train station with my mother. We wanted to visit my father, who was ill. I
was afraid to miss the train. Then suddenly my father appeared. Then I was at a watch-
maker’s shop and wanted to buy a replacement for my own watch which was lost.’
She feels superior to her mother, whom she respects inordinately. This is also true for
the father, who does everything to please her. The father died some time ago. Shortly
after his death she had a terrible attack of migraine. In the dream he came to life again
and his person indicates to her an elevation of her feeling of self-worth.19 She had
always been impatient, always afraid to be late. Her brother came before her and has
become a man. She must hurry—men succeed in one leap, women in a hundred—if she
wants to reach the level of the masculine feeling of self-worth. The day before she had
this dream she was hurriedly preparing to go to a concert and was held up by her
mother. Women are often late, and she does not want to be.
Reality reminded her of the fact that she is nevertheless a woman, like her mother. This
idea is contained in the image of being together with her mother at the train station. Her
aggressive emotional state, identical with her masculine protest, directs itself against the
man, against the father. In the further analysis the depreciating idea often comes to light
that the wife is stronger, more vigorous and healthier than the husband. As a further
incentive to conflict there is the fact that ‘the father (the man) suddenly appears.’ While
the patient, then, is afraid to miss her train, to be left behind, to suffer defeat at the
hands of someone else — to be explained from the context as a man—she notices with
her ever-growing experience that the man is first, is above. The use of a spatial picture,
of an abstract image of place, in order to illustrate the feeling of depreciation, can be
found extremely often in neuroses (see ‘Syphilidophobie’ in Praxis und Theorie l.c.),
due to its suitability to prepare by means of fictional, abstract antithesis—all or
nothing!—the disposition for conflict. In identical fashion it is an often applied,
unconscious artifice in painting—because this is practiced mostly by men—to express
the power, and also fear, of women, by giving them a higher position within the space
of a picture. In religious and cosmogenic fantasies, too, the concept of superiority often
manifests itself in this spatial movement upwards. ‘The eternally feminine [das ewig
Weibliche] attracts us irresistablyq.’ That in our patient’s dream the spatially
antithetical scheme according to the ‘man-woman’ analogy shows through can also be
seen in the ‘side by side’ of the patient and her mother—‘with the mother,’ as it is
called.
This, the patient’s first dream during treatment, then, begins with deliberations on the
roles of men and women. One should never, not even when the psychotherapist’s
conviction concerning the importance of this problem for the neurosis is absolutely
firm, fail to take its continuation into consideration without any prejudice, and wait for
and compare new, affirmative facts. The patient’s further explanation concerned a
watch-chain that had been lost through a fault of her husband. She cannot remember the
loss of a watch. When she was asked what was the meaning of the watch, substituted in
the dream for the watchchain, she answers with great emotion, but apparently evading
the issue, that she had been saddened not by the loss of the chain itself but of a charm
attached to it. In short, the watch on a ladies watch-chain is identical with the lost
charm hanging from it, for which the patient is grieving and for which she is trying to
find a substitute.
The dream began with a metaphorical expression, by means of a spatial representation,
of contrasting inferior femininity and superior masculinity and ends, logically, with an
expression of the striving for a substitute for the masculinity that has been lost. In this
construction of a fictional guiding line, the character, the emotional reaction, the
dispositions, and the neurotic symptoms had to be represented, as was proven by what
followed. The characteristics of her lust for power, of impatience, dissatisfaction,
obstinacy and reticence accordingly proved to be, as all others, secondary auxiliary
lines, which were dependent on the guiding fiction of attaining masculine elevation.
Further ways of reasoning showed her tendentious emphasis on the dead father, by
means of which she artificially accentuated and extended her grief, which became
noticeable as a stronger grudge against her surroundings.
17 In my essay ‘Über neurotische Disposition’, in Heilen und Bilden, l.c., I have

called attention to something that must also be mentioned here, that an original organic
inferiority determines the choice of symptoms. In the neurosis, this mechanism comes
under the power of the psyche as a predisposition for disease; in the case of migraine
there is the particular possibility to make the blood vessels respond to emotional
disturbance, analogous to compulsive blushing. It appears that in other attacks
disturbances in the blood circulation caused by emotional disturbances (the swelling of
the veins) give rise to the symptoms of the disease.
18Later, and independent from me, Moll established identical facts. (see endnotes)
19I have often been able to demonstrate an identical meaning in ‘dreams about people

who died’. Most of them are directed against the present.

Endnotes for Practical Part II-IV
a Sand, Georges

(1804 Paris – 1876 Nohant): Artist’s name of Aurore Dupin, who led a very free
life, full of scandals and love affairs, until she found a way of expressing her ideas and
feelings in the creation of a rich oeuvre of novels. Her first creative phase (1832-40) in
particular is full of feminist claims against social prejudice (Indiana, Lelio, Mauprat).
This was followed by a humanist-socalist phase, a period of democratic regionalism and
romantic pastoralism. At the end of her life she was active in Christian charity. She
knew
many of the great names of her time, such as Musset, Chopin, Leroux and Flaubert.
b exsudative diathesis

See endnote on page 19.

c Strümpell

See endnote on page 19.

d Ulysses

Ulysses with Circe and the Sirens: see Homer, Odyssee 12, line 17ff. and 47ff.
e Nietzsche: will to seem

See endnote on page xxiii.

f Kipling, Rudyard

(1865 – 1936): English author of a great variety of literary work, among others
stories such as ‘Kim’, ‘Jungle Book’, and a huge amount of poetry.
g Grüner

See endnote on page 166.

(footnote 11) pars pro toto
Latin name for the figure of speech known in Greek as synecdoche; make a part stand
for the whole. Example: ‘a hand’ for a worker.
h Jones See footnote 6 on page 246.
i Saul

For his childhood history, see the Old Testament, 1 Samuel 9 (Now there was a
man of Benjamin, etc.) where he meets the prophet Samuel and is subsequently
anointed king.
j Claudius

Roman emperor, 41-54 AD. He was murdered by his own wife, Agrippina, so that their
son Nero could be put on the throne.
(footnote 12) Jolowicz, Ernst
(1882 – after 1950): About 1922-35 he was a neurologist and psychotherapist in
Leipzig; he emigrated around 1935-36, later became a psychotherapist in the USA.
 (footnote 12) Oppenheim, Hermann
(1858 Warburg/Westfalen – 1919 Berlin): Neurologist, became private lecturer
of neurology in Berlin (1886), but gave up his lectureship in 1898, among others
because
of the absence of any prospect of an academic carreer for Jews. He was a supporter of
the
strictly organic-neurological interpretation of ‘traumatic neuroses’, a theory which
influenced national and private health insurers to generally react positively to patients’
claims. In the debate about shell-shock during the First World War that took place in
1916/17 he was decisively defeated by Max Nonne and Robert Gaupp, who tactically
used psycho-dynamic arguments and references to psychoanalysis.
k Lipps: sympathetic understanding See endnote on page 145.
l Kant: categorical imperative

There is more than one definition of this, for instance in the ‘Grundlegung der
Metaphysik der Sittten’ (1785), II: ‘Act as if the principle of your actions should
become
a general law of nature by means of your will.’
m Reich
n
See endnote to footnote 8 on page 2 8.
Demosthenes
(384 – 322 BC): First practiced as a speaker in judicial trials, than as a political orator in
favor of Greek autonomy against Phillippos II of Macedonia. Rather than by formal
perfection, his about sixty surviving orations are determined by his fascinating, soaring
patriotic pathos.
o Schumann

See endnote on page 144.

p Freytag, Gustav

(1816 Kreuzburg/Silesia – 1895 Wiesbaden): Cultural historian and realistic

writer concerned with bourgeois class consciousness and bourgeois virtues.
(footnote 18) Moll
See endnote to footnote 14 on page 147.
q ‘The eternally feminine attracts us irresistably.’

‘Das ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan’, the final words from Goethe’s ‘Faust II’
(1831).
Practical Part II - V
Cruelty, Conscience, Perversion and Neurosis
In the analysis of neuroses and psychoses one is confronted with characteristics of
cruelty in the earliest period of childhood with unusual frequency. It is, however, not
correct to apply our moral standards to the manifestations in the first two years and
already to consider the use of power of such children, who are in reality still beyond
good and evil, as sadistic or cruel, as so often happens when parents or educators talk
about the early histories of psychopaths. For these manifestations will become
psychotic, or in our case neurotic, only when they serve a specific goal, when they are
constructed for this purpose as abstractions and with an anticipatory tendency, when
they are part of a system of reference. The fact that they are invariably erected on the
basis of opportunities and capabilities of experience does not justify the assumption of a
constitutional factor. As a matter of fact, one finds the character trait of cruelty only as a
compensatory superstructure among children whose inferiority feeling forces them to
develop their personality ideal early and hastily in other ways as well. The
accompanying traits of obstinacy, irascibility, sexual precocity, ambition, envy, greed,
malice and malicious delight in the discomfort of others, all of which are regularly
forced to emerge by the guiding fiction and help to arrange and mobilize the
predisposition for strife and emotional disturbance, provide the confused, variegated
picture of the ineducable child. Very often one will find a point of departure formed by
a feeling of weakness that is evaluated as feminine, and a tendency to smother feelings
of submission in brutal and cruel acts. An aversion to emotions, to tenderness, to
congratulations, to condolations, to greeting, show us attempts to destroy the
community feeling.
The lust for power of such children clearly manifests itself within the family and in
play, usually also in the way they walk, in their bearing and their eyes. In playing and in
the earliest ideas about their choice of profession their cruel trait will often betray itself
in a veiled manner, making ideal figures of the hangman, the butcher, the policeman, the
gravedigger, the savage, but also the coachman ‘because he can whip horses,’ or the
teacher ‘because he can whip children,’ the physician ‘because he can cut,’ the soldier
‘because he can shoot,’ the judge, and so forth.1 An interest in investigating is often
associated with this, and the torturing of smaller and bigger animals and children,
speculations and fantasies about possible accidents, often ones that might befall close
relatives, an interest in funerals and graveyards, in sadistic horror stories, will begin to
appear, as an exercise as it were.
1A. Adler, ‘Agressionstrieb’. In: Heilen und Bilden, l.c.

The immediate purpose of this whipped up cruelty is to prevent the continuously

present and simultaneous possibilities of weakness, compassion and love from
emerging and taking effect, because they stand in opposition to the masculine guiding
line. The general further spread of this inclination to be manly, which is supposed to
lead to superiority over others, nowhere manifests itself more clearly than in ‘innocent’
delight in the discomfort of others; in neurotics, however, this can be emphasized
excessively and used to elevate the feeling of self-worth in the most nonsensical ways.
La Rochefoucaulda, in his typical roguish way, says that ‘there is something in the
misfortunes of our friends that is not wholly displeasing,’ a remark which filled Swiftb,
keen as he was, with great enthusiasm.
I once heard a patient laugh aloud when he was told about the earthquake in
Messina. He suffered from strong masochistic impulses. Compulsory laughter often
occurs when a patient is confronted with a superior person, a teacher for instance, or an
employer, who demands greater politeness. One finds in such patients a marked
inclination to dominate or torment others, from time to time also sadistic fantasies, until
one discovers that this compulsion to laugh, this lust for dominance and sadism are
constructed around the weak point of the inferiority feeling, in order to compensate for
it. It would appear from many of my observations that pyromania, the delight in fires
and the almost irresistible compulsion to think about fires in theaters and churches and
to yell ‘Fire!,’ is an indication of the inferiority of a sensitive bladder or an
oversensitivity of the eyes, or at any rate a preparation to compensate for these. Above
all, however, it is the task of the preparatory line to make oneself, by herostratic efforts,
conspicuous in life, but impossible.
However, in our culture, with its ethical imperatives, great dangers and accidents
threaten this guiding line of male cruelty, so that it can only be followed furtively, often
only in fantasy. Usually, devious and circuitous paths come into existence, in following
which the sadistic trait would seem to be largely or wholly lost. Then the neurotic will
succeed in securing an identical superiority over the weak by being mild and tender-
hearted, or he will operate so skillfully on this new line that he is able to set up a new
aggression in order to dominate and torture others. He turns into a dispenser of mercy.
In the case of compulsive neuroses one will often find that they seem to have left their
accentuated, domineering guiding line, and have now arrived at doing penance and
taking safeguarding measures that have a similar compulsive character and are no less a
burden for the environment than the patient’s earlier predisposition for emotional
disturbance. Thus, these compulsions allow the patient to leave the problems of his life
unsolved, while they may also be used, in identical fashion, to bring to light the
neurotic’s trembling ambition, which is paralyzing him, as well as his stagefright2. In
the major attacks of so-called ‘affective epilepsy,’ of hysteria, of the trigeminus
neuralgia, of migraine, etc., the lust for power takes the direction of the neurotic route
of the readiness for attack, but the powerlessness of the environment and its suffering
come to light more rather than less than it does in the case of open rage and hostility,
which, during intervals, will be active in its previous, open manner. An inclination for
antivivisectionism, vegetarianism, the protection of animals and charity often
distinguishes these connoisseurs of the suffering of others; they ‘cannot see a goose
bleed, but clap their hands when their opponent leaves the stock exchange bankrupt.’
Their inclination to sectarianism stems from a hostile, antisocial characteristic as does
their harsh criticism of the value of others, which they often express before they even
have formed an opinion. Tolerance is unknown to them, that is to say unless they are
crying out for it themselves.
2See ‘About Compulsive Neurosis’. In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie,

l.c.
Although the characteristics I sketch here may be encountered everywhere, they
are nevertheless traits of a neuroticism that has spread everywhere and a sign of an
insecurity that is seated deeply. They are by no means inherent in human nature, but are
rather forms of a failed masculine protest, which should bring about the security of the
feeling of self-worth. If it is frustrated in following a main guiding line, neurotic
circuitous routes will be entered on, and the ‘outbreak’ of the neurosis or psychosis will
follow as a result of the change of form and the increased intensity of the guiding
fiction.
I must also disclaim the ‘inborn’ criminality of children and criminals, as it has
been asserted by Lombrosoc and Ferrero.d They are nothing but forms of the aggressive
impulse, accentuated by the inferiority feeling, making use of the guiding line on the
useless side of life as soon as there no longer seems to be any hope of playing the hero
on the useful side. In doing this, the need of the community is violated by self-training.
The sudden change in the clearly visible neurosis will result because of a very strong
withdrawal. If the principal fear of making a decision fails to appear, an early result of
the safeguarding neurosis, and if a strong tendency develops to depreciate the life,
honor and property of fellow men, criminality will ensue.3
In the developed neurosis, on the other hand, one often finds traces of memories of
cruelty and criminality, just as those of sexuality tendentiously exaggerated, falsely
arranged and retained. By means of the imagination of an exaggerated conscience and
an exaggerated feeling of guilt the masculine protest is pushed away from
straightforward aggression and steered onto constructed routes of softheartedness. That
the old, over-stressed goal still exists and that nothing but a change of the fiction’s form
has diverted the direction of the tendency towards other, sometimes apparently opposite
routes, may be perceived only in the emotional disturbance that occasionally surfaces,
in the analysis of the attack, in characteristic traits that manifest themselves from time
to time, as is often the case when psychosis breaks out, and in the final goal of the
neurotic circuitous paths and characteristic traits that were pushed out of direction, in
the fact that a certain dominance has been established despite all subjugation, that
others are tortured by self-torture, and in the admixture of occasionally appearing,
fundamental and straightforward aggression.
3 See also A. Jassny, ‘Das Weib als Verbrecher’. In: Archiv für

Kriminalpsychologie,
1911, H. 19; ‘Verwahrloste Kinder. In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsycholigie;
and A. Adler, ‘Neurose und Verbrechen’. In: Zeitschr. f. Individualpsychologie, Bd. IV,
1926. (see endnote)
And so it is possible that after an altogether aggressive period, in anticipation or
because of the actual experience of a defeat, the psychopath’s greedy, brutal, violent
characteristics are made to approach the general guiding moral images more closely or
even too obtrusively by means of the construction of a fictional authority—the
conscience—just as, after all, the lines of egocentric, evil desire are entered upon from
the inferiority feeling. ‘It must be my destiny, then, to be a villain’—in this and similar
ways the fictional plan of life of many neurotics takes shape, if unnoticed and
unconconsciously, until a look into the abyss pulls them away from the dangerous spot,
gripped by sudden dizziness, and forces them to a stronger safeguard than would have
been absolutely necessary. Under pressure of the safeguarding tendency, the conscience
develops from the simpler forms of anticipation and self-evaluation, and will be
endowed with the attributes of power and elevated to a god,—so that the neurotic is
able to pursue his guiding lines in apparent harmony with the community feeling, so
that he will find it easier to find his way in the uncertainty of events, so that he can
dispose of a safeguarding doubt among the tactics and methods of combat to which his
desire for power leads him. Yet the neurotic is always lured by the fruitlessness of his
pangs of conscience, of remorse, of sadness, because their deceitful image elevates him
and attempts to improve him and make him look better; at the same time it absolves him
from finding a solution for the real problems of life. ‘Pangs of conscience are
improper!’ (Nietzsche.e) It is always suspicious when someone, in exaggerated high-
mindedness, roams far beyond the limits of what is considererd normal. In that case our
judgment must rely on concluding whether general usefulness is served or neglected in
the process.
However, in order to be better able to determine his tactics, the neurotic will bring
about this tranformation of his character traits himself. This is the case when, from a
neurotic perspective, he ascribes to his sexual partner, of whom he is afraid, general and
fundamental characteristics of egoism, cruelty and deceitfulness, while ascribing noble
characterstics to himself. He will search, bring out and exaggerate those among his
memories and inclinations that confirm the cordiality, mildness and openness of his
own character. In order to provide proof, he will often act as if his virtues had the reality
of being inborn and everlasting.
One important question remains to be mentioned. Nearly all of our neurotic
patients come to us when they are in the ‘virtuous stage,’ that is to say, after having
experienced a defeat. Accordingly, we must therefore be prepared to discover with great
effort their striving for superiority less in direct characteristics and a predisposition for
emotional disurbances, than in neurotic deviations, accentuated safeguards, and in the
analysis of their dreams and neurotic symptoms. One will discover that the childish
fictional guiding image has only become more intense, and in the cases just mentioned,
that the neurotic symptoms lead to the depreciation of others with greater impetus than
the old guiding lines of cruelty and the desire to torture. For all of these lines are
stretched tensely between the original insecurity of the constitutionally or subjectively
inferior individual and his unattainable fictional idea of personality. However far back
into the days of childhood the sadism, perversion, sexual libido, or the masculine
protest and the constructive lines of the character may reach, they are invariably
constructed according to a plan of life and will manifestly be dependent on it. The
development of sadism from neurotic predispositions and deceitful secretiveness, from
the unconscious, may be considered equal to tracing back the neurosis to an earlier
stage, to the time before the defeat. Freud’s scientific work, however significant and
momentous it may have been for the understanding of the neurosis, did not provide a
correct picture of the neurotic psyche, being as it was, like a neurotic’s reasoning, too
much occupied with things of secondary importance to its structure. The neurotic
predispositions of increased affectivity, the traits of exaggerated aggression, the
hypersensitivity, and the direct compensatory peculiarities of character require that they
be released from their mistaken overstrained state, not justified by pointing to ‘inborn
impulsive components.’ This is also the case with those neurotic perverse inclinations
that are occasionally constructed at an early stage, and that want to come to the aid of
the general fear of making decisions, apparently by means of the development of a
compromise, but in reality by eliminating the feared, normal solution of problems
concerning love. Therefore, one should aspire to put an end to the erroneously
exaggerated inferiority feeling and the depreciation tendency resulting from it—those
two all-important poles of every neurotic—by means of the patient’s insight and
superiority. For they have become, like their sexual analogies and manifestations
(sadism, masochism, fetishism, homosexuality, incest fantasies, apparent increase or
decrease of the sexual impulse), the foundation of the neurosis, not of the human
psyche.4
4See A. Adler, in the Handbuch der normalen und pathologischen Physiologie. Berlin
1926, the articles ‘Homosexuality’, ‘Sadism’ etc.
Endnotes for Practical Part II-V
a La Rochefoucauld

See endnote 'c' on page 121.

b Swift, Jonathan

(1667 – 1745 Dublin): His satires in ‘Gulliver’ constitute an irony of history. On

the same lines is his ‘Stella’ (1696).
c Lombroso

See endnote 'bbb' on page 28.

d Ferrero, Guglielmo

Co-author of several of Lombroso’s publications, e.g., La donna delinquente. La

prostituta e la donna normale. Turin: Roux (1893). See also endnote on page 28.
(footnote 3) Jassny: Das Weib als Verbrecher
See earlier note. The title and magazine reference are obviously incorrect here.
e Nietzsche: Pangs of conscience are improper!

See endnotes on page xxiii, ‘fff’ on page 29, and ‘lll’ on page 30.
Practical Part II - VI
Above–Beneath — Choice of Profession — Somnambulism — Antithesis in
Thought — Elevation of the Personality by
Depreciation of Others — Jealousy — Neurotic Assistance — Authority — Thinking in
Antitheses and the Masculine Protest —
Dilatory Attitude and Marriage — The Attitude Upwards as a Symbol of Life —
Compulsive Masturbation — Neurotic Striving for Knowledge
The abstraction of the concept ‘above-beneath’ obviously plays an immensely
important role in the cultural development of mankind, and is probably even connected
with the beginning of the upright carriage of human beings. Since every child repeats
this process in the course of its development by standing up from the floor and since
training, from a general hygienic principle, also strongly discourages the child from
‘being down,’ indeed, even attempts to develop a disgust for clinging to and creeping
on the floor, it is obvious that this higher development in childhood contributes not a
little to the higher valuation of ‘above.’ A certain indication may be found in the
behavior of small children when they throw themselves on the floor defiantly, probably
also because they want to make themselves dirty, in order to make their presence felt to
their parents. But in doing this, they betray that the concept of ‘being down,’ as a fiction
of forbidden filthiness and sinfulness, is beginning to develop within them. In this
psychic gesture of small children one may probably also see the model for later,
strongly expanded neurotic traits, in particular for pseudo-masochistic behavior.
Further impressions, which can be obtained in great number from psychological
perceptions of culture and religion, may be derived from impressions of the heavenly
bodies. Like the child, primitive people, too, came to feel that the sun, the day, joy,
elevation, being ‘above’ could be equated to one another, whereas they very often
associated the ‘beneath’ with sin, death, filth, disease and the night. The antithesis of
the ‘above-beneath’ in modern religious systems can be perceived in ancient ones no
less clearly. From a work by K. T. Preußa about ‘the fire gods as a basis for
understanding Mexican religion’ (‘Die Feuergötter als Ausgangspunkt zum Verständnis
der mexikanischen Religion,’ in Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in
Wien 1903), we may infer the special expression of this antithesis and of the association
‘above-beneath.’ The god of fire is at the same time the god of the dead who lives with
him at the place of descent. Overturned containers, people falling down, were
considered to be images of the ‘above-beneath,’ that is to say, of the fall into the realm
of the dead, and in this spatial antithesis conceptions of preservation and destruction or
terror were given form.1
Furthermore, sensations and impressions from childhood have a formative effect
on the spatial notion of ‘above- beneath,’ making the antithesis even more intense.
Falling, falling down, is painful, disgraceful, dishonorable, sometimes punishable. Not
rarely it is the result of inattention, clumsiness or a lack of carefulness, or may be the
reason one is laughed at. Therefore, too, these feelings are constantly taken in as
admonishing reminders, so that ‘being down’ may be experienced as a sharp expression
of ‘having fallen down,’ of inattention, of clumsiness, of defeat, not without provoking
or at least stimulating the emergence of a protest that directs itself against the inferiority
feeling that accompanies it.
In addition one will find in this category of ‘above-beneath,’ each of which is
invariably accompanied antithetically by the other, that among normal and neurotic
individuals both it is mixed with trains of thought expressing an antithesis of conquest
and defeat, of triumph and inferiority. More in particular, memory traces will emerge in
the analysis that are concerned with riding, swimming, flying, mountain climbing, with
climbing stairs and climbing to great heights, and as antitheses of which the carrying of
a rider, nightmares, submergence in water, falling down, collapse, or restraints on
movement upwards or forwards will appear. The more abstract and figurative the
memory becomes, in dreams, in hallucinations, in single neurotic symptoms, the more
distinctly one can observe certain transitions indicating a male-female factor; in this
connection, the male principle, often only conceived as a greater power, is represented
as ‘above,’ the female as ‘beneath.’ It is easy to see that fights and their results support
this valuation.
In the games of children, preparations for life as they are (Karl Groosb), this
striving ‘upward’ may regularly be found as a struggle for superiority. This is also
found in children’s ideas about future occupations.2 In the progress of psychic
development one will regularly find that reality functions as a brake, so that the
abstraction of the ‘above’ will try in some way to find a concrete representation. In this
process there is often a marked effect of caution such as that of the fear of heights,
which turns the wish to become a roofer into the choice to be a building contractor,
makes an airplane engineer out of the aviator, and transforms the little girl’s wish to be
like her father into a reality that can be fulfilled by dominating like her mother.
The safeguarding tendency and masculine protest exploit the resulting guiding
lines of ‘wanting to be above’ to the fullest. Under pressure of this fiction the neurotic
is sometimes forced to ‘masculine’ decisiveness, to conflict and struggle, and
sometimes over-cautious, hesitating, doubting behavior. He is permanently placed in a
situation in which he must find explanations for everything he does or experiences,
even for things which others never even have seen. Indeed, he must smell out, hang on
to, exaggerate, or arrange situations whose importance seems really very little to us. Let
us take a more detailed look at this behavior.
1 I am particularly indebted to Prof. Dr. D. Oppenheim for many valuable

historical references.
2See Kramer, ‘Berufsphantasien.’ In: Heilen und Bilden, l.c.

A rather small woman, 25 years old, came to me with complaints about frequent
headaches, emotional outbursts, and a dislike for work and life in general. There was
clear evidence of traces of rickets. The history of her childhood reveals an intense
inferiority feeling, which was constantly kept under strain because of her mother’s
preference for a younger brother and his intellectual superiority. The most passionate,
unconscious wish of this patient always had been to be big, clever and to be a man. She
took the preparatory attitudes to reach this goal from her father’s example. Wherever
this appeared to be impossible for her, being a small, stupid girl, she had secured her
imaginary feeling of self-worth by a disposition for emotional disturbances in the form
of rage and anger, by simulating stupidity and illness, not least by an arrangement of
laziness towards her relatives in general, and particularly in obstinacy towards her
mother. At this point I ignore the lines of masculinity, malice, and obstinacy she
constructed, nor do I want to go into her burning ambition or her tendency to lie and
boast, indeed I will confine myself to demonstrate how all these characteristics are
combined in the passion to ‘be above,’ and how they serve the depreciation tendency.
For this purpose I want to refer to one of her dreams, one which contains a modest
reference to the psychology of somnambulism. The dream is as follows:
‘I have become a sleepwalker and climbed onto everyone’s head.’
A few days before, the patient had heard some talk about ‘moonstruck’ people. In
her attempts to explain this dream a series of ambitious ideas emerge, taking the form,
among others, of her dominance over her future husband. From earlier times she
remembered dream images in which she was represented riding a man as a horse.3 I
have never treated a genuine sleepwalker. However, this neurotic symptom may
occasionally be found in rudimentary form. Just as dreams of flight and climbing stairs,
etc., it proves to be, as the dynamic expression of ‘wanting to be above,’ equal to the
masculine aggression. I once found that a patient who showed strong masochistic
tendencies strenuously attempted, while he was asleep, to reach the ceiling of his room
by stretching out his legs up on the wall. The interpretation showed that the patient,
from an imaginary or real situation that he valued as female and masochistic, turned to
the masculine protest by reversal, simultaneously expressing this by his striving to be
‘above’ in a symbolic modus dicendi.
The dream’s second idea: ‘I climbed onto everyone’s head’—reveals the same
meaning. Here, the patient uses a common figure of speech to express that she is
superior to everyone. Her striving upward can only be understood dialectically, within
an antithesis, as indeed the thinking process of the insecure neurotic is invariably
moving in markedly opposite directions, in an ‘either-or,’ as in an abstraction conceived
according to the scheme of the opposites masculinefeminine. The innumerable possible
compromises do not carry any weight because both neurotic poles — the inferiority
feeling on the one hand, the exaggerated feeling of self-worth on the other — controlled
by the accentuated safeguarding tendency will only allow absolutely opposite values to
be apperceived.4
3 The image: a woman riding on top of a man can often be found, directly or in

disguise, in paintings. I call attention to Burgkmaier, Hans Baldung Grien, Dürer and to
the many prints showing Kampaspa, Alexander the Great’s lover, riding Aristoteles.
(see endnotes)
The train of thought of this dream permits us to guess our neurotic patient’s
predispositions. Indeed, her masculine protest, her tendency to depreciate others, her
ambition, defiance, unyieldingness, obstinacy are all remarkable enough. The psychic
significance of her headache shows itself in this dream. Previous analysis, namely, had
revealed that the symptom always occurred when there was a feeling of depreciation, of
belittlement, of ‘feminization’ — to put it in the words of the dream: whenever one
‘climbed onto her head.’ During the periods of her headaches, where one would expect
anger, she had escaped the dominance of others, particularly of the mother, by
constructing this ‘predisposition for pain’ with its incumbent hallucination of pain, and
accordingly her feeling of self-worth could be elevated only more, as if by defiance,
laziness and obstinacy, in short: she had ‘climbed onto the heads’ of the others.
Among children this tendency to be ‘above’ is unmistakable and often coincidental
with a wish to be big. They want to be lifted up, like to climb on chairs, tables and
cupboards and usually connect this striving with the idea of showing that they are
disobedient, brave, and manly. How close the tendency to depreciate others borders on
this is clearly shown in their joy at the moment when they succeed in being ‘bigger’
than grown-ups. The accentuation of the aggressive drive is often clearly manifested in
this showing off by prematurely neurotic children. Thus it occasionally happens that
very young patients constantly climb on chairs, benches and tables in the consulting
room of the physician, thus revealing their contempt and their inadequate preparation
for the community.
The danger of falling or of accidents, in this striving upwards, as well as the
customary education to being a coward, forces most of these children to a change of
form of their guiding line or to neurotic circuitous ways, in which the fear of heights,
acrophobia, serves as a memento, and usually symbolically represents undertakings and
risks of all kinds, thus laying the foundation for a ready predisposition that functions as
a restraining device that lets the patient get stuck on his way time and again. Cases of
agoraphobia sometimes express in this manner their fear to descend from their elevated
position, hankering after greatness as they are. From time to time the striving upwards
is largely assimilated into tendencies to depreciate others. In a transposed form, this
putting down of others may express itself in an inclination to slander, but more
particularly in neurotic jealousy and in jealous delusions. Another interesting type of
depreciation I found among neurotics is their precaution, their anxious behavior, and
their worry about the fate of others. They behave as if others were incapable of taking
care of themselves without their help. They are constantly giving advice, they want to
do everything themselves, are always discovering new dangers, and will not rest until
the other, intimidated and discouraged, places himself entirely in their hands. Neurotic
parents do great harm in this way, and it is also the cause of much tension in love and
marriage. What they are striving after is to lay down the law for others. One of my
patients, who had been run over twice in his childhood, linked his damaged feeling of
self-worth with this memory and whenever he crossed the street with someone he
would anxiously lead this person over by the arm, as if he did not trust this person’s
ability to get to the other side without help. Many are anxious when their relatives travel
by rail, or go swimming or canoeing; they are constantly giving their nursemaids
instructions, and they pursue their depreciation tendency with exaggerated criticisms
and reprimands as well. In school or at work one will always find these nagging,
faultfinding depreciations in neurotic teachers and superiors. It is an absolute priority to
obviate such predispositions in the practice of psychotherapy, even when the patient is
provoking them. This requirement leads to a renunciation of oppressive authority.
Anyone who has become acquainted with the hypersensitivity of neurotics knows how
easily they feel depreciated. One of my patients, who suffered from hystero-epilepsy
and always behaved as if he wanted to place himself in an entirely subordinate position,
on one occasion fell unconscious before my door. In such ‘accidents’ one may easily
recognize the depreciation tendency. Even in his confused state he still addressed me as
‘teacher’ and stammered that he would bring a note. After the attack he confirmed to
me that on that occasion he had not wanted to come. The analysis revealed that he had
made me into a teacher—which was very well possible at any time, given the nature of
the situation—in order to gain, by means of self-deception, the distance necessary for
conflict, and to be able to act as if he was obliged to come to school and had to bring a
written excuse. After he had intuitively placed himself in this situation of inferiority, he
could now let the compensatory predispositions derived from it come into play in order
to scare me.5
4 We have already pointed out that the tentative beginnings of philosophy, initiated

in insecurity, have also hypostasized this antithetical thinking. Karl Joèl discusses this
problem in the ‘Geschichte der Zahlprinzipien in der griechischen Philosophie’
(Zeitschr. f. Philosophy u. philos. Kritik, Bd. 97) where he says: ‘The real root of
antithesis is the instinctive, obstinate rigidity of reason, which only wants to recognize
absolutes.’ In the neurosis this antithesis is maintained (‘Aut Cæsar aut nihil’), because
the neurotic in his accentuated inferiority feeling wants to recognize the strongest
confirmation of his own value. (see endnotes)
A twenty-year old girl is suffering from the compulsive idea that she could not ride
in a street-car, because when she got on, the thought would invariably emerge that a
man might get off and fall under the wheels. Analysis revealed that this compulsion
neurosis represents the patient’s masculine protest in the image of being ‘above,’ and
accordingly the man has to be ‘beneath,’ has to be depreciated, and must bear the
injuries that he causes women.6 In addition, the accentuated safeguarding tendency
constructs a precautionary structure of fear, which is intended to further satisfy the fear
of men: even when her superiority was assured she would be unable to decide on
marriage because her future husband would certainly have a very hard time with her.
And finally, by means of these neurotic problems, she prevents herself from ever
playing a feminine role. One can understand from this point of view the often
incomprehensible striving of many neurotic girls and women to exact from their
partners great sacrifices and to put them through severe tests, in so far that they hope to
elevate their feeling of selfworth, to attain an appearance of being equal to men. A
female patient prevented the (feminine) connection to society with the compulsive idea
that she would have to crow like a cock (masculine) in front of others.
5 How the change that is taking place in the age of socialism, the decline of

authority, must alter our entire life, particularly education and schools, is a subject for
discussion elsewhere.
Thinking in crude antitheses is therefore a sign of insecurity in itself and adheres to
the one genuine antithesis, that between man and woman. It contains within it a value
judgment, too, which, unnoticed, smoothly infuses itself in all ‘antithetical reasoning’
because this is invariably undertaken according to the image of the dissection of the
hermaphrodite into a masculine and a feminine half. Platoc has perhaps expressed this
idea in its purest form. And human perception was unable to free itself from the
clutches of its self-created fiction until Kantd. But the neurotically disposed child holds
on to the oppositeness between the sexes and the higher valuation of the masculine
principle connected with it, in order to escape insecurity and to find guiding lines for
the guiding personality idea. This is how it happens that this guiding fiction takes on a
masculine appearance, and that in all experience and striving of the neurotic the
masculine protest prevails as an arranging and driving principle. The symbol of the
spatial antithesis of ‘abovebeneath’ mentioned above is exquisitely suitable to express
this antithesis between the sexes. And thus we come to understand that in every one of
our psychological analyses this expression of a sharply antithetical scheme must, in one
way or another, come to the fore. It is an open question whether intensification is taken
from the realities of childhood and their impressions, or from observations of the sexual
relations among people or animals.
The ‘wish to be above’ of the neurotic woman is forcefully produced by her
masculine guiding image and represents an attempt to identify with the man. The
insistence and ‘rigid reasoning’ with which this happens, even in neurotic circuitous
ways, testifies to the original insecurity and fear of being, once ‘beneath,’ depreciated,
female, ‘just’ a woman. Thus the transcendental personality idea attains its dominating
control, because it holds out the prospect of compensation, of pacifying the inferiority
feeling at a later stage, in the ‘hereafter.’ ‘I want to be above, I want to be a man,’ is
what every gesture expresses, ‘because I fear to be oppressed and misused as a woman,’
‘because only the man enjoys a feeling of power.’ This is accompanied by a
strengthening of ambition, jealousy, etc., and a usually intensified mistrust turns against
any possible depreciation. In the case of true depreciations, however, the masculine
protest will flare up, leading, even when the causes are insignificant and empty, to the
well-known, unpleasant frictions of neurotics with their environment, for which their
principled dogmatism and love of justice, their obstinate shrewdness and acuteness
form the predispositions and tactics, the advance organ of attack, in order to provide
some kind of confirmation for the feeling of power. One will never, and particularly in
times of great insecurity, fail to notice the ‘search for that which is beneath’ in this, the
acute perception for humiliations and insults, slights and neglects, further arrangements
of depression, anxiety, remorse, feelings of guilt, and pangs of conscience. And now
stronger safeguards are put in place, new neurotic symbols and circuitous routes are
constructed, the neurotic characteristics become more fundamental and more abstract,
and the fully developed picture of the neurosis comes to the fore.7 In this way the revolt
to develop a higher feeling of self-worth has been set up; the introduction to it is formed
by both disease itself and the predisposition for disease, which is used in one way or
another as a means of power over the environment.
6Laura Marholm quotes the following poem: ‘The woman is a rose bush; then comes

along the he-goat and eats it.’

A 21 year old woman came for treatment for severe depression, insomnia and
compulsive ideas that she must die. It appears that she has had neurotic characteristics
from childhood on. The compulsion neurosis set on when a relation she had with a man,
whom she was supposed to marry, became serious. This typical pathogenic situation
forces out the neurotic ‘No’ and while the patient is preparing for her marriage, and has
no hesitation in saying, ‘I will,’ she is arranging the neurosis and behaves as if she does
not want to marry. In all these extremely frequent cases the next step will be the
creation of a neurotic set of mutually dependent preconditions that go as follows: ‘When
I become healthy, if I overcome my present situation, etc., (among men often: if I
become potent), then I will marry.’ By means of this conjunction, which is equivalent to
vacillation, doubt, to a special kind of caution, the patient avoids all responsibility; he
has secretly bolted himself in, awaiting further developments, but may behave as if he
would open the door with pleasure. The traits of mistrust, obstinacy, the desire to
dominate, and the ‘wish to be above’ will clearly manifest themselves during treatment,
and one may easily observe that the fear of not being equal to the partner, and the
insufficient preparation for partnership, the threat of the superiority feeling in love or
marriage, demand a stealthy retreat and construct the neurotic symptom. It is not
uncommon to find a tendentious valuation of the individual’s own sexuality, which is
seeking to give the impression, without actual proof or by taking recourse to memories
such as anyone can dispose of, or sometimes by staging unconscious falsifications, that
it is too big, too perverse, so that the risk of marriage cannot be taken. In connection
with a collection of marriage songs Herdere has pointed out the remarkable fact that
their contents were without exception sad.
7 While I was writing this I discovered a typical example of this kind of person,

drawn with great intuitive power, in whom the ‘wish to be above’ stands out blatantly,
namely in Alfred Berger’s Privy Councilor Eysenhardt (see Praxis und Theorie, l.c.),
which I would recommend every psychotherapist read. One will recognize in his
account a poetical perception of everything we mentioned about this prototype in our
description. The all too strong energy of the father, the inferiority feeling of the boy
with the compensatory masculine protest, the increasing sexual desire, the lust for
power, the preparations to kill the father, fetishism, the judicial career, exaggerated
safeguards in case of defeat, the construction of remorse, pangs of conscience,
hallucinations and obsessions as revengeful rejections of the authoritarian idea of the
state, the loss of a tooth and the exaggerated fear of women as the cause of a further
increase of the masculine protest, and with it once again the arrangement of an
increased sexual desire — all of which is very impressive and transparent, a description
of the neurotic deviation which reminds one of those of Dostoyevsky (see
‘Dostoyevsky.’ In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c.) and requires no
further explanation. (see endnotes)
The patient’s further communications went on to explain the fact why she could
not undertake anything, since whatever she did the thought would always cross her
mind that it was useless anyway because after all everyone must die. As one can see,
this is a senseless idea that yet, at the same time, makes sense and has been pushed so
far into the foreground that it is interfering with life’s course. Most importantly,
however, it neutralizes the influence of time and development and on this occasion
makes it impossible for the patient to enter marriage. The conviction that the patient had
come to the physician only because she was forced to and was not striving to get cured
at all, but rather wished to get proof of her incurability followed as a matter of course.
One of her dreams revealed much from this constellation. This is how it goes:
‘A physician comes to me who tells me that I should jump and sing when my
thoughts would turn to dying. Then these thoughts would disappear. Then a child
(hesitatingly)—quite a big child—is brought in. The child is in pain and is crying. The
child is given medicine in order to calm down and fall asleep.’
The physician in the dream had once treated her when she was a child and suffered
from scarlet fever. In the dream he uses words that in her present illness she is hearing
time and again from her relatives and physicians. He gives her advice as he would a
child, and it is completely useless. These ideas are directed towards me and they
express the expectation that my measures will be useless as well. Of course she dreamt
this dream on a night when she actually slept—for the first time after quite a long
period of sleeplessness. Since the patient considers this to be a partial result of my
treatment she reacts with a great deal of aggression, my measures are worthless, too.
After all: we all must die! The second scene is a description of a birth. The hesitation in
mentioning the child’s ‘bigness’ indicates where the thoughts of the dreamer are
dwelling: on a small, newborn child. The expression: ‘a child is brought into the world’
is taken from the image of giving birth and it coincides with the sketchy form of the
dream. The dream moreover shows the situation which the patient is anticipating, in
which she has imagined herself: a crying child! And I am supposed to follow this
physician? Jumping and singing no less? In other words, the patient here expresses: I
cannot sleep because I am thinking of giving birth with all its pain.
Giving birth, pain, death, in these she sees her certain fate and she thinks about
death in order not to have to give birth. She fails to see what is most important by
looking too far ahead.
The exaggerated safeguard against giving birth is a change of the form and
intensity of her masculine fiction. She enters on the neurotic circuitous route in order to
safeguard herself from the feminine role, which she experiences as a defeat, fixates her
thought, under the influence of an anticipatory tendency, on giving birth and dying as a
memento, and would rather be a child herself, to take a powder rather than be cured by
psychotherapy. For her, being cured implies to be fitted into the feminine role. Now her
fight, under a more acute tendency, turns against the physician who wants to cure her
insomnia. She must remain superior to him, let him talk nonsense and dictate to him
that he must treat her by giving her medication, as she was treated when she was a
child. The compulsion neurosis represents her safeguarding private philosophy of the
vanity of everything as a protection against the feminine role.
In our type of the psychology of neuroses one always gets the impression that the
neurotic gesture that one observes is pointing straight to the final purpose, to the
fictional final goal, as if one were examining one of the middle pictures in some
cinematographic film. The problem consists in recognizing these gestures, that is, the
symptoms, predispositions and characteristics, and to come to understand what is their
objective. In every neurotic attitude the beginning and the final goal are suggestively
concealed.8 This conclusion is the foundation of the individual-psychological method,
and coincides with our other findings. In the analysis of a symptom or a dream one will,
therefore, always come across traces of the ‘beneath’—the feeling of inferiority—and
the ‘above’—the fictional final goal,—in the form of an upwardly directed psychic
attitude, expressed in strong antitheses in the image of the psychic circuitous route,
which in itself is an illustration of the tendency to use expedients in order to cope with
obstacles. The phenomena are often disunited, so that in the change and hesitation of
the psychic manifestations it is now the ‘above’ and then the ‘beneath’ which comes to
light. Often, this ‘desire to be above’ is expressed in a strongly figurative manner,
particularly in dreams, but in symptoms as well, manifesting itself symbolically as a
race, as flight, as mountain climbing, climbing stairs, emerging from water, etc.,
whereas the ‘beneath’ is expressed by falling, by prison walls, restraints, missing a
train, etc., or in other words a movement downwards. At this point I would like to give
an account the dreams of a patient who had fears about his future as a man because of
memories of weakness and noticeably feminine behavior. A dream from his early
childhood, which filled him with terror for a long time, showed him how he was being
pursued by a bull. As a farmer’s son he understood even at that early age that this male
pursuer was racing against a cow, which was represented by the patient himself. When
he was to go to school he immediately directed his steps towards the girls’ school, and
had to be taken to the boys’ school by force. He unconsciously regarded his whole life
as a race for which he was continuously making preparations. When courting a girl he
lost out to a friend. He had shrunk back, in accordance with his neurosis, at the moment
when he should have made a decision. When he was at the point of marrying, he feared
his future wife’s superiority, fell into the habit of compulsive masturbation, often had
pollutions, and began suffering from a tremor which hindered his work and
advancement at his office. Naturally, he constructed a neurotic set of mutually
dependent preconditions that stipulated that he would marry only when he was cured,
an idea that seems wise and justifiable, but which allowed the patient to operate secretly
against marriage, as if he were under cover, because he feared it would fail and
depreciate his feeling of self-worth, allegedly because of his bride’s higher education.
The tremor represented the anticipated onset of paralysis that he feared because of his
excessive masturbation. After he had secured himself in this way he still needed
confirmation of his incurable suffering, and this is why he went to physicians weeping.
Our discussions gave me the impression of a restlessly ambitious individual who always
wanted to depreciate others but shrank away from making a serious decision. For him,
amorous relations were also mainly a means to acquire proof for his superior manliness.
However passionately he might court a girl, from the moment she responded to his
advances she lost all charm for him, since his striving for power lost its entire
foundation and seemed to come under threat. Besides, as an engagement seemed to be
getting near, he would begin other hopeless relations or he would make them seem
hopeless, and so he ran from one rejection to the next, all in order to be able, by feeling
his lack of influence, to evaluate himself as inferior compared to his future bride and
come to a stop. This provided him time and again with a new impulse to operate against
the marriage that he apparently wanted. One of his dreams is as follows:
8 Bergson correctly emphasizes the identicality of every movement in life. With

sufficient knowledge and enough experience one may discern the past, the present and
the future, but the final goal as well, of any psychic phenomenon. And thus every
psychic phenomenon, and indeed every characteristic, in a similar way as an inferior
physical organ, can be viewed as a symbol of an individual life, as an individual attempt
to climb up. (see endnote)
‘I am with an old friend of mine and talk with him about a mutual acquaintance.
He says: “What use is his money to him, he has not learned anything.”’
The old friend, to whom the patient had lost out when he was courting a woman,
had also failed in lower science school and had given up his study. The patient is
superior to him, for he finished technical school. He embraced the sublime teaching:
knowledge is more than money—particularly since this belief serves his fiction of being
‘above’ and comforts him. The mutual acquaintance here takes the place of the rich
woman they both had been courting. The contest begins all over again. Our patient is
declared the winner by his rival.
A second dream that same night clarifies this. The patient dreams ‘ as if he had
brought to shame a woman of lower standing, and had dishonored her.’ The fiction of
this dream expresses yet a shade more obviously that he is ‘above.’ The woman he used
to court before is depreciated here, in the patient’s sense, in that she is poor and
recognizes him as her master. The lack of a feeling of friendship and community is
particularly clear in this case of the contestant, as is the predominance of power politics.
I want to mention briefly here that the occurrence of a multitude of dreams in one
night can be explained from the fact that multiple attempts of anticipatory thinking of
tentative solutions to a problem are being undertaken. Frequently it will become
apparent that—and this is easily understood in the case of neurotics—a single route to
the guiding personality idea is insufficient to satisfy their caution. Under the influence
of the increasing safeguarding tendency the dream will then become even more
abstract, even more metaphorical, and the interpretation of all the dreams of one night
will then provide one with several psychic attitudes, from the comparison of which the
dynamics and the goal of the neurosis will become much clearer. In the case described
above, the rival in the first dream submits and the wealth of the woman, her power, is
depreciated as far as its importance is concerned. In the second dream he has taken
away this power from the woman, put her in the feminine situation ‘below,’ and this is
done in such an abstract manner that the woman under consideration is left with nothing
personal, and only her subordinate role remains. The patient, moreover, more than once
expresses the idea that only an uneducated woman from the country would be good for
him, as he would always be the dominating person to her. The woman he wants to
become his wife, too, frightens him because of her intelligence. This is a characteristic
trait of many neurotics that always makes them choose below their social level, and it is
the reason why ideas emerge of choosing a prostitute, a little girl, etc., to love or marry.
In all similar cases one may be able to observe the depreciation tendency towards the
female partner that seeks to initiate the depreciation of the woman by constructing
mistrust, jealousy, a desire to dominate, ethical principles and demands. The inferiority
feeling thus hinders the expansion of the community feeling.
Yet another dream depicts the idea of a race very graphically: ‘I was riding in a
train and looked out of the window, whether the dog was still running along with the
train. I thought, it has run itself to death, it has gotten under the wheels. I felt sorry for
it. Then it occurred to me that I had another dog now, but this one is rather awkward.’
With his old friend and rival he had often raced on bicycle, betting who would win, and
he had usually been left behind. Now that his friend is in a lesser social position than he
himself, ‘the friend can run after him,’ as they say in Vienna when you are bragging
about your superiority. The transformation into a dog is a product of the depreciation
tendency and fairly common. In a case of dementia præcox I observed once that the
patient gave all dogs names of important women. The dog also represented his future
bride who, after all, also made his superiority questionable. Her death would liberate
him from his fear, and he would also be free if she would listen to a rival, as his
suspicion often whispered to him, if she would get under the wheels. If this would
happen he would be sorry. ‘In the dream he supposes this has actually happened and he
anticipates his grief. The ‘awkward dog’ is a woman who about this time had disgusted
him by responding to his advances, and for whom he no longer cared.
His aversion against people ‘above’ him is boundless and fundamental. One night
he dreamed: ‘Our choral society gave a concert. The director’s place was empty.’ The
society to which he belonged once had had to sing without its director because he had
missed his train. This situation seemed best to him: we do not need a director! This is
his usual attitude in all situations where he is not himself the director.
Just as in male neurotics, the compulsion to masturbate in females also originates
in the tendency to evade making decisions, to avoid sexual intercourse and thus to
remain ‘above.’ In the masturbation fantasies of women one often finds the woman in
the role of the man. Among men, masturbation serves, in the first place, as proof that
they can live by themselves, that they can live without a woman, and in the second
place, as a pretext for and prevention of sexual intercourse, which is feared because of
the woman’s superiority. It is, therefore, a product of the safeguarding tendency. Very
often indeed the neurotic’s one-sided, antithetical principle: triumph or defeat, finds
expression in the masturbation fantasy, in sadistic or masochistic images. If the situation
calls for stronger safeguards, then impotence or the developed neurosis will make an
appearance, not so much as a result of the renunciation of masturbation or as a
consequence of auto-eroticism, but as an accentuated safeguard. The problem is not the
common, usual masturbation of young people, but its persistence; Individual
Psychology demonstrates that masturbation is the eroticism of the isolated individual
who is hostile to society.
Among the preparatory actions and neurotic predispositions supposed to serve the
safeguard directed to the ‘above,’ curiosity, an impulse to investigate, a desire to see
everything, and a ‘voyeuristic’ impulse, as mentioned by several authors, occupy a
prominent place. These impulses are invariably proof of a primary insecurity, for the
compensation of which the guiding lines of the investigator are developed. They serve,
particularly in the fully developed neurosis, secondarily the goals of hesitation, the
avoidance to come to a decision or establish a plan, and in life, especially in sexuality,
they are often transformed from a means into a goal to which every impulse of the
psyche is related. Investigation, the search for truth, the desire to know everything, the
well-known neurotic thoroughness—these are then the characteristics that build up the
feeling of self-worth, and must elevate and protect it. Among children one may often
find incessant reading as a way of satisfying ambition, and at the same time as an
escape from the more serious demands of school. Furthermore it may be used in the
simultaneous obstinate attitude towards the parents, causing a disturbance of the daily
routine of the family.
Endnotes for Practical Part II-VI
a Preuss, Konrad Theodor

(1869 Eylan – 1938 Berlin): Director of the Museum of Ethnology and professor
in Berlin. As R. R. Marett and E. B. Taylor, he, too, supported a theory of ethnological
theology which was taken further sociologically by E. Durkheim and psychologically
by
W. Wundt. He considered the archaic belief in a supreme god an expression of the
‘experience of wholeness’ of ‘primitive’ thinking.
b Groos, Karl

See endnote on page 40.

(footnote 1) Oppenheim, David, Ernst
(1881 Brünn – 1943 Ghetto Theresienstadt): Ph.D., teacher of Greek and Latin at
a gymnasium, was interested in ancient history and mythology. He was admitted to the
Wednesday Group in 1910, left with Adler in 1911, was a founding member of
Individual
Psychology and for some time a member of the board of the Association for Individual
Psychology.
(footnote 2) Kramer, Josef
He was a member of the board of the Association for Individual Psychology (1912).
See: ‘Kindliche Phantasien über Berufswahl’, Heilen und Bilden, 1914, 1922).
(footnote 3) Burgkmaier, Hans
(1473 – 1531 Augsburg): See following note.
(footnote 3) Baldung Grien, Hans
(1484/5 Schwäbisch Gmünd (?) – 1545 Strasburg): See following note.
(footnote 3) Dürer, Albrecht
(1471 – 1528 Nuremburg): German Renaissance painters of what is known as the
‘Dürer-era’. Adler here refers to their frequent choice of themes from classical
antiquity.
(footnote 4) Joel, Karl
(1864 Hirschberg i. Schl. – 1934 Wallenstadt, Switzerland): Professor of
philosophy in Basle. As a follower of Schelling he is a representative of the ‘new
idealism’; he attempted to argue for an ‘organic world view’ as an explanation for the
unity of life and thought.
 (footnote 4) aut Cæsar aut nihil
‘Cæsar or nothing’, the motto of Cesare Borgia (1475 – 1507), who is presented
as the example of a great statesman in Machiavelli’s ‘Il Principe’.
(footnote 6) Marholm, Laura
She represented women in her books as the archetypical sexual object.
c Plato: masculine and feminine half

Besides the myth told by Aristophanes in Plato’s ‘Symposion’ (189d-193d), also

compare the dialog ‘Timaios’ 91a-d on the creation of men and women: ‘Of the men
who came into the world, those who were cowards or led unrighteous lives may with
reason be supposed to have changed into the nature of women in the second generation.
And this was the reason why at that time the gods created in us the desire of sexual
intercourse, contriving in man one animated substance, and in woman another, [...].’
(translation Jowett).
d Kant: to free itself from the clutches of its self-created fiction

See also endnote ‘e’ on page 75. By means of his philosophic criticism, Kant
wanted to liberate people of their ‘self-inflicted tutelage’ by enlightening them, and by
the Copernican turn toward the subject to make them conscious of its transcendental
global constitution. Everyone should ‘use his own reason without anyone else’s
guidance.’ ‘Free reasoning’ as a public use of reason is decisive in this, while in an
institutional sense, in professions, in the state, the church, etc., ‘private use’ of reason is
authoritative in a limited sense.
(footnote 7) Berger, Alfred Freiherr von
(1853 – 1912 Vienna): Director of the Burgtheater from 1909, and a writer of
poetry, stories and philosophical studies.
(footnote 7) Dostoyevski, Fyodor Mikhaylovich
(1821 – 1881 Petersburg): From 1844 he made a living as a writer, was
condemned to death in 1849 but at the very last moment before his execution he was
pardoned and deported to Siberia, where he had nothing but the Bible to comfort him.
In
1859 he was freed. After this he published those works that constitute his literary and
religious-spiritual genius: Memoirs from the Underground (1864), Crime and
Punishment
(1866), The Idiot (1868), The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80).
e Herder, Johann Gottfried

(1744 Mohrungen – 1803 Weimar): A follower of Kant, teacher in Riga, travel

companion of nobility, and theater manager in Weimar, he was a friend of Hamann,
Diderot and Goethe. At the end of his life he was critical of Kant, and attempted to
complement the one-sided rationalism of the Enlightenment by means of an empathic
hermeneutics of the history and ethnology of humankind.
(footnote 8) Bergson: the identicality of every movement in life
See also endnote to footnote 3 on page 75. ‘The identicality of every movement in
life’ is a characteristic of the ‘lust for life’ (élan de vie) which forms the basis of all
vital development and is at the same time the origin of all variety and diversity.
Practical Part II - VII
 Punctuality — The Will to be First — Homosexuality and Perversion as a Symbol
— Embarrassment and Exhibitionism — Faithfulness and Unfaithfulness — Jealousy
— The Neurosis of Conflict
A phenomenon often noted in neurotics is their attitude concerning punctuality. In
accordance with our analysis of neurotic pedantry the expectation is justified that one
will meet a large number of punctual people among one’s patients. This is in fact true.
However, it is easy to observe that these patients, in particular, play with the idea of
how it would be if they let the other wait, a way of thinking that indicates their
oppositeness to others. So much aggression always remains in this attitude of
punctuality that these patients are very strict in demanding the same punctuality from
others, as a result of which they are often in a position to activate their tactics and
neurotic predispositions for attack when others are not punctual. In other cases one will
find that pride compels them to arrive late regularly, and when others must wait and a
torrent of mostly hardly tenable excuses is poured out, this is felt as an elevation of the
neurotic feeling of self-worth. This ‘arriving late’ is particularly suited to replace the
fear of decisions. It is a direct threat to socially accepted norms and soon both
professional duties and relations with friends and loved ones are eliminated.
Admonitions are entirely fruitless, for the obstinate attitude will regard them only as a
confirmation to persist. The neurotic is able to master the situation with his perpetual
late arrivals and so present his relatives with an insoluble problem. The choice of this
line of character is often the result of a far-fetched analogy: ‘since I arrived in this
world too late among my brothers and sisters as well, since I arrived as the second, the
last,’ ‘since I did not arrive later, instead of my younger brother or sister!’ One will see
how this neurotic set of mutually dependent preconditions— inferiority feeling and the
order of birth of the brothers and sisters1—creates a broad and permanent basis of
operation for the fight for superiority. Patients who always come too early at other times
also show the characteristic trait of impatience. Feeling depreciated, they are always in
fear of new losses and safeguard themselves by an unhesitating belief in their ‘unlucky
star.’ Among these neurotics, too, one often finds an elder brother as an opponent with
whom they are engaged in a running race, an analogical fiction but by no means the
original cause of their behavior.
For younger children, fictional rights of primogeniture often develop into an
impetus to elevate their personality idea, as indeed in my experience second and later
children show more ambition. An exception must be made for those first-born children
who are destined from an early age to replace the father, as one may see among families
with entailed estates and in orthodox Jewish families, or in those cases where the father
fails because he is too irresponsible and hope is therefore placed on the eldest son. In
their neurotic behavior the history of Jacob and Esaua often occurs as a figurative
analogy, proving that the wish to be first is essential. Their preparations and
predispositions will invariably have as their object to allow no one any value, to
transform, by means of the neurotic expedients of love and hate, every relation in such a
way that their own superiority becomes apparent. The depreciation tendency often
exceeds all bounds. This type of individual will not flinch from harming himself either
as long as he can harm others by doing so. In the change of form of the guiding line,
observations such as the following by Cæsar are often arrived at: Better to be first in the
village than second in Rome—it is better to play the dominating role with the mother or
the father than to expose oneself to an uncertain lot in marriage, do nothing rather than
be unoriginal, etc. Thoughts of hatred often occur towards superiors, teachers and
physicians. These patients are usually kill-joys in society as soon as their superiority is
not clearly recognized and they will break off any relation of friendship and love after a
short while if the other is prepared to take the inferior role. Very often their behavior
will be blunt and hostile from the very start, because they are already engaged in
struggle before the other even suspects as much. They cannot tolerate it when someone
stands or walks in front of them, and they will avoid every school examination because
they cannot endure the superiority of an examinator or of an author. That all these
phenomena may finally be directed against the family, often resulting in the
unconscious view that the family must take care of them, is a further step towards
proving the significance and importance of the personality idea of these patients. At
times they pursue their neuroses as others pursue legacies.
1 See: Die Geburtenabfolge von Geschwistern in ihren psychischen Wirkungen:

‘Individualpsychologische Erziehung.’ In: Praxis und Theorie der

Individualpsychologie, l.c.; and Aline Furtmüller, ‘Kampf der Geschwister.’ In: Heilen
und Bilden, l.c. (see endnote)
Frequently the wish to be a woman’s first lover is hidden in the neurotic efforts of
male patients—either he will jealously and suspiciously ransack her previous life and
constantly believe that he is being deceived, or he is eagerly keeping watch in case his
wife might prefer another—the fear of women as an expression of an incomplete
masculinity. Security is all the neurotic wants at this point and at times he may go so far
as to put the woman to all sorts of tests. From the jealousy that will flare up at this stage
certain tactics to depreciate the woman will automatically ensue, and this will elevate
the feeling of self-worth of the jealous neurotic so clearly that he is often unable to
separate himself from the—justly or unjustly—accused person. This last fact, which
may often be observed, is wholly dependent on the patient’s masculine guiding idea. He
cannot endure the thought that one might leave him, he then transforms the facts in such
a way that he is prevented by love, by pity, by fear of some misfortune that might befall
his wife or children, to take this final step.
Often the urge to be the first, to impress everybody, is founded on an inferiority
feeling that is related to smallness of stature, which may or may not be justified. In the
fully developed neurosis, the closer the patient gets to the occasion on which he must
prove himself, he will fail by means of the arrangement of a neurotic symptom. A
frequent symptom of this kind I have observed is compulsive blushing.
One may observe the tendency to be first, expressed in a less emphatic manner, as
a universal human characteristic and with it we also find certain aggressive tendencies
in all people. The competitive race in life begins in earliest childhood and creates for
itself psychic organs and safeguarding characteristics. For example, one will often find
as an outstanding characteristic among children that they want to be the first to eat or to
drink, that they like to run ahead in order to get somewhere before others. When they
are about five years old it is not uncommon for them to play a game in which they try to
outrun every car, and many children’s games find their origin in the idea of a
competitive run. Many people maintain this tendency during their whole life in the form
of an unconscious gesture, namely, that they must always walk at the head of a group or
they double their speed when someone wants to pass them on the street. In a
metaphorical sense this same tendency makes itself noticeable in that those who possess
it are given to hero worship, in which the underlying sense that they themselves want to
be heroes, Achilles, Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon, Archimedes, will come to
light incidentally, and in doing so reveals the guiding fiction as well as the original
inferiority feeling. To be like a god also occurs as an attractive fiction and is
occasionally to be seen in fairy tales, in fantasies and in psychosis. We have stressed
that in this state of dispositions and characteristics all ties of friendship and love are
under threat and when a stronger insecurity demands it, it will force the patient into
doubt, and make him set up terrible bogeymen or ideal figures by means of which he
can constantly safeguard himself from reality. As a caricature of Cæsar he will then
seek to find his mother, the small town, the unimportant relations, wandering restlessly
from one place of residence to another, as if the external situation were the cause of his
inner confusion. In this developed neurosis, the sexual drive will often be directed
towards children, or persons who are in low positions, such as maids, and homosexual,
perverse, or masturbatory inclinations are constructed and maintained, because the
patient hopes that it will be easier for him to control the situation in this way. For the
fear of women will prevent a natural love relationship to such an extent that the
neurotic, so as to avoid the defeat he fears, will by sympathetic understanding find an
escape in ejaculatio præcox, in pollutions, aspermatism, and impotence.
The same thing happens to neurotic women of this type, in whom the social rivalry
with friends in the big city, with sisters, with the daughter and daughter-in-law is often
secretly rankling, forcing them to neurotic safeguards and thus causing illness. Among
male neurotics it is sometimes the position in society that leads to neurosis as soon as,
among the three types with a considerable inferiority feeling, precedence in business, in
science, or in amusement becomes doubtful and is then challenged.
In those cases where the inferiority feeling of the younger child constructs the
fictional guiding goal on the basis of those born first or earlier, the most varied real and
apparent things will incite the desire and envy of the younger child. Nearly always
teachers will notice hostile traits, such as envy of the older brother’s size, etc. In
practice, it became clear to me that such judgments involve fictional values in the
psychotherapeutic treatment of two brothers, each of whom had envied the other in
childhood for his larger genitals. In identical fashion the real preference of the older
brother, or such as is natural from the way things are, is taken as a point of attack. The
fact that he is taken to the theater and traveling, that he has more experience with
problems of a sexual nature, that he is sexually active, that he is preferred by girls and
servants, that his clothes are handed down, may fill the younger child, if an inferiority
feeling is present, with the most profound bitterness. For this melancholic and
occasionally hopeless emotional state has often been prepared to a considerable degree
in our patient by very early feelings of organ inferiority and can attain an incredibly
high level. From time to time, the competition seems hopeless to the child. It will turn
its masculine tendency toward the pseudomasochistic2 side and will now try to reach
the masculine guiding goal by strongly emphasizing feelings of illness and weakness,
by yielding and submitting to an extreme degree, in the hope of thus acquiring
protection from his parents and those who are stronger, to gain dominance over them
and so to attain the desired security in life. I have seen cases where protracted cattarrh
in childhood (Czerny’sb exsudative diathesisc) was maintained by a continued clearing
of the throat and panting and thus led to sneezing fits and asthma (see Strümpell’sd
asthma theory), while at the same time feminine fictions of pregnancy and castration in
combination with exaggerated anal sensitivities brought about a suggestion of
homosexuality which should be understood symbolically. In one of these cases the
fictional feminine attitude had been carried to such lengths that the patient, in the
transformation of his guiding line came to identify himself with his younger sister. And
since the mother showed a marked tendency always to be late, he took this observation
and his wish to be in the place of his later born sister as a guiding motive to be late on
every occasion throughout his life, frequently also when he came to me for treatment, a
phenomenon which did not disappear when it was revealed but only after a cure had
taken effect.3 In these feminine attitudes, the masculine protest is aspired to by way of a
circuitous route, by following the feminine guiding lines, and it is regularly flanked by
day dreams, irritability, disputatiousness, and dissatisfaction, and as a rule it is forced to
follow by-ways by a fear of tests, of decisions, and of the sexual partner, so that
perverse tendencies, compulsive masturbation and pollutions are often to be found. The
initial phenomena of organ inferiority may disappear or remain in traces. Smallness and
anomalies of the sexual organs may sometimes be discovered, but are usually only
imagined, thus strengthening the fear of being unable to impress the sexual partner. This
emotional condition often leads to petty jealousies, a desire to torment, and sadistic
tendencies that are intended to establish proof of potency and being loved.
Often the patient’s pride is so great that he is himself unaware of his jealousy. In
accordance with our point of view, the solution for this psychic constellation is that the
masculine protest, in addition to other effects, also brings about the repression of
jealousy, in order to prevent the feeling of self-worth from decreasing. The result of this
repression is not great, at most the patient will get in confused situations. In general,
however, he will act as if he were jealous, and often so plainly that everyone notices it,
except the patient himself. However, from time to time this jealousy may disguise itself
as depression, migraine, a refuge in solitude, etc.
I want to describe still another dream of a patient who came under my treatment
because of depression and anxiety in social situations, because in the partial
interpretations undertaken by the patient, this dream reveals many points concerning a
neurotic’s competition with his older brother.
‘It seemed to me as if I had made a bet with my brother Joseph to be at a certain place,
which was not identified in the dream, before him.
2 According to my conception every inversion and perversion is a parable, a

symbol, in a manner of speaking it is what is left when one suspends to a certain degree
the norm for sexuality. For pseudomasochismus, see ‘Der psychische Behandlung der
Trigeminusneuralgie.’ In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie, l.c.
3Because it was still useful to slow down treatment.

‘Suddenly I now saw myself in a small three-wheeled automobile on a highway,

making an effort in steering the car as well as possible with a small handle that looked
like a key and which I could only hold between my thumb and index finger. I was
driving very insecurely and felt ill at ease. I also got on side-roads on which I could not
get any farther. The people I met were astonished and laughed. I was forced to take the
car on my back and return to the highway. There I drove on in the same fashion.
‘All of a sudden I saw myself with my three wheeled vehicle in the room of an inn
that I knew quite well and which is situated on a mountain near my birthplace. I shoved
my car into a corner and did not trouble myself anymore about it. My brother had
already arrived at this same inn before me; besides him, a family that I knew very well,
and which was deeply in debt, was sitting there, too, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. M and
their two daughters. Then Mr. M. came over to our table, spoke with us, and finally we
went with him to join the family at their table, which I found unpleasant.
‘The idea of a bet came up in the conversations I had with my brother. He advised
me not to bind myself prematurely to the irresponsible girl that I wanted to marry, and
told me from his own experiences in life what serious consequences this may have for a
man who wants to get on in the world. I realized the truth of this and promised him to
act according to his advice. He always was very skeptical about such promises. This
provoked me to a bet. In earlier years, when I did not yet know anything about what he
was carrying deep inside him, he seemed a model to me and I strove to become like him
in character, way of thinking, and behavior. Now I realize that I should not be like him
in many ways if I do not want to end up in the same situation.
‘With a car one can reach one’s destination earlier than on foot. This car, however,
obviously represented the wife to whom I had tied myself. A three-wheeled car is less
perfect than one with four wheels, something is missing. It is the same with women. A
man is perfect. Therefore: the small handle. Already in my earliest youth I was looking
for something in girls. There was something I could not understand about them. This
often made us go and stand under a bridge, yet we did not know what we expected to
see through the cracks above. In that time—I may have been five years old perhaps—I
had not the slightest idea about sexual facts (‘insecurity’), nor had I ever fallen prey to
any sexual aberration. I do remember, though, that even in those days something
attracted me to girls. ‘The small handle on the car’ indicates, at the same time, that I
myself, in the confrontation with women, possessed too small a ‘handle’ or none at all,
so that girls had to become superior to me.
‘With my car, that is to say, by means of a woman, I got on side-roads on which I
could not go any farther and that did not take me any closer to the goal I wanted to
reach, my way upwards.
‘I took the car on my back, the woman was thus more than ever above me and a
burden.
‘The inn where I eventually found myself with my brother is standing on top of a
mountain; this signifies my burning desire someday to attain something great in life, as
I had expected my brother to do.
‘That I met with a family which was deeply in debt points to the fact that before I had
often had exaggerated ideas about how much a wife actually costs for a man, and that
the wife is only too often the reason for the debt.
‘It is clear to me that certain trains of thought about masturbation (side-roads, being in
debt) run through the dream, as well as the incorrect association of masturbation and the
shrunken genitals. The latter I ascribed to my insecurity towards my bride— without
realizing it, I made all arrangements for her removal (into the corner). My condition of
depression serves the same purpose, to prove my superiority in life independently from
women.’
In our physiognomy of the psyche, which comprises our theory of character, we have
quite often before spoken about those obvious, fundamental characteristics that support,
and are supposed to elevate, the feeling of self-worth as an obtrusive proof of
masculinity, as if a relegation to, or a revelation of the feminine role were to be feared.
Thus the exaggerated feeling of modesty of many neurotics, men who do not dare to
visit a public lavatory, who suffer from an inability to urinate in the presence of others,
who avoid all company by compulsive blushing or anxiety and palpitions of the heart,
shows us the whipped up masculine ambition that supports itself by leaning on the
original inferiority feeling. The masculine protest of these patients, who are insecure to
the very core, impulses them to this arrangement, whose boundaries fade into those of
shyness and awkwardness; or the result may be a cooperation of these traits, one of
which may also substitute the other occasionally. One often finds that neurotic
individuals of both sexes are unable to go to the toilet in front of others, even when it is
most necessary. The greater modesty of women, particularly neurotic women, in every
aspect of life, finds an origin in the fear, maintained since early childhood, that attention
might be drawn to their sex. I have often found confirmation of the fact that the
achievements of girls and women suffer considerably from this more or less
unconscious impression, indeed, that progress in the mental development—just as is the
case with male patients who feel unmanly— and the establishment of social,
professional and love relations are immediately checked as soon as the patient comes
into a ‘feminine’ or subordinate role or presupposes this expectation in others.
This conclusion of ours is by no means affected when open or ‘repressed’ sexual stimuli
come to light as the apparent source of the checked aggression. For these are similarly
arranged, and their goal is to increase the fear of the partner and to make the retreat
decided upon in the plan of life take place with certainty; as such they are, therefore,
acts of caution as well. The neurotic, however, has been after this caution already since
childhood. It reflects, as a guiding line of the safeguarding shamefulness, the feeling of
shame and the prudery of civilization. One may find out about the exaggerated feeling
of shame from the previous history of female patients, sometimes also from those who
in other respects show a boyish nature, and one may observe in neurotic children how
they anxiously avoid ever to be naked and send everyone from the room, even lock
doors, when they have to undress. This behavior may quite often be observed in boys
who grow up among girls. The masculine protest of the latter expresses itself in these
cases in the deliberate or indeliberate depreciation of the boy, until he reaches the stage
where he hides his masculinity or experiences it as abnormal. For the development of
the neurosis this expedient of cowardice has momentous significance. It is equivalent to
eventual later ideas and desires of castration of the neurotic, desires to be a woman, as
soon as the fear of women seems real, or as soon as he wants to avoid a decision. And
nevertheless it arises originally from the compulsion of an exaggerated masculine
fiction, which is easily perceptible from the accompanying, often persistent,
characteristic traits, such as the desire to dominate, a burning ambition, a yearning to
have everything, to be first everywhere, as well as from emotional predispositions such
as rage and anger, from the depreciation tendency and from the enormous caution!
Consequently, if neurotic shamefulness can said to be equivalent to the secret attempt to
play the man, then this ‘role-consciousness’ (Groose) manifests itself more clearly in
the apparently antithetical characteristic of neurotic shamelessness. In reality this latter
line proves to be a reinforcement and continuation of the former, as an obtrusive
reminder to the environment that one is a man. The guiding idea which brings about the
predisposition for or the habit of exhibitionistic gestures, and at the same time often
brings with it an insulting, tactless obtrusiveness towards the environment, betrays the
strong masculine factor in detail. Thus it is when sexual exhibitionism breaks through in
neurotic boys or men, or finds habitual expression in certain mistakes in dress. In all
similar cases one finds that the belief in the power of the phallus is constructed as an
awareness of masculine power, exactly as it was in antique religious cults, thus
safeguarding the feeling of self-worth. Narcissistic traits are frequently admixtured, too,
very often indeed when because of a very strong inferiority feeling interest is directed to
a greater degree towards one’s own person, so that in these cases the triumphant
attitude, accompanied by coquetry and the inability to believe in a refusal, are
particularly obvious to the observer. Among shameless girls this trait is even more
conspicuous because it is quite unusual. In their use of words, in dress, in behavior, at
times in small things and at times obscenely or in coprology, they demonstrate how
poorly they fit in, how dissatisfied they are with their feminine role. The basis of
operation for both sexes will then be established in such a way that each demands
recognition or extreme tolerance from the other. In the analysis of such neurotic girls,
occasionally only in their dreams and symptoms, one finds the childish expectation of a
metamorphosis into a male, otherwise generally as an attempted substitute for the will
to power, the desire to be above. If two persons of this kind meet, which seems to
happen remarkably often, the outcome is not rarely that the accentuated masculine
guiding line of the one affects the other temporarily in a miraculous way, as a talisman,
because her own guiding goal contains within itself the belief in the miraculousness of
masculinity and its magic power as well. In this way a certain fate is often apparently
accidentally fulfilled, though it is actually brought about by the inherent power of their
personality idea. Quite often one finds shameless behavior in girls as an anticipation of
a fictional expectation; they behave as if they were a boy or a man, expose themselves
naked or they live out their reincarnation as a man in neurotic symptoms, dreams and
fantasies. Often one may observe in such patients an attempt to ascribe, by means of a
transformation of the fiction, the magic power of the phallus to other parts of the body
such as, for instance, the hands, the feet or the breasts, which are then, transposed into
masculinity, given special favor as fetishes, and enjoy narcissistic worship, as often also
the genital organs or the entire body. This fetishism is nearly always transferred to
articles of clothing and constitutes a large part of the magic of fashion, of which we
consequently should assume that, as fetishism itself, it must be regarded as a substitute
of masculinity with its larger sphere of influence, a masculinity believed to be lost but
always to be sought.
Just as shamelessness, the fundamental neurotic infidelity of many sick patients has
been formed in imitation of an exaggerated interpretation of the masculine image. It
shows us one of the ways enforced by the masculine goal, and it is as so many of the
neurotic characteristics often nothing more than an ideal, a matter of mood or
worldview, or it does not reach any further than the boundary where the reality of the
feminine role begins. Much more often one will find the virtue of fidelity as a safeguard
in the fear of the man. Fantasies of infidelity, occasionally with the strength of
hallucinations or in dreams, often manifest themselves if there is very strong actual or
imagined oppression by the man, or they are a way of exacting revenge, or to bring
about greater safeguards in one’s own sphere, also by means of close attraction and
strong depreciation of the man. Fantasies of prostitution4 in these cases indicate the
neurotic, exaggerating view on the power of the sexual urge and serve the same
safeguarding purpose. Generally speaking, the suspicion is justified that female patients
who speak easily about their sexuality are painting out their own bogeyman with great
exaggeration. Reality is always in their favor. Among girls, one may often find the holy
conviction of their infidelity quite prominently. One may conclude from this that for
them even a single man would be too much and that they want to protect themselves
from love and especially from marriage: ‘for where would my passion lead me?’ The
actual infidelity of many male and female neurotics is often also the result of the fear of
the single partner whose superiority they fear. An understanding of the accompanying
symptoms, fear of being alone, agoraphobia, fear of social situations, etc., unsocial
behavior, fixation of childhood faults, the disease itself, the depreciation of the other
sex, these all provide more grips to come to an understanding of the fictional masculine
goal of these characteristic traits. Often, despised love gives rise to a feeling of
depreciation of the personality to such a degree that hate, indifference or infidelity are
brought about as a masculine protest. I have found that marital infidelity is invariably
an act of revenge.
A number of observations should be added here, which I was able to make among
neurotics suffering from jealousy. These are all concerned with the search for one’s own
influence on the partner and every situation, even if it is only half-way suitable, will be
used for the experiment. The insatiableness with which the neurotic puts his partner to
the test clearly indicates his lack of self-confidence, his insecurity, so that it may easily
be seen how his jealous attempts serve to make his partner notice him more, to attract
more attention to himself, and in this way to safeguard his feeling of self-worth. One
will observe how in all these cases the old feeling of being neglected and depreciated
revives, even on the slightest occasion, together with the old childish attitude of wishing
to have everything, wishing to attain proof of superiority over the partner. A glance, a
conversation among company, a word of thanks for assistance, a show of sympathy for
a picture, an author, a relative, even an indulgent attitude towards a servant girl may be
taken as an occasion for the operation. In severe cases one will get the unmistakable
impression that the neurotic cannot come to rest because he does not trust himself to be
quietly happy on account of his deficiencies. The neurosis now develops, in seeking to
bind the partner to the neurotic’s own person by an arrangement of attacks and in
attempting to arouse the partner’s pity, while, on the other hand, the attack may be
intended as a punishment and a rule for the partner. Headaches, crying fits, conditions
of weakness, paralysis, attacks of anxiety and depression, prolonged lapses into silence,
etc., have the same value as falling into alcoholism, masturbation, perversion or
dissoluteness. The lines of distrust and doubt—often about the legitimacy of the
children—become more pronounced, outbursts of fury and scolding and suspicion of
the entire other sex are frequent phenomena and reveal the other aspect of jealousy, as a
preparation for the depreciation of the other. Often, pride prevents the neurotic of
becoming conscious of his jealousy. Behavior will remain the same. Quite frequently
the situation is made worse by the fact that the other party meets the helplessness of the
jealous person with an unconscious satisfaction, thus providing a firm basis for his
superiority feeling and, consequently, failing to find the right tone, the appropriate
gesture, to at least prevent the jealousy from developing further. Jealousy of children
often leads to serious mistakes in their upbringing. The threat of the belief in miracles to
one’s own magical power by births or by aging will nearly always accentuate the
jealous impulse in predisposed people.
The frequent cases of sickness, related to compulsion neurosis, that manifest themselves
in that the sufferer is nearly constantly getting into quarrels and disputes with his
enviroment I would like to call ‘conflict neurosis.’ In order to maintain this situation of
conflict, neurotics occasionally seize on all kinds of grounds for suspicion, accusing
others by using generally accepted, long-winded ethic formulas, perceiving with great
ease all kinds of connections and secret plans, so that the relationship with paranoia
cannot be dismissed. In their urge for conflicts and in their ambitious disputatiousness,
they sometimes violate the immunity of logic, so that their ‘twaddle’ and their absurd
behavior brings them close to the hebephrenics. Their fate is terrible. One will without
exception find a cowardly avoidance of the true problems of their life. This nourishes
their tendency for conflicts because it keeps them occupied, distracted and relieved
from their tasks. If Individual-Psychological treatment is not undertaken, the patient
will remain untreatable and uncured and his life will be lost in dementia præcox,
hebephrenia, or paranoia. This kind of ‘uncurability’ must, in addition, serve to justify
the disastrous diagnosis and therapeutical nihilism.
4See ‘Psychology der Prostitution.’ In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie,

l.c.
Endnotes for Practical Part II-VII
a Jacob and Esau

According to the Old Testament book of Genesis (27, 1-40), the younger son Jacob
contrived to get his father’s blessing by using a trick, thus making an enemy of his older
brother Esau.
(footnote 1) Furtmüller, Aline
(1883 Vienna – 1941 USA): Ph.D., the wife of Carl Furtmüller (see endnote for
‘footnote
10’ on page 165), née Klatschko, the daughter of an important socialist Russian
emigrant. She
was a member of the City Council of ‘Red Vienna’ and noted pedagog. In 1939 she
emigrated to
the USA.
(footnote 1) Kampf der Geschwister In: Heilen und Bilden 1914.
b Czerny

See endnote on page 19.

c exsudative diathesis
See endnote on page 19.
d Strümpell

For general information, see endnote ‘n’ on page 19. Strümpell’s asthma theory
was published in: Ueber das Asthma bronchiale und seine Beziehungen zur
sogenannten exsudativen Diathese. Medizinische Klinik 6, 1910, 889-894. See also: Die
Pathologie und Therapie des Asthma bronchiale. Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für
physikalische Medizin 3, 1910, 16-29.
e Groos

See endnote on page 40.

Practical Part II - VIII
Fear of the Partner — The Ideal in the Neurosis — Insomnia and Compulsive
Sleeping — Neurotic Comparison of Man and Woman — Forms of the Fear of Women
In the striving of the neurotic to attain his guiding goal of superiority, it is
inevitable, as we have stressed before, that the fear of making a decision proclaims
itself most oustandingly as the fear of the other sex, the touchstone of one’s own power,
the fulfiller of the guiding idea. Within the family, in games, in their gathering of the
most varied experiences, in fantasy, in daydreams, in the way they experience actual
and imagined occurrences, both boys and girls begin to make preparations for the
struggle for superiority at such an early stage, in such profusion and with such unity,
that by the time they reach puberty definite favorable or unfavorable predispositions for
love and marriage already exist, a fact which in itself predetermines the choice as well
as the direction of their eroticism within narrow limits. And now consider of what kind
this predetermination of the neurotic’s object of love might be! There is the desire to
dominate, the hypersensitivity, the ambition, the discontent, the egoism, the impatience,
and all those neurotic, fundamental aspects of character we have already described, the
safeguarding dispositions such as mistrust, caution, jealousy, the depreciation tendency,
looking out for imperfections everywhere, the neurotic digressions and subterfuges,
which initially are used by the neurotic in his striving to put himself in a situation of
subordination, which he is then able to use as a basis to prove his superiority or to take
flight. The neurotic’s set of mutually dependent preconditions becomes involved and
demands for love yet another quality which is difficult or impossible to fulfill, or the
partner must (Platoa and many modern psychologists of sexuality) ‘supply what is
lacking,’ which is paramount to saying that the partner must fulfill or represent the
personality idea that the other has constructed as a compensation.1 The normal child
also expects the future, and more in particular his choice in love, to fulfill his ideals.
But in due course of time, after letting his idea drive him as an expedient, the normal
child will become able to turn away from it to confront and cope with reality. Not so the
neurotic. He is unable to change his neurotic perspective by himself, to dispose of his
now rigid, fixed principles; he must obey his own traits of character. Chained to his own
style of life, he brings his old prejudices and biases even into his love relations and
behaves as if these should not bring him reality, companionship and partnership, but
should vouch for the safeguarding of his idea, the triumph of his exaggerated
superiority ideal. And soon there will be disappointment. For the neurotic introduces
and protects it as a subterfuge, as a safeguard against the depreciatory distancing effect
of his fictional final goal. This disappointment provides the adequate basis to continue
the struggle against the partner, to make use of every opportunity to humiliate him. And
after all, these were the most immediate goals of the old neurotic predispositions.
1Jung now describes this as the ‘spouse-imago,’ but he makes it out to be too general a

principle.
Unconsciously, the fear of the sexual partner hovers in the psyche of the growing
neurotic as if he anticipated the end of his fiction in the near future, and with it the
destruction of his feeling of self-worth, the lodestar of his insecurity in the chaos of life.
He sets up ideals in order to devalue reality. He often narcissistically pushes up his
feeling of self-worth to the highest possible degree so as to make any partner seem
small. He surrounds himself with a wall of the crassest egoism to provide proof of his
own and others’ unfitness. He arranges in a neurotic manner doubt, insecurity and
awkwardness, maintaining old childhood mistakes and constructing new deficiencies in
order to keep himself at a distance. And he invents weaknesses, submissiveness and
masochistic impulses to provide a pretext and to scare himself. The power of the sexual
drive for him develops into an ‘overvalued idea’ (Wernickeb) because he needs it, and
he experiences his own sexual desire as the superiority of the other sex. The neurotic is
incapable of love, not because he has repressed his sexuality, but because his rigid
predispositions lie in the direction of his fiction, in the direction of power and not in
that of community. The neurotic caricatures of a Don Juan and a Messalinac are
neurotics despite their sexuality. Those who become inverts and perverts have already
escaped the cliff that threatens them and from then on are trying to make a virtue of
necessity. And where the idea of incest seems to restrain the love-life, we have been
able to show that it represents to the neurotic, afraid as he is to make a decision, a
secure refuge, the safeguarding asexual way to the mother or the father, wrapped up in a
sexual metaphor.
The flight from the partner, in particular the flight from the wife, is more
successful among those neurotically disposed people who found their way into a
profession or into artistic activity at an early stage. It is, however, certain that the fear of
decisions, of the future, of life, may overtake them in the midst of their work when they
are threatened by a defeat. Often, however, the neurotic will find the means to safeguard
his feeling of self in satisfying work, or his talents allow him, by transforming his
fiction, to contest for the palm of victory in art. Not infrequently the motive and
contents of his creative work that drove him into the safeguarding domain of the arts
will then appear: the power of women, and the fear of the female.
In line with this is the magnificent, effective fascination that appeals to us in many
myths and artistic and philosophical creations: the fact that women are to blame for
every great evil — the banal cherchez la femme.d Baudelairee expresses this idea in a
bizarre way: ‘I cannot imagine a beautiful woman without some kind of misfortune
connected with her.’ Mystically and sublimely it is expressed in the myth of Evef, traces
of which have never disappeared from poetry. The Iliadg is built on this foundation, as
well as the Thousand and One Nights,h and when we take a closer look, so is every
great artistic creation. What is their guiding idea? Nothing less than to obtain a
standpoint in life’s insecurity, in the struggle with love, in the fear of women. )@` B@L
`Jj!i
The woman as a sphynx, as a demon, as a vampire, as a witch, as a manmurdering
monster, as dispenser of mercy—the sexual impulse, excited by the masculine protest,
is reflected in these images, which have their counterpart in the caricature of woman, in
obscene outpourings of gall, in anecdotes and jokes, and in degrading comparisons. In
the same manner the neurotic, philistine consciousness of men and the desire for
superiority demands the firm convictions whose depreciation tendency directs itself
towards denying women equal rights, sometimes even their right to exist.
As a natural consequence of his attempt to find security from women, the
neurotic’s train of thought may lead into another direction, one that moves away from
the present and from life. Schopenhauerj came to follow this route—the preparations
originating in the hostile relation with his mother—towards a denial of life, of the
present, of all times. Somewhat less consistently and methodically, many patients take
flight in their fear of women, but they constantly lust for the fulfillment of their fiction,
in fantasies and dreams, which they weave all around the future. Every neurotic shows
this trait, wants to investigate and illuminate the future in order to safeguard himself in
good time. His cautious-anxious expectation sets the keynote for future events: gray,
gloomy, full of danger. For that is how they must appear to him in order to become
effective as a threatening incentive. Now he is able, while keeping an eye on the
greatest danger, to draw out the lines of his characteristics and predispositions with
razor-sharp clarity, so as to secure himself. Now he believes to have found the road to
his guiding goal, and instead or besides his ambition or his longing for victory and
triumph, for respect, elevation, power and admiration, he allows his neurotic symptoms
and attacks to become effective. Under the force of his guiding line, he experiences the
anticipation and calculation of reality of sober individuals as the gift of prophecy.
However, as a result of the neurotic efforts to think ahead, attention will be drawn to
certain problems which are arranged according to the rigid, antithetical apperception of
the neurotic, which values a defeat as death, as inferiority, as femininity, and a victory
as immortality, higher value, masculine triumph, while the hundreds of other
possibilities of life are obliterated in an abstracting, antithetical manner. In the same
manner the road is entered towards the anticipation of future terror and triumph, as well
as to hallucinatory accentuation for the sake of security. Psychoses show this direction
most clearly, melancholy and mania as anticipations of the pure antithesis ‘below or
above,’ dementia præcox, paranoia and cyclothymia, in their avoidance of the facts of
life.
The recognition and extension, in a fundamental way, of the lines of character now
follow, in conformity with the final goal. The accentuation of the traits of greed and
parsimony is intended to safeguard against humiliating poverty, pedantry against
difficulties, ethical characteristics against shame, and all of these together to safeguard
against love relations, marriage, or subjection to the partner, while providing, at the
same time, a possibility to attack the partner, the everready motive to depreciate him.
The neurotic’s self-created set of mutually dependent preconditions as an exclusive
principle is held in high esteem, turns into an inventory of deified morals or into the
highest wisdom about life. The insecurity of our social system, our ethical points of
view, and the difficulties of bringing up children provide the welcome excuse to set the
limits of the attitude to life as narrowly as possible, anxiously looking into the future,
and the obscure if really hardly suitable problem of heredity is brought forward in order
to remain single. Many take refuge in religion, giving up their present life and whipping
up their feelings of morality and asceticism in order to partake of the happiness, of the
triumph in the ‘beyond,’ while already being with God in this world. The asexual role is
also arranged, and everything becomes a means to attain the personality ideal, which for
them is the result of the situation and of the neurotic perspective on life and its
experiences. At times, security in relation to the other is achieved by a lack of
satisfaction in sexual relations, and a colossal increase of disappointment, arrangements
in which the patient is clearly lending assistance in finding arguments against the other.
When the patient lets his predispositions come into play against the
psychotherapist, this is just another aspect of the fear of the competitor. In her own way,
the neurotic female patient is simultaneously fighting, in the physician, against the man,
and attempting to escape his masculine influence, which she often apperceives most
terrifyingly in a sexual image. The male neurotic secretly tries to undermine the
superiority of the therapist, which he apperceives as masculine, which is occasionally
given the form of a sexual image as well. And both will put up resistance during the
treatment, as they have always resisted when they allow external influence, when they
must take an active part in life or are confronted by a decision.
Sometimes one finds patients who flee from their partner into the past. Their
interest for antiques, heraldry, dead languages, etc., is thus tremendously intensified and
they often become quite skillful. This skill is absent in those neurotics whose attention
is turned particularly to graveyards, death notices and funerals.
I mentioned above that the motive of the fear of women is a very strong stimulus
to fantasy and an incentive to become an artist. Here is a passage from Grillparzer’sk
autobiography that illustrates several aspects of our descriptions:
“Like every other healthy man I felt myself attracted by the more beautiful part of
the human race, but I was far too dissatisfied with myself in order to believe myself
capable of making deep impressions in a short time. Could it have been, perhaps, the
vague idea of poetry and poets, or even my natural intractability, which, if it does not
repel, attracts for sheer contrariness? I found myself deeply involved while I still
believed myself to be only at the first advances. This brought pleasure and unhappiness
in my immediate environment, though more of the latter, because my real goal still was
to preserve for myself that untroubled state which would not make it difficult or even
entirely impossible to approach my real goddess, art.”
It is in conformity with this fundamental disposition, animating both artist and
neurotic, when they both, taking into consideration the uncertainty of their triumph,
regard the attraction which women exert as threatening, as dangerous, as compulsive,
and their own feelings of love as servitude and subjection. By which I do not at all deny
the miserable reality of these relations. For any examination, however sober, will find in
love a mutual adaptation, or subjection if you want. It is, however, unequivocal proof of
the relentless drive to self-assertion of those involved, a drive which we have more than
once pointed out as a neurotic overcompensation of their neurotic inferiority feeling,
that they one-sidedly sense this subjection, feel it is important and because of it
renounce any pleasurable surrender. The guiding goal does not allow the development
of fitting predispositions, or they are tolerated only in the form of an excessive,
masochistic exaggeration, which is in its turn itself used to safeguard and assert. The
lack of community feeling makes surrender an impossibility, and also companionship,
which is the only secure anchorage of love and marriage.
Occasionally, the urge for self-assertion will seek other channels as soon as the
patient begins to experience his own sexual tension as the superior strength of the
partner; wishes and attempts to escape this power by satiation, by orgies, will follow.
Even the desire and intention of castration, and, as a result of the same mechanism,
attempts at asceticism and penance, flagellation, etc., will occur, demanded by the
inexorable safeguarding in order to secure peace from the demon love. There is also no
other way to explain the strong, constantly recurring perversions, in particular
manifestations of masochism, that are an expression of the compulsion to convince
oneself even to the smallest detail of the partner’s tremendous power, in order to be able
to use this conviction of the other’s power and one’s own weakness to create a general
bogeyman, yet simultaneously to make the partner into an instrument of masochistic
effects. The actual result of these corrections of the neurotic’s boundaries will be a
strong deviation from the normal line, which he fears most of all. The arranged self-
humiliation, however, makes the lure of the masculine protest very strong and puts
strong emphasis on it in the sense of the fictional final goal. ‘It must be night if
Friedland’s stars are to shine.’l Now his attempts on the lines of these circuitous routes
will be once more along the neurotic line, showing sadistic elements and a great
fanaticism for cleanliness wherever he is confronted with ideas or facts of the rage
against his belonging to one sex, and against his partner. Alternatively, in the struggle
against the judgment of others, against the law, the patient may content himself with the
use of an often outrageous logic to provide an appearance of justification for his
neurotic circuitous routes, so that in this way his superiority will once more become
active. This may also be seen in the argumentation of homosexuals who, in identical
fashion, owe their fear of the other sex to the neurotic deviation from the norm.2
The prestige that must be safeguarded is invariably pushed to the fore with great
persistence, until the revelations of analysis reach the point where in the memories of
the man the neurotically grouped thought comes to light that his inferiority will prevent
him from victory over the woman. Very often one will find that certain elements from
earliest childhood, such as the dethronement by younger brothers and sisters, are carried
over into the style of life. In the memories of female patients this is represented by the
feeling of inferiority and the neurotic terror towards the humiliation of the feminine
role. One may observe how these reopened trains of thought, originating in the very
earliest years of childhood, are immediately followed by megalomanic ideas, often
disguised as as narcissism, sadism, and exhibitionism, aiming for the strongest possible
confirmation of a fictional superiority. It is easy to understand them as preparatory
attempts to find compensation for the inferiority feeling, as is brought forth by the
compulsion of the guiding fiction, as secondary neurotic formations which signify: ‘I
want to be a complete man, a conqueror!’ We have spoken often before about the
change of form of this idea, which in girls often results in the following attitude of
predisposition: ‘I want to be above all women, nearly a higher being!’
 I can illustrate several of these correlations with the following case of a female
patient. A 19-year old girl came under my treatment for depression, with ideas of
suicide, insomnia, and an incapacity for work. She had become a designer
(compensation for her myopia) just to have some profession. Except for an indication of
tuberculosis and myopia no physical symptoms could be found. Her relatives described
her as a child who used to be obstinate, and as someone who was very eager to leave
home to be independent. The mother and her only older brother had died of
tuberculosis.
The beginning of the treatment proved to be very difficult, because the patient sat
before me impassively and did not answer any of my questions. Only occasionally did
she express herself with a negative gesture, or answered with: “No.”
I cautiously set about to make her aware of her depreciation tendency against the
world, which is identical with her indifference. I show her how her persistent silence,
her negativism, her ‘no,’ can be traced back to this tendency, which is directed against
me as well. Then I begin to discuss the fact that her behavior indicates that she is
dissatisfied with her role as a girl against which she is trying to safeguard herself in this
way. The only answer I constantly get is ‘no,’ which was to be expected and which I
interpret as being directed against men. Her depression began during her stay at a
bathing resort. I now contend with great certainty that something must have happened
there that brought forth this ‘no,’ that is to say, that her feminine role had brusquely
been brought to her attention. She then told me that more than a year ago she had been
in another bathing resort, where she had made the acquaintance of a young man she
quite liked, and that they had begun caressing and kissing each other. One evening the
young man had assaulted her as if he were mad, and had wanted to touch her indecently.
She had fled and left the resort immediately. I point out to her that she had left—
understandably in other respects—at the very moment when the young man with his
behavior clearly wanted to force her into the feminine position, and I further remarked
that she must have had a similar experience this summer. The patient then tells me that
a guest at the resort, whose acquaintance she had made a short time before, had behaved
in the same way as the young man before. She had immediately left, as she had done
the year before.
2A. Adler, Problem der Homosexualität, l.c.

This ‘return of the identical’m immediately suggests that the patient must have
played a relevant part in the game herself, that she had been arranging encouragement
both times, only to stop short at the same moment. The patient provides us with
valuable support for this with her remark that the kisses they exchanged had by no
means irritated her. I show her that she acquiesces only to the point where she considers
her feminine role brought into question. Her initial courage, as an idea of conquest, is
consistent with her masculine goal.
At this stage her insomnia vanished. She informs me about this improvement,
which is after all quite remarkable, with the depreciating remark that she feels she
would like to sleep all day and night now. Those who, like myself, have come to know
the excited aggression of female patients in the course of psychotherapeutic treatment,
directed as it is against the superior masculine physician, and who have thus sharpened
their perception for the manner in which neurotics express themselves, will not fail to
understand this utterance of our patient. Her expression clearly shows that she has
recognized the result of the treatment, but that she is now trying to touch up this result,
and thus to depreciate me. She points out to me, in a metaphorical way, that one evil has
only been replaced by another.
When she is more closely questioned the patient indicates that during her four
weeks of insomnia she had constantly been thinking during the night how worthless life
really was. We understand that she did not merely think of this idea, but had actually
been working on it. Now, in a confrontation with her masculine enemy, in the form of a
physician, who is subjected to the same valuation as every other man, who exposes her
safeguarding tendency and in doing this undermines her attempt to gain security by
means of her insomnia, and who is supposed to lead her back to normal life, she is
making an effort, being forced to sleep, to belittle him by an excess of sleep.
Neurotic insomnia3 is a symbolic attempt to escape defenselessness (also that of
sleep) and to devise safeguards against defeat. It is the most significant attitude of the
fighter: be on guard! The dream is a different form of this effort, a compromise so to
speak, since it responds to the defenselessness of sleep, and so to the feeling of
inferiority, with a self-delusion which is determined by the individual goal.4 The dream,
so my observations tell me, is always urging for safeguards and accordingly its function
is to think ahead. That it accomplishes this by using the facts of experience may easily
be understood, and this is how in the dream’s contents and thoughts one finds the
accumulated results of experience which led Freud to his heuristically valuable but
otherwise imperfect and onesided theory of dreams. Among other, later dream theories
only that of Maedern has come close to my point of view.
3See A. Adler, ‘Über Schlaflosigkeit.’ In: Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychology,

l.c.
After a long hesitation, and after having called her attention to the negative
implication of this hesitation, the patient comes up with the following dream:
“I am in front of the ‘Steinhof’ (Vienna’s large mental hospital). But I hurry past,
because I see a dark figure inside.”
In order to entirely avoid influencing my patient artificially, particularly in the
interpretation of the dream, I refrain from any explanation of my dream theory and only
refer to the fact that the dream represents trains of thought that betray how the patient is
attempting, by thinking ahead in the direction of her style of life, to safeguard herself
for a situation she experiences in a present problem that reminds her of her
defenselessness against life. In cases such as the one just mentioned, in which the urge
to discuss the fear of the female role is preeminent, I also point out how sleep may be
felt as the will to participate in society, because it is necessary for cooperation and must
therefore be eliminated in the case of ‘spoil-sport.’
The figure of speech ‘lying in Morpheus’o arms’—the frequent sensations of being
paralyzed, being crushed down, the analysis of nightmares, of witches,p etc.,
furthermore the lines of the inferiority feeling that I discovered in all dreams, lines from
which the dream elevates itself to the feeling of superiority—curiously misunderstood
by Freud, as appears from a critical remark of his, as bisexuality in the dream,—all
occasions, then, where the process of confining sleep awakens an individual association
of a feeling of submission, point without doubt towards the fact that every dream must
exhibit a progression from the ‘feminine’ to the ‘masculine’ line. That not every dream
is suitable to convince the beginner of the correctness of my view I have already
stressed myself. The reason for this is that often only part of the turn towards the
victorious finale, the beginning or the end, finds expression, that moreover in a sketch
—and as such we should regard dreams—only a part of the meaning and significance of
traces of thought and allusions can be retrieved and completed, which will never be
difficult for the experienced. This is another thing that I teach the patient, namely that
he should regard the dream as a sketch of a painting, the details of which he must fill in
according to his own impressions.
After these explanations the intelligent patient elaborates without assistance:
“Steinhof means: So this thought indicates that I am on the verge of insanity. But I
hurry away from there! Then it occurs to me what you are always telling me, that I am
running away from my role as a woman. According to that, ‘becoming insane’ and
‘feminine role’ are one and the same!”
I now lead her on to force a meaning into the dream, using the patient’s spirit of rivalry,
which I am familiar with, to excite her zeal when difficulties present themselves, for
instance by saying: “One certainly might imagine all kinds of things there!”
Patient: “Perhaps that it would be insane to play a role as a woman?”
I: “That would be an answer to a question. But what would have been the question?”
Patient: “You told me yesterday that I shouldn’t be afraid of my role as a woman.”
I: “An answer directed against me, then, in line with our conversations, a struggle
against any change in your method. And the black figure?”
Patient: “Death perhaps?”
I: “Now try to fit death into this context.”
The patient succeeded in doing this only with difficulty, although it is quite clear that
she is motivating her flight from femininity with the fear of death in order to make it
sufficiently strong.5 The relation between sexuality and death is often the subject of
philosophy and literature. The analyses of neurotics often show this relation in the sense
of a set of mutually dependent preconditions that accentuate emotional disturbances.
The meaning of the dream appears to be the patient’s predisposition, now directed
against the physician, and is understood from the patient’s fantasies as follows: it would
be crazy to submit to a man—equal to death. According to her own evaluation,
however, she already has subjected herself by the fact that she has been able to sleep
since treatment began. This dream therefore is a revolt against sleep, and her
depreciating remark that she would now like to sleep night and day, that is to say, flee
once again from the feminine role which the community demands, is supported by the
same tendency. In doing this, the neurotic predisposition of this patient against the
possibility of a man getting influence over her has now become apparent, and it is
shown that the patient acted and dreamed as if she knew about her guiding goal.6
This fundamental predisposition, her depreciation tendency, her lust to be victorious
over men, and her neurotic safeguarding tendency, threatening as it is in the background
with the fear of death and madness, had caused the actual development of the neurosis,
also by their accentuation in order to provide a higher degree of security. The patient,
because of the enormous obstacle of her feminine role, becomes unfit for life and finds
an evasion on the useless neurotic side. The neurotic manner of apperception, which
conjures up a neurotic set of mutually dependent preconditions between love and
madness and death, has something of the ring of poetry. How firmly it is lodged in the
patient’s mind is clear in her first account: the young man had fallen over her “as if he
were mad.”
Often one may find in the anamneses of male neurotics that they have been under the
influence of a strong woman, mother, teacher, sister, who despite or besides their
feminine role also played a masculine role, who were ‘above,’ who did not lack
recognition or sometimes disapproval by their surroundings, indicating that they were
really regarded as men. This circumstance may also often provide support for the
accentuation of the insecurity of the neurotically predisposed boy, who is trying to
convince himself about his masculinity by trying to understand the differences between
the sexes. Such children already failed ‘to come to terms’ with the mother. A special
case of safeguarding by means of knowledge, sexual curiosity, forces them to confirm
their sexual superiority over and over by inspecting themselves, a need which
approaches the masculine guiding line even more because it is simultaneously created
from a preparation for the future, to acquire a definite knowledge and full understanding
of the female body. The neurotic’s insecurity will remain with him as the pretext and
foundation of his fear of women often even after he is married, so that one hears it said
that the female body, the condition of virginity, and the legitimacy of the children and
fatherhood are mysteries, just as women themselves are mysteries. The satisfaction
which is obtained by looking at the female body is from time to time accompanied, in
neurotically disposed children, by a sinister feeling of danger, as if obscure ideas were
arising in the boy’s mind, that his future life, his victory and his defeat were dependent
on his solution of the sexual problem. In addition, the nature of things often is such that
the child can actually only see these things in one position, when the woman is above
the boy. Even this minute circumstantial detail, as I have repeatedly shown, may often
be found as a figurative representation in the fantasies of the neurotic in fear of women.
Ganghoferq and Stendhalr give nearly identical accounts of such a terrifying experience
in their childhood, an experience which it is suggested left permanent traces. Yet their
terror was probably rather a safeguard for their injured masculine prestige, and the
agitating scene remained a metaphorical memento of the caution regarding the power of
women.
Often the depreciation tendency will spring into action at the point where the
superiority of women assumes a threatening aspect, leading to a comparison of male
and female merits and deficiencies. In dreams and fantasies, in jokes and in science, the
figurative-abstract representation of the inferiority of women often resorts to
expressions of lost body parts or increased numbers of body cavities. One of my
patients who suffered from vertigo once dreamed, after his wife had made a particularly
violent scene in front of him, the following dream, which brings about the depreciation
of the woman who is superior to him in a succinct and fundamental way:
“The image of a birch trunk emerged. At one point there was the scar of a branch with a
round swelling. A branch had fallen off there, and I had the impression as if it were a
female sexual organ.”
Similar dreams have been discussed by myself and others. However, to me it became
clear that the meaning of such dreams was the metaphorically expressed question of the
difference between the sexes, answered in a childish way by saying that a girl is a boy
who has lost his masculinity. The above dream fits itself into the psychic situation of the
dreamer by establishing the idea, ‘I am a man who has been deprived of his manliness,
who is weak and ill, who is in danger of being ‘below,’ of falling down.’ Now he has a
basis of operation, he sees that he is depreciated, and takes breath, bracing himself to
regain predominance. From now on, when he is awake, his masculine protest will be
expressed in his desire to dominate, in outbreaks of rage and acts of infidelity. Whereas
in his dream only the point of departure, the feeling of unmanliness, had found
expression.
In this respect I would like to remark that one often hears from neurotics that in
moments of personal danger, or when they are threatened with defeat, they notice a
shortening or contraction of the genitals, occasionally also a feeling of pain that very
strongly urges them to end this situation.7 Most often this phenomenon is found when
there is a fear of heights, a fear of falling. The shortening of the genitals when taking a
bath nearly always causes the neurotic to react with a feeling of ill humor, sometimes
accompanied by pressure in the head.
It has already been emphasized that homosexuality, as a tendency and as behavior,
originates in the fear of the partner of the other sex. In addition, it should briefly be
mentioned how the evaluation of the partner simultaneously elevates the value of the
perverted neurotic. In the neurosis one invariably finds homosexuality, even when it is
brought into practice, as nothing more than a symbol by means of which one’s own
superiority must be placed beyond question by the elimination of one difficulty—
women. This mechanism is similar to that of religious mania in which being near to
God also implies an elevation.
One of the forms in which the fear of women particularly likes to disguise itself is that
of syphilidophobia. The reasoning that the sufferers of this phobia (Adler,
‘Sypilidophobie,’ in Theorie und Praxis l.c.) usually follow is this: they fear, on the
grounds of no matter what feelings of inferiority, for which they have all kinds of
reasons ready at hand, even though occasionally these may lack any conscious
motivation, that they will be unable to play a dominating role regarding women. In this
manner they follow the road of steadily ongoing depreciation of women and come to
suspicious trains of thought, by means of which they safeguard themselves against
sexual relations. Sometimes women are an enigma, sometimes they are criminal
creatures always on the lookout for adornment and expense and sexually insatiable. The
suspicion constantly arises that a woman is only after financial support, that she is out
to capture the man, that she is crafty and sly and always bent on evil. These ways of
reasoning are universal and can be found in every period of history. They manifest
themselves in the most sublime and the most common artistic creations, they play their
game in the minds and efforts of the wise and the foolish, and they create in men and in
society a constant predisposition which develops suspicious and cautious traits in order
to always keep in touch with the enemy and to be able to fend off her insidious attacks
at the right time. It is an error to think that it is only the man who harbors distrust
against the sexual partner. Identical traits may be found in women, often not as
distinctive, when fictions of her own strength put a check on the doubt of her own
value, but flaring up only the stronger when the feeling of depreciation becomes too
powerful. In this attitude, the lack of any feeling of intimate connection, the lack of
close attachment with people, manifests itself very often.
In the disputations of pious wise men in the middle agess questions arose as to whether
women had a soul, whether they were even human, and the general emotional
preoccupation with ideas of this kind eventually led to the insane burning of witches of
the following centuries, in which government, church and a blinded populace all lent a
hand. These hateful devaluations of women, such as we find them, together with their
more amiable variations, in Christian, Jewish and Islamic religious customs and rules,
will irresistably break forth from the psyche of the fearing, insecure man, filling the
neurotic’s world of ideas so completely that one will find the tendency to depreciate the
partner as the most remarkable characteristic trait in the neurotic psyche. At this point
the outposts which must provide the security of the feeling of self-worth, with its
insistent demand for power, have been firmly established and the peculiar play of the
neurotic characteristic traits begins. An ongoing testing and probing, a desire to
subjugate, an urge to find faults with and to depreciate the partner now set in, always
favored by the fact that the tendentious interest and attention are directed to the sole
purpose of keeping in touch with the enemy and to safeguard against a surprise attack.
As long as this depreciation tendency, with its peripheral offshoots—such as distrust,
fear, jealousy, negativism and the desire for power— remains in existence, a cure for
the neurosis is out of the question. As we have seen, great and widely recognized works
of art and literature owe their origin to this tendency. The same line leads from the
Lysistratat to Die Kreutzelschreiberu as leads from the Gorgo Medusav to the distorted
grimace of syphilis as it arose before the eyes of Lenauw or Ganghofer.x The guiding
line that provides the keynote in Tolstoy’sy Kreutzer Sonata and that strives after the
depreciation of women had been perceptible even in his boyhood, when he pushed his
future bride out of the window, and it was still powerful in his old age, when he fled his
home and went to die far away. This ancient guiding line developed into
syphilidophobia by a change of form that expresses itself in the myth of the poison girl8
in antiquity, in the middle ages and at the beginning of the modern age in a fear of
witches, demons, vampires and sprites. Poggioz related the story of a cleric who
violated a girl. The girl changed into a devil and vanished with a stench.
All these trains of thought, returning in similar fashion in the dreams and the psyche of
the neurotic, reveal a man who is constantly anticipating, insecure in his masculinity,
who is attempting to safeguard himself from real life by setting up bugbears just as
much as by retreating into veneration of an unattainable ideal for this very same life.
The often facetious note in such an attitude towards women is entirely meaningless in
so far as our view is concerned. It rather shows an attempt not to be guilty of any
exaggeration, to preserve decorum, and safeguard oneself from ridicule by the gesture
of joking. Similarly we see this in Gogol,aa whose strong safeguarding tendencies are
perceptible in every vein of his writings. In The Fair Of Sorovhinsk, he has a character
say:9 ‘Good Lord in Heaven, why do you punish us poor sinners like this? Surely
there’s enough rubbish around already, did you really have to put women into the world
too?’ In Dead Souls, this great author, neurotic during his entire life and a sufferer of
compulsive masturbation who died in a madhouse, has his hero reflect on laying eyes
on a young woman:
“A charming little woman! But what’s best about her—the best about her is that she
seems to have been dismissed from some institute or boarding school only just now, and
that she doesn’t have anything specifically feminine about her yet, none of those
charactersitics that disfigure the whole sex. At this moment she is still a pure child,
everything about her is plain and simple; she speaks out whatever is in her heart, and
she laughs when she feels like it. Anything could be made out of her; she may become a
lovely being, but she may turn out as some deformed creature just as well—and that’s
probably what she’s going to be as soon as the aunts and mamas set themselves about
educating her. In a year they’ll stuff her so full with all this women’s rubbish that her
own father won’t recoginze her. She’ll be pompous and affected, she’ll turn and swirl
and curtsy according to rules she’s learned by heart, she’ll rack her brains about what
she should say, and to whom and how much, how to look her admirer in the face, and so
on, she’ll be constantly in great anxiety about whether she hasn’t said too much, and
finally she would have no idea any longer as to what she should do and walk through
life a one great lie. Shame! Devil!—Still, I’d really love to know who she is!”
4 See A. Adler, ‘Zum Problem des Traumes.’ In: Internat. Zeitschr. f.

Indiv.Psychologie, V. Jahrg. 1927.

5Please note how the dream tendentiously grabs its arguments ‘from the air,’ in order to

deceive the dreamer.

6Richard Wagner’s genius gave expression to this in the song of Erda: ‘My sleeping is

dreaming, my dreaming is thinking, my thinking is ruling knowledge.’ (see endnote)

7Sometimes this ‘feeling of pressure’ extends to the abdomen and the breast and cardiac

region, or it may even occur there only. Sometimes pollutions or erections may follow,
as a reactive symbol of the masculine final goal. The quite common genital type will
respond to fear and terror with genital excitement easier than others, just as the bladder
type will react with excitment of the bladder and the intestine type with excitement of
the digestive tract. Particularly pronounced genital types may eventually come to notice
a sexual overtone in any excitement so that for them the ‘sexual foundation of the
psyche’ will easily turn into a dogma.
8Wilhelm Hertz, ‘Die Sage vom Giftmädchen.’ In: Abh. d. bayer. Akademia d.

Wissenschaften. 1897. (see endnote)

9From O. Kaus, Der Fall Gogol. München, Reinhardt 1912. (see endnote)

Endnotes for Practical Part II-VIII

a Plato See endnote on page 208 for the meaning of to ‘supply what is lacking’.
b Wernicke, Carl

(1848 Tarnowitz/Upper Silesia – 1905 Thüringer Wald): Neurologist and

psychiatrist, professor of psychiatry and neurology in Breslau (1890-1904), appointed
in
Halle in 1904. In 1874 he discovered sensorial aphasia and was the first to formulate a
theory on aphasia.
c Don Juan, Messsalina

See endnote on page 144.

 d Cherchez la femme
‘Find the woman (who is behind all this)’ is from the play ‘Les Mohicans de
Paris’ (1864) of Alexandre Dumas Père. Similarly, Juvenal already has ‘There is hardly
a
dispute that was not caused by a woman.’ (Satires 6, 242).
e Baudelaire, Charles

(1821 – 1867): Literary critic, poet and translator of Edgar Allan Poe. In 1856 his
‘Fleurs du mal’ was published, for which he was sentenced for ‘immorality.’ French
romanticism, passion and modernity are decisive influences on his aesthetics.
f The myth of Eve

See the book of Genesis 2, 21ff, for the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib, and 3, 1-24
for the Fall of Adam and Eve.
g Iliad Epos in verse by Homer. About 3000 years old, it stands at the beginning of

Western literature. It deals with the kidnapping of Helena and the resulting siege of the
city of Troy.
h Thousand and One Nights

An Arab (Alf laila walaila) literary collection of novellas, fairy tales, sagas,
anecdotes, etc. The Indian frame story relates that the king refrains from killing the
clever Sheherazade because night after night she spins on her narrative yarn, whereas
all previous women were killed in the morning, the king’s revenge for his wife who had
deceived him.
i
j Schopenhauer
Also see endnote 'kk' on page 82. On the theory of the ‘denial of life’, see in
particular book II, chapter 43 of ‘The World as Will and Representation’. Schopenhauer
was particularly well-known for his misogyny.
k Grillparzer, Franz

(1791 Vienna – 1872): In his plays, the process of the decline of the traditional
idea of order in Austria and the protohistory of modern Vienna finds expression. In
1854
he formulated it as follows: ‘I come from other times/And hope to go yet into others.’
In
his autobiography (1853) the fear of losing his identity manifests itself; both his mother
and one of his brothers committed suicide. He takes up jobs as a private tutor, a
librarian
and an official in the ministry of finance. In ‘Die Ahnfrau’ (The Ancestress, 1817) he
makes a theme of redemption through fatal incest by having Jaromir fleeing into the
arms
of a ghostly primordial mother. In the tragedy ‘Sappho’ (1818), he deals with the
history
of the passion of this great Greek woman.
l It must be night if Friedland’s stars are to shine

‘Nacht muß es sein, wo Friedlands Sterne strahlen’. Said by Wallenstein in

Schiller’s ‘Wallensteins Tod (1799), 3, 10.
m return of the identical
See earlier endnote ‘aaa’ on page 28 (Nietzsche).
n Maeder, Alphonse

Physician, psychiatrist, member of the staff at Burghölzli with among others C.

G. Jung, whose student he was from 1928 on. According to Maeder, dreams have a
teleological function, which brings him close to Jung’s and Adler’s position. Later he
developed the method of the ‘short psychotherapy’ (Kurzpsychotherapie), which
emphasizes the processes of self-regulation and self-cure. According to Maeder’s
memoirs, he met Adler in March 1910.
o Morpheus

The god of dreams, known only from the work of Ovid, who appears to sleepers in
human form at night. For Ovid, see also endnote ‘q’ on page 146.
p nightmares, witches

Etymologically, the word ‘mare’ in ‘nightmare’ is explained as ‘a kind of goblin

supposed to produce nightmare by sitting on the chest of the sleeper’, producing a
feeling of suffocation (from OED). For the word translated here as ‘witch’, Adler uses
‘trud’, a dialect word from Southern German, indicating a creature that may appear in
animal or human form and may even transofrm itself into an object.
(footnote 6) Wagner
See also endnote ‘ee’ on page 125. Erda, in the operas Rheingold and Siegfried, is
the mother of the Fates as well as of Brünhilde; also the German name of the Norse
goddess Jörd, mother of Thor, the goddess of earth.
q Ganghofer, Ludwig

(1855 – 1920): Bavarian Swabian whose stories form a bridge between

Rosegger’s poetic reality and lighter forms of literature. In 1881 he became playwright
for the Viennese ‘Ring Theater’, and later went to Munich. His memoirs, published in
1909 as ‘Lebenslauf eines Optimisten’—Life of an Optimist—show his naive good
faith
in all of life and give a colorful and variegated picture of his times, filled with people
and
adventures.
r Stendhal

(1783 Grenoble – 1842 Paris): Pseudonym of Henri Beyle, French consul in

Triest and the Vatican, novelist and essayist. In ‘De l’amour’ he provides a ‘physiology
of love’, that is to say, ‘an exact and scientific description of a kind of madness’ which
he
sets in several European countries. His great novels ‘Le rouge et le noir’ (1830) and ‘La
Chartreuse de Parme’ (1839) are characterized by alternating lyrical passages and
scientistic explanations, a result of his interest in philosophy and French romanticism.
s the disputations of pious wise men in the middle ages See endnote ‘z’ on page 235.
t Lysistrata

A comedy by Aristophanes (445 – 385 BC Athens), first performed in 411 BC.

Lysistrata advises the women of Athens to grab possessions from the strongholds and
the
national treasure and to refuse any contact with their husbands until the latter would
have
ended the Peloponnesian war. Many later adaptations, among others by Anzengruber
(see
next note).
u Die Kreutzelschreiber

Comedy by Ludwig Anzengruber (1839 – 1889 Vienna), in which farmers’ wives,

persuaded by the priests who act as their confessors, take the attitude of Lysistrata in
Aristophanes’ play, and refuse their husbands any contact because the men are
insubordinately refusing to accept the dogma of papal infallibility, which at the time
was new.
v Gorgo Medusa

According to Greek mythology, she was slain by Perseus, but also figures as his
spouse. Athena had taught him not to look straight into the face of Medusa, but only at
the image mirrored in his shield. Henceforth, Athena wore the mask-like head of Gorgo,
the so-called Gorgoneion, on her shield or beastplate.
w Lenau, Nikolaus

(1802 – 1850): Austrian writer, born in Hungary. A sufferer of melancholia, he

spent his life in sanatoria, the result of his unhappy love for Sophie von Löwenthal, the
wife of a friend of his. He is a lyricist of melancholy for whom nature is transformed
into
the animated bearer of his mood and feeling.
x Ganghofer y Tolstoy

Also see endnote ‘x’ on page 80. His story ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’ was published in
1891, a product of his old age. Its subjects are, according to the writer, ‘marital
relations’ and ‘sexual love’, in which the writer eventually recedes behind the moralist.
The frame story is about a conversation in a train between people whose ideas about
love are of the widest possible variety, and in which sensuality, disruption and revenge
play a central role. Tolstoy, whose alter ego in the story is called Pozdnysev, in contrast
to this, offers an ascetic-christian ideal of chastity and moderation.
z Poggio, Bracciolini

(1380 Arezzo – 1459 Florence): Italian humanist, a secretary in the Roman

Catholic Curia, eventually active as Chancellor in Florence. His work comprises
polemic
‘Invectivæ’ against contemporaries, a text aimed against monasticism called ‘Contra
hypocritas’, and also the ‘Facetiæ’, a collection of burlesque-erotic stories in a popular
style. His letters are of great significance for the history of civilization and reflect his
enthusiasm for classic antiquity, a period from which he rediscovered several important
manuscripts that had been lost in monastery libraries for centuries.
aa Gogol, Nikolay Vassilyevich

(1809 – 1852 Moscow): Russian writer from the Ukraine, well-known for his
grotesque representations of social and human wrongs. His ‘Dead Souls’ (1842),
originally meant to be the first part of a trilogy, offers a portrait gallery of property
owners who have been fossilized into a scurrilous inhumanity. Gogol burnt the second
part and embarked on the direct preaching of Christian ideals. In his work, human
beings
appear as marionettes, torn between impulses and fears, although there is a dark humor
intended to provide moralistic refreshment by ‘laughing through tears’.
(footnote 8) Hertz, Wilhelm: Die Sage vom Giftmädchen
See: ‘Abhandlungen der philosophische-philosophischen Classe der königlich
bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Band 22. Munich: Verlag der Akademie
1879, 89-166.
(footnote 9) Kaus, Otto
‘Der Fall Gogol’ was published in 1912 as the second in the series ‘Schriften des
Vereins für freie psychoanalytischen Forschung’; see the bibliography under an earlier
note. Kaus was one of the earliest supporters of Adler, became a board member in 1912,
and in the 1920’s was an important member in Berlin. He belonged to the Marxist wing,
and was at least part of the time a supporter of Communism. In 1933 he was active in
the
resistance, and was apparently killed in an air raid. He distinguished himself mainly
with
work on themes from literary science, sexual-reform and politics.
Practical Part II - IX
Self-reproach, Self-torture, Repentance and Asceticism — Flagellation —
Neuroses in Children — Suicide and Suicidal Ideas
Among the forms of neurotic behavior intended to safeguard the superiority
fiction, impulses of self-imprecation, self-reproach, self-torture, and suicide are
remarkably strong. Our surprise about this, however, will be diminished as soon as we
come to see that the entire arrangement of the neurosis follows this trait of self-torture,
that the neurosis is a self-torturing expedient whose goal is the elevation of the feeling
of self-worth and the depreciation of the environment. And indeed, the first impulses of
an aggressive tendency1 directed against the individual’s own person originate in a
situation in childhood in which the child wants to cause pain to the parents, or wishes
them to remember him better by means of disease, death, shame, and all kinds of
constructed deficiencies. This trait already characterizes the neurotically disposed child,
who has developed predispositions from reminiscences of the symptoms of his organ
inferiorities and their significance for the elevation of his feeling of self-worth for the
purpose of increasing the affection and interest of his parents. The developed neurosis
consolidates and extends this latter expedient and guides its activation by an
accentuation of the fiction as soon as the increasing insecurity demands it. It is well
known how strong aggravations play a role in this process, how the hallucinatory
character, the anticipatory force and the sympathetic understanding of the neurotic assist
in it, and the resulting situation of attacks and health disorders with their predominating
influence over the environment is a fact. Paradoxical as it may seem at first glance, the
neurotic is at peace only when he has his attack behind him. Janeta has already referred
to this fact. I can only add as an argument for it that at that moment the neurotic, by
means of a legitimation of his disease, has attained the security of his superiority, if
only for a short while.
 The characteristic trait of wishing to surpass all others is also contained in the
feeling that the neurotic expresses frequently: as if he is suffering more than all others,
as if he is more heroic than anyone else. He needs this conviction, however, because it
must provide him with an operational base to feel himself in opposition to others, to
refuse to acknowledge demands, to avoid a decision or to make an attack. This is also
why attacks, pains, or a disease are desired when the situation demands it; from time to
time, the desire or thought or the fear of an attack are a substitute for it, when only as a
reminder they already sufficiently terrify the environment. For the patient’s own psyche
it is sometimes sufficient, as one of my female patients once told me, that a fantasy is
formed, as is also often the case in dreams, according to which the neurotic suffers on
account of another person’s actions. This produces the sense of repression or
mistreatment, awakens the safeguarding tendency, and introduces the masculine protest.
Simultaneously, this characteristic trait satisfies the neurotic’s boundless vanity. The
entire world and all people in it, the weather, every accident, all women, they all have
only one tendency, that is to threaten the patient. Here one may observe a line which is
more markedly present in the case of a condition of paranoia.
1A. Adler, ‘Der Agressionstrieb.’ In: Heilen und Bilden, l.c.

We have already discussed the significance of feelings of guilt, of the conscience,

and of self-reproaches as a construction of safeguarding fictions and fruitless, time-
consuming preoccupations. It is not rare to find in the psychology of masturbation
added traits of penance or an intention to hurt, the latter as an robstinate revolt against
the parents, the former as a cheap pretext or a hypocritical act of the eroticism of the
individualist.
Injuring others by penance is one of the neurotic’s most subtle expedients, for
example, when he bursts out hurling curses against himself. Ideas of suicide often
reveal the same mechanism, which is particularly clear in joint suicides. In melancholy,
too, related traits can be discerned.
When one of my patients was treated by another physician with cold douches for
impotence, he expressed the wish that ‘the physician must injure me.’
When he had suffered great losses in his business two years before, and although he still
remained a rich man, he wanted to commit suicide.
The driving force of these curses (cf. Shylockb) is neurotic greed. The analysis offers a
complete explanation.
In order to safeguard himself from any expense on account of woman he also curses
himself when he has to pay physician’s fees. This is certainly accompanied by a half-
conscious feeling that his wishes do not have to be fulfilled absolutely. He particularly
curses his imprudence—for this is the basic meaning of his self-reproaches and curses
—whenever he has made or must make large payments. Then every small expense
becomes a torture to him, so that he safeguards himself from expense in marriage.
Attacks of anxiety are common before buying something.
He feared the magic of sexuality. He would even be capable, and he stresses this with
an evil intention and exaggeration, to bring ruin to his sister or his sister’s daughter,
who are both living with him. At the same time it would seem that he really did not rate
the meaning of his self-curses very highly, or perhaps even expected the opposite; this
may be concluded from the enormous amount of his safeguarding measures, among
which the self-curses only played an insignificant part. He safeguarded himself far more
by the arrangement of impotence.
The patient constructed self-detraction and self-torture in a manner similar to
hypochondria, in order to hold before his eyes the feeling of his own inferiority, to feel
himself as being too weak, too small, and too unworthy. They appear as hindrances and
as such they nearly replace doubt, which invariably represents the position of the
unequivocal denial. Neurotic women who are afraid of men and do not want to play a
feminine role, are constantly worrying about their hairgrowth, about birth-marks, and
they fear that their own children might at one time find themselves similarly deformed.
Often they used to be plain children or they experienced many slights when as girls they
were confronted with a favored brother. In a female patient who suffered from a
compulsion neurosis, the compulsive thought appeared to be that the enlargement of her
skin-pores was a clear hint against a decision for the female role, and a preoccupation.
Another form of self-torture develops as a tendency to do penance. It may be
recognized as a safeguarding tendency quite easily as soon as it is realized that these
patients really want to change or improve just as little as those with the related feeling
of remorse for the past. Their deeper intention is identical to the compulsion neurosis:
wasting time, privileges and—satisfaction of vanity. ‘Noble am I and pious!’ There was
one patient, for instance, in whom I found, among others, depression and active
repentance every time she experienced a strong feeling of happiness and felt that she
was superior to everyone else. Her penitential mood indicated to her the preeminence
she enjoyed over others. One of my patients suffered from bitter resentment from a
vision he had of a friend who had died long ago every time when he felt himself
comfortable and at peace. It appeared that this friend had gone to miserable ruin during
the time he had been a rival of my patient’s. My patient had remained victorious. The
image of the dead friend (Banquo’s ghostc!) and the subsequent depression proved
themselves to be the equivalent of making amends for his victory. The latter had just
taken on a form that was more acceptable to the community feeling. In professional
publications a process such as this is incorrectly addressed as ‘repression,’ apparently
because the patient chooses to express himself in a way different from that which the
psychologist would like. Nor indeed will a deeper understanding result even when, in
what appears to be an attempt to be scientific, the repressed ‘libido’ begins to make its
way into the discussion. Only an artistic sympathetic understanding of the attitude of
the ‘patient’ towards the tasks of his life makes it possible to recognize that, consciously
or unconsciously, he may express himself differently from others, but still in such a way
that his feeling of self-worth (one might also say, his feeling of ego) is elevated, even if
this happens at considerable cost. The question of what is the reason of its partially
unconscious character can be explained, on the one hand, by the rivalry of the critical
stages of the community feeling. Apart from psychosis it is a very difficult thing to play
the role of being the happiest, the most important person, of being number one. On the
other hand, however, I have to remark that although everyone carries something of this
quixotism within him, it has remained unknown to even the most ingeniously captious
analysts and among them must therefore be lying in their own unconscious as well.
Cases of agoraphobia, and of compulsive washing, anxious neurosis, etc., as well, show
how anxiety or compulsion prevails as a manner of expression, as a proof of
uniqueness. ‘How is it possible that a gem such as I can be exposed to such dangers
and difficulties?’ Occasionally one may find that agoraphobia contains the
compensation tendency to appear as the person who must support the entire house.
The symptom of doing penance is clearly directed toward the future, and this just as
much when it manifests itself as a personal impulse in individual form and conduct as
when it reveals itself socially in religious performances. As in all other safeguarding
tendencies it, too, does not by any means exclude the possibility that fresh evil deeds
and thoughts may come to light; its purpose is rather to become active as a restrictive
admonition and a deep inner proof of the valuable disposition of the person in question.
Not least, the impulse to do penance is contained in this critical self-reflection and
accentuation of inner values, in which the antithesis to others is invariably kept in mind,
to such a degree that occasionally the desire for penance and remorse betrays a strongly
antagonistical, obstinate, vain, aggressive, and hostile note. The epidemic character of
acts of penance in particular hardly ever lacks this conspicuous pomp, with penitents
vying with each other in crying, weeping, self-torture, and contrition.
The possibility, therefore, to secure a feeling of superiority by means of penitential
performances such as fasting and praying, going about in sackcloth and ashes, etc., will
easily have an attraction for weaker souls as soon as they are inclined to identify pious
as good, and religious as sublime. And asceticism will lead to elevation if it is
experienced as a triumph. Most important in this respect is that the valuation is
arbitrary, frequently based on an antagonism towards otherwise superior persons, a fact
that is also revealed in the opposites of the Godfearing type, the atheist, the militant
freethinker and the iconoclast, who seek to demonstrate their superiority in an identical
manner. Lichtenberg’sd remark should be understood in this sense when he says how
few people live according to the principles of their religion, and how many fight and
battle for them. The conversion from militant free thinking to orthodoxy is not at all
rare, nor is that from sensuality to asceticism. The two are not so far apart as is
believed. Pascal:e ‘To doubt God means to believe in God!’
Besides the safeguarding tendency by means of penance, the masculine protest plays a
guiding role that should not be underestimated. However, it is necessary to take into
consideration its building blocks, the opportunities such as they lie within the psyche
and that it uses in order to find expression. There is no question about the fact that acts
and thoughts of submission manifest themselves in this connection, masochistic
elements that are, in our sense, valued as feminine elements of the human psyche. The
fact that this submission is connected to a strong upward movement, an elevation,
proves how incompatible these elements are with the human consciousness, as does the
fact that they are constantly demanding correction in the direction of the masculine
protest and are, therefore, pseudomasochistic phenomena. The line of force, then,
moves upwards from below in this case as well, for the penitent feels elevated or
cleansed, he speaks with his god, he is closer to him than others, closer than ever. And
the ‘joy in the kingdom of heaven’ is awaiting him, the fulfillment of his guiding line.
One of my female patients ‘punished herself’ after the death of her 72-year old mother,
with whom she had been quarreling throughout her life and whom she was quite
justified to reproach, by strong feelings of remorse, because of her unloving behavior
towards her and by sleeplessness. Her feelings of remorse had the character of
compulsive thoughts and compulsive behavior. The analysis showed that she wanted to
prove her moral superiority over a sister. This sister was married while my patient was
tempted to begin an affair with a married man, which she felt ‘degraded her.’ According
to her own opinion this brought her down in comparison with her sister. On the
occasion of her mother’s death the striving for superiority offered an opportunity that
once more elevated her, namely, her stronger grief for the sad event and the end of her
affair.
In the history of civilization, as in neurosis, the desire to do penance not uncommonly
degenerates into lashing and flagellation. From the confessions of Rousseauf and from
private communications of both healthy and neurotic individuals as well as from keen
observations of children,2 we know that blows and anxious excitement are capable of
evoking sexual excitement in many people. This is the actual, somatically perceptible
moment that is present in the natural disposition of such individuals and that determines
the choice of their particular penance. Patients have indicated to me that in their
childhood they experienced pleasure from blows on their buttocks, although they found
it terrible to be beaten. In the later life of neurotics, flagellation is analogous to
masturbation and all other perversions in that it is a visible expression of the fear of the
sexual partner. The following communication I owe to a female patient who came
under my treatment for severe migraine: several years before treatment began she had
had dayfantasies in which she was caught in the act of adultery and punished by a man
to whom she was married but who did not resemble her actual husband. This fantasy
was followed by a severe self-flagellation until she broke down exhausted. This
flagellation brought on strong sexual feelings. In the analysis it became clear that the
woman hated her husband—in neurotic fashion—and in this hatred would have liked to
commit an act of adultery to humiliate him. Now she had become too old to find any
recognition in sexual matters — in earlier years the masculine protest had prevented
her. For a short while before she began having thoughts of flagellation she had been
playing with fantasies of adultery, but not without safeguarding herself from them
becoming real. The discovery by the man, the thrashing, and the autoerotic satisfaction
find their origin in the anticipatory safeguarding tendency and are a play of fantasy, the
latter emphasizing in particularly strong fashion the fear of men. The replacement of her
husband by another is an effect of her depreciation tendency and equivalent to her
desires of adultery: her husband must be humiliated, another would be better than he.
Continuing, she disavows this incidental assumption by an act of adultery against this
other man. Over the years she stopped these flagellations. However, her depreciation
tendency directed itself more vehemently against her husband and against all other
people. She developed a migraine whenever she feared that she might in some way lose
her dominant role in respect to any one person. And her disease made it possible for her
to withdraw completely from society. Within the family her suffering made her into an
almighty mistress. Many physicians who came to the family residence she degraded as
well, because despite all their efforts she continued to suffer from migraines. Even
morphine failed in its effect, a fact that I recommend to your special attention in view of
the perverse reaction to this remedy in other cases. I want to remark in passing that she
put up great resistance to my treatment as well and that for a considerable time she
attempted to expose me by hanging on to her pain while openly lavishing me with
excessive praise. Patients only recover when they understand that depreciating the
physician is yet another motive to hold on to their disease.
Incidentally, I want to refer to the fact that in my experience, ‘religious mania,’
fantasies, and hallucinations about God, heaven and the saints, as well as the feeling of
contrition, should be understood as an attempt on the part of these patients to express
their infantile, megalomaniac ideas, their superiority over their environment, and their
closeness to God. Frequently, this is linked to a hostile feeling against the environment,
as is the case when a catatonic patient lets himself be commanded by God to give his
guard a slap in the face or to throw over a bedside table, or when he attempts to force
his Jewish relatives to baptism. The sudden upward swing in manics and the
megalomaniac ideas in dementia præcox are parallel phenomena that indicate the buried
feeling of humiliation now demanding to be over-compensated in madness.3
In medical practice, one will often come across children who have entered the way of
aggravation and simulation in order to escape from their parents’ oppression. It is self-
evident how close these phenomena are to mendacity, without being entirely identical.
However, the clear manifestation of organic inferiorities is remarkable, as is the obvious
advance of the development of the neurotic character, of an uncontrolled impulsive life
as a result of the lack of community feeling, and thus, the neurotic disposition. Let me
describe my observations of neurotic children in three cases to illustrate this.
A seven year old girl comes under my care for periodic attacks of stomach-aches and
nausea. We are confronted with a frail child of slight physical build with struma cystica,
adenoidal growth, and enlarged tonsils. Her voice has a hoarse ring. When we ask her,
the mother tells us that the child often suffers from conspicuously protracted catarrhs,
accompanied by coughing, and also from protracted attacks of dyspepsia. Her present
complaint has existed for six months, without any demonstrable organic affection. In
addition her appetite and bowel movement are always normal. The child appears to
have a very sweet tooth. The stomach aches had started when the child began attending
school. Her progress in all subjects was excellent, but her teacher had repeatedly
expressed surprise over the remarkable ambition of the child. She was very sensitive
about admonitions and always felt neglected compared to her sister, who was three and
a half years younger. What particularly attracted the mother’s attention was a significant
lenghtening of the clitoris, one of the genital anomalies whose importance as a sign of
inferiority I have already pointed out, and which after me was found and emphasized as
being characteristic by Bartelg and Kyrleh, later also by Tandleri, Groszj and
Kretschmerk. Her skin is hypersensitive everywhere, and the tickling reflex on all the
predisposed places is remarkably accentuated. The child wants to be tickled often,
which is important as it is a sign of an unfettered impulsive desire. Her anxiousness
exceeds the normal level. As a further sign of organ inferiority we may also consider
the irregular position of her incisors which points to an inferiority of the
gastrointestinal tract. The pharyngeal reflex is clearly accentuated.
From this ensemble of phenomena, one gathers the impression that the reflex activity of
the gastro-intestinal tract is also accentuated. Indeed, the child used to vomit frequently
during the first three years of her life. The numerous dyspeptic attacks also point
towards the inferiority of the alimentary tract. One year ago, eczema of the anus—the
end of the inferior intestinal tract—had been followed by an itching of the anus that
lasted for months and was cured by the family physician by means of suggestive
treatment assisted by a neutral salve.
The painful pressure in the stomach proved to be a physical reflex that set in whenever
the child feared to be depreciated in school or at home.4 The final goal of this reflex,
which had been prepared on the basis of an organic inferiority that was at present being
put to use, that is to say, had become neurotic, lay in the effort to avoid punishment and
draw the attention of the somewhat harsh mother, who preferred the younger girl. It
would seem that fixation and manifest aggravation were effected after inner perception
of this accentuated reflex activity, as soon as the child was looking out for a useful
guiding idea to accentuate her feeling of self-worth. After a short time, and after I had
made the connection clear to the child, the attacks disappeared. A dream after one of
these attacks points in the direction described above. She dreamed: “My girlfriend was
below. Then we played together.”
Her girlfriend was a preferred rival in school. There were often conflicts, although they
did not come to blows. She lived on the floor above and they always played together in
our patient’s home. But the form of expression in the dream she related was obvious
enough. When I asked the intelligent child whether they said that “her girlfriend was
below” when the teller of the story played with her, she immediately corrected this to
“she was with me.” However, if we suppose that the form of expression is correct and
the accent is on ‘below,’ then the hidden idea here is that her rival was ‘below’ our
ambitious patient, as she would be in a fight. “The girlfriend was below” then means: “I
was above,” an interpretation that puts the ambitious point of view of the speaker in the
right perspective. And the word ‘then’ also points in that direction. It only begins to
make sense if we allow a time interval in both images from the dream, more or less as
follows: first I must be superior to my friend, then I want to play with her.
The previous history of the attack which preceded the dream provides confirmation for
our interpretation. The games of the two girls were as a rule ‘playing father and mother’
or ‘playing doctor.’ In the former game the two girls had quarreled about who was to
play the ‘father’ until the father of our patient had intervened, admonishing her that her
girlfriend was always more yielding than she was, that she was always unyielding,
which was true. Her friend then got to play the role of ‘father.’ Shortly afterwards, when
the family were seating themselves around the table for the evening meal, the child’s
attack set in. She did not eat anything and was put to bed, in her parents’ room in fact,
where her other little rival, her sister, usually slept. The dream, then, pursues the
tendency initiated by the attack, the patient seizes upon the masculine role and in doing
so she indicates to us how she puts her ambition to assert herself on par with
masculinity. The representation of femininity as being subordinate by the use of the
word ‘below’ in particular strongly emphasizes this interpretation. She had been
sleeping in her parents’ bedroom until her younger sister was born, and also later,
whenever she was ill. This suspicion was expressed in the presence of the mother and
remained uncontradicted, but it had a good point in that from now on both children
were permanently kept out of the parents’ room. However, once again we may observe
how the characteristic traits of the child are active in the direction of the masculine
protest, as faraway outposts whose function it is to ward off, even from a distance, any
analogy, any symbolic suffering of fate, depreciation, and weakening of the feeling of
self-worth, and to safeguard her from any future misfortune. The later, positive
development of the child was disturbed only once, when she and her friends committed
a small theft because they loved sweets (see the unfettered impulsive desire above). A
little while later the father began to suffer from a mania because he believed that his
brother had seriously betrayed him. Anyone who eventually wants to recognize the
vanity of maniacs, present even in their ‘healthy periods,’ will understand that the air in
this little girl’s family was thoroughly poisoned.
A similar affection well known to physicians is vomiting in school, at the table, or
shortly after having eaten, which resembles the complaint mentioned above in its
psychic structure, since it is an artifice that is or has become unconscious,
demonstrating how one may avoid a threatening humiliation, assert oneself and evade
decisions. This belligerent attitude, tending towards a complete refusal of food, can be
seen in a more marked degree in the ‘neurotic hunger strike’ of girls who are fighting to
play first role.
A 13-year old boy has shown such remarkable indolence over the past three years that it
is proving a hindrance to his progress in school, despite his indisputable intelligence.
Several months ago he developed a tearful nature that becomes particulary manifest
whenever he is admonished, for whatever reason. His father and mother have probably
always been somewhat too strict with him, but as far as the information I was able to
acquire told me, their admonitions were usually concerned with the fact that he ate and
dressed very slowly, and most often with his all too great eagerness for reading.5 Lately
the situation had come about that the boy began to cry whenever he was reminded of
something or as soon as he was pressed to do something. The result of this situation was
that although the parents took a more cautious attitude, they still believed that the boy’s
sluggishness should not relieve him from all admonition.
A question concerning his last crying fit made it clear that he had been admonished to
hurry to school, since, in his vanity, he had been standing in front of the mirror for half
an hour, trying to smooth down his upstanding hair with a brush. The analysis showed
that he saw himself on the way to difficulties and that he was trying to safeguard
himself from painful humiliations by taking careful precautions. He severely
reproached himself with childish sexual indiscretions he had committed together with
other boys and girls. He feared above all that his parents might find him out and this
fear had enormously increased when one night while he had been sleepwalking he had
entered the servant’s room and to his astonishment woke up in the cook’s empty bed.
This sleepwalking was the result, as it is in all other cases that I have examined, of the
protest against a feeling of depreciation. As it was, the day before he had been
transferred from his secondary school, where his progress had been very slow, to a less
demanding one. The impression of this sleepwalking scene, the thought that he might
betray in his sleep what he and his friends were doing, appeared so strong to him, who
talked in his sleep as all sleepwalkers do, that he had to reach out for strong safeguards.
In the first place these concerned his outward appearance, which he used in the hope of
making a good impression, and his tearful nature, which was intended to keep his
parents away from him. In this case we may detect the first, timid beginnings of
compulsory behavior. The fact that he went into the room of the servant was at the same
time a vivid complaint: “I am like a servant here.”
Actually, ascetic impulses, as a form of self-torture, gained ground in the boy’s
safeguarding tendency and his aversion to eat was calculated to put a stop to his
presently developing sexual desires, in an analogy with the idea of ‘abstinence.’ The
boy, who had been weak at all times, now became even weaker, so that the parents were
compelled to intervene. In doing so they hit upon his safeguarding tendency, which he
had managed to acquire after so much difficulty. Then the psychomotor familiarity with
his parents’ attacks led to a safeguard in the form of crying, which in its turn elevated
his self-assertion, as did his parents’ efforts to get him to eat again.
His eagerness to read also originated in his safeguarding tendency. The insecurity that
had seized him in puberty forced him to seek comfort, instruction, and a safeguarding
fear of disease from the encyclopedia. He was incredibly well-read on the relevant
problems. Once he was on the way to seek security in books he exaggerated this
tendency, particularly because his elder brothers and sisters, whom he emulated, were
great readers, also because it was against his parents’ wishes and in the third place
because in this way he could satisfy his original masculine protest, which found
expression in his choice of reading. His favorite author was Karl May.l The significance
of his sleepwalking appeared to be an expression of his annoyance with his parents,
whom he also reproached for “treating him like a house servant.” In hebephrenics I
have observed effects similar to those in servants, when they wanted to demonstrate
their inability to do better or in their equally repressive and demonstrative reactions to a
feeling of depreciation.
The third case is that of an eleven year old boy afflicted with pertussism protracted by
psychic conditions, and at this time still suffering from enuresis. He was a wild, hot-
tempered child and always trying to attach his father to himself, while trying to make
out his step-mother as a cruel persecutor. His father’s susceptible disposition manifested
itself in an exaggerated concern during the boy’s attacks of whooping cough. When on
a morning the mother was once again reproaching the boy for wetting his bed, he
jumped out of bed laughing and apparently out of his senses, running about the room
undressed until his father, while reproaching the mother, took the boy, who was
breathing with difficulty, back to bed. A severe fit of coughing, resembling the
whooping cough from which he had just recovered, finished this scene and caused a
very serious quarrel between husband and wife. When the boy went to bed that evening
he sprang up excitedly and jumped up and down on his bed, breathing with difficulty.
The meaning of the attack was quite obvious. The boy wanted to provoke reproaches
against his mother once again, and draw his father to his side. Suggestive treatment and
an explanation of the goal of his attacks brought them to an end, but the pseudo-
pertussis still dragged on for another six months. Some years later— the boy had not
undergone further treatment—I heard that he had committed a major theft.
Mechanisms analogous to those described constitute the foundation of the idea of
suicide. The deed itself usually fails because the inner contradiction of this form of
protest against the persons concerned is recognized. The sudden change in the psyche is
a result of the idea of death, of not being, of the depreciating feeling to become dust, to
entirely lose one’s personality. If obstacles of a religious nature come to interfere, they
are usually nothing more than a veil, a recoil, as if the act had been made to carry
punishment. Hamlet is up to our time the model of the psychic hermaphrodite, a person
doubting his own masculinity, who attempts, by thinking ahead in a safeguarding
manner, to make himself conscious of the obstacles against his masculine protest, but
who rebels against his feminine guiding line, not without avoiding the dialectic
turnaround towards murder on the masculine side, protecting himself from suicide by
conjuring up those dreams: “To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there’s the rub, for in that
sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil.” In
the graveyard scene his real horror is manifested because Yorick’s skull has no higher
value than the others.6
For quite a long time I have defended the opinion that suicide is one of the strongest
forms of protest and represents an absolute safeguard against depreciation and a
revenge on life itself. The cases accessible to me, mostly of suicide attempts, always
revealed their neurotic structure in the psyche. Signs of organ inferiority, feelings of
insecurity and inferiority in childhood, a psychic structure perceived to be too feminine,
and the overstressed masculine protest were found to be similarly arranged in every
neurotic. The nearer or farther example often shows the direction. The most powerful
psychic support originates from the numerous thoughts of death in childhood as an
expression of a dissatisfaction, thoughts that constitute, in the playful and more
particularly in the exemplary and preparatory manner in which they shape the psychic
physiognomy under the influence of the personality idea, a permanent predisposition to
suicide. In the previous history of would-be suicides one will find similar tendencies to
acquire influence by means of illness, or, in a situation of depreciation or despised love,
to find satisfaction by reflecting on thoughts of death and dreams about the subsequent
mourning of the relatives. And the idea turns into a deed in a similar situation where
there is a decrease in the feeling of self-worth, as soon as this loss leads to a strong
devaluation of life and is capable of letting the dialectic turnaround of the masculine
idea of suicide change into a renewed devaluation. We must, then, concede that those
writers are correct who perceive in suicide a process closely related to that of the
construction of insane delusions. My own and Bartel’sn comments concerning organ
inferiorities, and particularly inferiorities of the sexual apparatus, are in close agreement
with this.
The probability of a correction in the neurosis is greater, even if it does not always
prevent suicide. The fact that the neurotic is often deeply occupied with the problem of
suicide for many years seems in itself to be both a sign and a cause of the correction.
And indeed, the thoughts and dreams of the neurotic are full of ideas of death.7 Here is
the corresponding dream of a neurotic who was under treatment for stammering and
psychic impotence, during a night after he had been expecting a letter from his bride:
“It seemed as if I had died. My relatives were standing round the coffin and behaved as
if they were in great despair.”
The patient remembers that in his childhood he had often had the idea that he might die
because his parents preferred his younger brother. He had always been persecuted by
the thought that he was inferior because of hydrocele and other anomalies of his sexual
organs, and that he would never have children. Later he attempted to safeguard himself
from an unhappy marriage by his depreciation and great mistrust of women. In reality,
however, he felt too weak and was afraid of women. Just as he feared the test of his
feeling of self-worth in marriage, he avoided all decisions by an attitude that had
become automatic. His impotence set in when his bride had agreed to marry him, as an
excuse, an expedient to postpone the marriage. In the dream, the idea is reflected that
his bride might prefer someone else, in accordance with his childhood situation. This
was connected with an attempt to find a solution that would attract all her love to him
and would yet eliminate the possibility of marriage, as in the arrangement of his
impotence. However, he could find only one solution, one that shows him, in the
despair of his relatives, his own personal significance.
 2 See Asnaurow, Sadismus in der Kultur. München. (see endnote)
3Poul Bjerre (Zur Radikalbehandlung der chronischen Paranoia. Wien und Leipzig

1912) was the first to give a convincing and detailed description of the significance of
the masculine protest and safeguarding tendency in the psychosis. See also
‘Melancholia und Paranoia.’ In: Theorie und Praxis, l.c. (see endnote)
4 R. Stern has described phenomena identical to those which we have repeatedly

discussed in this book, as ‘pre-active tensions.’ From my arguments it becomes clear

that we are concerned with the systematic, if unconscious, use of the reflex sensitivity
of inferior organs (Studie über Minderwertigkeit von Organen, l.c.), with ‘reflexes that
have become intelligent.’ Aerophagia often plays an important role in this. (see
endnote)
5The latter is often an indication of insecurity towards the school. This is expressed

more clearly by truancy, neglect, and vagrancy. See A. Adler, ‘Wo soll der Kampf
gegen die Verwahrlosung einsetzen?’ In: Soziale Praxis. Wien 1921.
6The meaning of the tragedy of Hamlet seems to have remained undetected until the

present day. It is, as in so many of Shakespeare’s dramas, the attempt to determine

where lies the borderline between permissible and non permissible murder in our
culture. The interpretors of Hamlet, who are invariably emphasizing Hamlet’s
indecisiveness and nothing else, I would like to ask whether they would find it easier to
come to the decision to kill their uncle than Hamlet. (see endnote)
7Freud later acknowledged but misunderstood this. The death wish will only be a

desired compensation for people with a very great inferiority feeling.

Endnotes for Practical Part II-IX
a Janet See endnote on page xxi.
b Shylock

The name of the Jewish money-lender in Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of

Venice’.
c Banquo’s ghost

A character in Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’. After being killed by Macbeth, his ghost

appears at a banquet, invisible for all but the murderer who seeks to deny his selfcreated
terror (see act 4, scene 3).
d Lichtenberg

See endnote for footnote 24 on page 83. The quotation runs as follows: ‘Isn’t it
strange that people so much like to fight for religion and so much dislike living
according to its rules?’
e Pascal, Blaise

(1623 Clermont – 1662 Paris): French philosopher, mathematician and physicist.

He realized that, as far as belief is concerned, rational certainty does by no means
ensure
certainty about human behavior. Besides this, no certain proof can be acquired from a
philosophical deduction of God alone, but rather from the question whether salvation is
certain, which cannot be answered by human reason. The decision to believe, the ‘logic
of the heart’, must leave room to the ‘logic of reason’ with its justified doubt, since man
has nothing to lose with this ‘bet’, but everything to gain.
 f Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
(1712 – 1778): The son of a clockmaker in Geneva, he was a self-educated man
and led a socially marginal life. He produced works of an extraordinary diverse nature:
plays, lyric poetry, novels, works on botany, language and social philosophy. In
opposition to an over-civilized society he pleaded for a simple life in which ‘nature’, as
a
principle and paradigm, comprises human development and its ongoing development.
In
his ‘Confessions’ (1765-70), he attempts with great sincerity to penetrate the true nature
of man in a generic sense: the man Rousseau will continue to live on after his initial
‘innocence’, no matter what his mistakes and guilt may have been. These
autobiographical elements are linked with ethnological and prehistorical reflections.
The
work leads to a view of the original in which nature, before it was alienated, is seen as
the
irreducible essence and standard of existence.
(footnote 2) Asnaourow, Felix
Professor. He published ‘Sadismus und Masochismus in Kultur und Erziehung.’ in
the series ‘Schriften des Vereins für freie psychoanalytische Forschung’. See
bibliography under an earlier note. Asnaourow also made a contribution on the same
theme in ‘Heilen und Bilden’ (1914).
(footnote 3) Bjerre, Poul
(1976 – 1964): Swedish psychotherapist, from 1907 physician in Stockholm,
specializing in psychotherapy. In 1911 he became a member of the International
Psychoanalytic Association. He wrote about Adler’s theory of neuroses in the
proceedings of the Swedish Association of Physicians (1913), turned away from Freud
in
the early 1920’s and oriented himself on psychosynthesis. He was a member of the
‘International Medical Association for Psychotherapy’. Until 1943 he maintained
contacts with representatives of ‘German psychotherapy’ such as Mathias Göring. In
1941 he founded a private institute for psychotherapeutic education.
g Bartel See endnote on page 22.
h Kyrle See endnote on page 23.
i Tandler, Julius

(1869 Iglau/Moravia – 1936 Moscow): Anatomist and social-democratic

politician. Between 1910-34 he was professor and director at the 1. Anatomisches
Institut, 1914-17 he was Dean of the medical faculty, that is, at the time when Adler
attempted to get his lectureship appointment. He was a representative of the view that
anatomy and clinical medicine should closely cooperate. Between 1920-32 he was a
member of the city council, dealing with public welfare, health and youth affairs. He
was
the most prominent representative of the health policy of the so-called ‘red Vienna’ and
a
Social Democratic eugenicist. In February 1934, after the civil war in Austria, he was
discharged from all his functions.
j Grosz (Gross), Siegfried

(1869 – 1922 Vienna): Dermatologist, 1907 private lecturere of dermatology in

Vienna, 1915 extraordinary professor. Adler is referring to his work (with J. Tandler)
from 1913 on the biological origins of secondary sexual diseases.
k Kretschmer

See endnote f’ on page xiv.

(footnote 4 ) Stern, Richard
(1865 – 1911 Breslau): In 1892 he became private lecturer of internal medicine,
1900-11 he was extraordinary professor and director at the ‘Medizinische Poliklinik’,
1906-11 he was appointed to teach about social medicine in Breslau. Besides
clinicalbacteriological and serodiagnostic work, he particularly occupied himself with
traumatology and expert opinions.
l May, Karl

(pseudonym of Karl Hohenthal) (1842 – 1912): Teacher, editor and writer of

adventurous travel stories, which made him into one of the most widely read authors
even
until this day. The exotic couleur locale and the stimulating powers of his imagination
in
his descriptions of the American Wild West and the Near East—told in first person by
his heroes Old Shatterhand and Kara Ben Nemsi—are based on an educational-
moralistic need for freedom and ‘the big life’. His later work shows a pacifist tendency,
and he was a defender of oppressed people, especially North American Indians.
m pertussis

whooping-cough
(footnote 6) Shakespeare, William
(1564 – 1616 Stratford on Avon): Actor and writer of over thirty plays. The
subject matter of ‘Hamlet’ comprises revenge, suicide, death, individual and political
justice, the torments of conscience, conflicting duties, life after death, family, innocence
and cunning. Shakespeare uses them in his play, not as isolated topics of observation,
but
as materials for consideration of what might be called the adventure of mankind. The
complexity of these questions makes it impossible for psychology, morality, religion,
politics and philosophy to ignore his work, as Adler makes clear.
n Bartel See endnote on page 22.

Practical Part II - X
The Neurotic’s Feeling for Family — Obstinacy and Obedience — Silence and
Loquaciousness — The Tendency for Reversal — Replacement of a Characteristic Trait
by Means of Safeguards, Expedients, Profession and Ideal.
In this chapter I want to call attention to a number of characteristic traits of
neurotics that are often a prominent feature in psychological observations yet whose
influence does not go further than the external picture of the neurosis. They merely
assist in the construction of the neurotic individuality, but it is exactly by doing this that
they steer a particular neurosis in a certain direction, or provoke an unavoidable fate in
the collision with the environment. Thus it may happen that the neurotic’s feeling for
family comes to the fore in a particularly obtrusive manner, and that genealogical or
racial investigations come partly to fulfill the neurotic’s thinking, which conceals more
deeply seated traits of a neurotic, often untenable pride of ancestry, which is then used,
in a fashion comparable to that of the research for hereditary disease, to work against
the social activities that are sexual relations and marriage. This may also easily succeed
by the arrangement of extreme affection for single or all members of the family;
accordingly, this affection comes into being under the force of the guiding fiction and
its internal contradiction that is the foundation of the fear of making decisions and the
sexual partner. The disposition is then concerned with dominance within the family, for
which purpose the family ties are first declared holy. Disassocation with the family
borders on the increased feeling for the family as soon as the safeguarding tendency is
developed further and needs proof of the fact that one cannot even depend on blood
relations. Misanthropy as an abstract guiding line of the character and refuge in solitude
are not uncommon phenomena and are more clearly perceptible in the psychoses1.
Often neurotics’ ties with the family of their father goes much further, even when they
are married. ‘Home’ in their case is not their own home but that of their parents. Many
are constantly dreaming about the latter in a way which clearly proves that they prefer
the parental home; these dreams contain a certain defiance towards the partner, at least
because he is left out of the picture. The excessive, pathologically exaggerated grief for
blood relatives constitutes a similar form of attack. Pride in one’s own ancestry may
also be used effectively in the fight against the spouse. From time to time the ties will
remain because the patient has not yet brought his fight against his parents to an end
and is still struggling to assert his equality or priority. However, a feeling for the family
with the tendency mentioned above will most often be found to serve the purpose of
confining the neurotic’s own sphere of activity by eliminating the community, as soon
as loss of prestige is threatened and felt to be too painful. In one of these cases I found
in an extremely ambitious woman that her relation with her family was strongest when
she had the following, alternating compulsive ideas: ugliness of the ears, of the teeth,
the hair, later: to be considered homosexual, and after the reading of newspaper articles
about psychoanalysis: to be considered incestuous. Actually touching other people was
out of the question because of her compulsive blushing and the fear of discovery.
1 In a very general way one will find that the neurotic’s ties to his family are

stronger than usual. The environment of the community invariably will make him shirk
back into the environment of the family. Here he can provide himself with what he does
not trust himself to do in the larger environment: superiority. No matter where in the
environment of society one finds the neurotic, his movements will always show a
retrogressive tendency towards the family.
The subordination of characteristic traits to the guiding fiction may be observed
particularly well in the antithetical traits of obstinacy and obedience2, which, seperately
or mixed in various degrees, contribute a great deal to the psyche’s color spectrum. An
understanding of the thus achieved construction of these characteristic traits, which are
made into abstractions from neutral, real impressions from the time before the neurosis,
and are neurotically grouped and made into guiding lines, can teach us much about the
origin, the significance, and purpose of the character. The idea that character is
congenital completely collapses on itself, since the real substratum for the development
of the psychic character, and whatever part of it that is congenital, is constantly
transformed under the pull of the guiding idea until this idea is satisfied. Obstinacy as
well as obedience, then, are nothing but psychic attitudes that betray to us the jump
from an uncertain past into a protecting future, as are indeed all other characteristic
traits. From this point of view an understanding of the ‘will’ is linked to the fact that it
exhausts itself in its striving for compensation in the face of a feeling of inferiority. The
apperception: masculine—feminine, the erroneous logic that is inherent in people,
therefore makes the will appear to be masculine.
Among neurotics, shyness as an attitude of the fear of making decisions is often
accompanied by taciturnity. The applicability of this form of disposition also lies, for
example, in its isolating effect and in the fact that it keeps possible points of attack out
of reach for the environment. The silent neurotic may also occasionally show his
superiority by acting as a spoil-sport. Or by speaking little and by a lack of ideas he
arranges the proof that he is not equal to others, particularly when they are in the
majority, and that he is especially unfit for love and marriage. In the adoption and
accentuation of the fictional antithesis, in loquaciousness, I have occasionally found
that the patient is looking for proof and confesses that he is unable to keep a secret, but
in any case wants to be in the foreground. A different form of attack and devaluation
may be found in the brash, impatient manner that many neurotics have of interrupting
everyone. The object is often even more obvious because of the fact that he introduces
every remark with “no,” or “however,” or “on the contrary.” In all cases the intention to
increase, not to decrease, the distance to others, to elevate oneself above them, will
clearly be present.
2A. Adler, ‘Trotz und Gehorsam.’ In: Heilen und Bilden, l.c.

A characteristic trait to which the neurosis owes a great deal of its severity and
significance, which is always present and which, together with obstinacy and
negativism, belongs to the strongest means of expression of the masculine protest,
consists in the tendency to desire that everything is different, that everything is turned
around. This trait can be found in the striving for compensation as well as in the
inclination towards neurotic artifices, it also lies in the disputatiousness and in the
neurotic depreciation tendency and shows an enormous applicability in attacking the
environment. It is the counterpart of the often conservative, pedantic nature of the
neurotic, simultaneously allowing him, however, to activate his desire for dominance. If
the protest is constructed on a basis of principles and according to neurotic antithesis,
one will find its essence to be the striving for change and reversal. “Popularly, the
nature of all feminine dialectics is said to be: to always wish everything different,” says
E. Fuchsa in ‘Die Frau in der Karikatur.’ Some element of this eccentricity will always
penetrate, usually under some pretext, in clothes, habits, attitude and movement. One of
my female patients often turned herself in her sleep, in such a way that she woke up
turned around. She also tried to make everything turn around while she was awake. One
of her favorite phrases was: ‘It’s the other way round!’ as an objection to the opinions
of others. The wish to be above, to ride, to wear the pants, is expressed in an unusually
clear fashion in these patients. In psychotherapeutic treatment, this trait endures from
the beginning to the end, and, similar to negativism in catatonics, its presence may
always be presupposed and may extend to the most trivial things. Very often these
neurotic tendencies to contradiction manifest themselves in the form of a notion that the
physician cannot touch them, nor they the physician, and furthermore in the negativistic
impulse to fundamentally change, to rearrange the hours of treatment. In general, one
should be careful to avoid favorable predictions, to set a timetable, etc., in the treatment
of neurotics, even when one feels very certain. In case of a strong tendency to inversion
one would be put to shame every time.
An attempt is made to turn above into below, right into left, front into back,
because the guiding fiction demands ‘reversals’ or transformations from ‘feminine’ into
‘masculine.’ Words, writing (mirror writing), morality, sexual behavior, dreaming (in
antitheses and in reverse sequence) and thinking are turned around in a manner that is
playful yet offensive at the same time. The expedient used in this case, that is, to behave
in a masculine fashion, usually contains an element of destructive anger.
The use of this ‘reversal’ in superstition, to cheat fate, as it were, by expecting the
opposite of what one would like, is a frequent characteristic of neurotics which reveals
their complete insecurity and caution, once again leading us back to neurotic caution
and permitting us to recognize its immense significance and tremendous consequence in
the psychic life of the neurotic.3
Around this nucleus of caution, depending on the tolerance of the guiding image or
the demands of the situation, traits of truthfulness and untruthfulness may group
themselves, giving expression to the striving for superiority, sometimes directly,
sometimes by following circuitous ways. Closely related to it are traits of simulation
and openness, the first characteristic clearly taking for its point of departure the feeling
of depreciation, of being ‘below.’ A strong anticipatory tendency is manifested by the
characteristic trait of tearfulness and sensitivity to pain, which reminds the environment
as well as the patient himself of the fact that he can only choose those situations in life
that can be endured without pain. It goes without saying that the anticipation of labor
pains often comes to play a role in the construction of this guiding line. I observed
movements that unmistakably expressed a situation of giving birth in a female patient
who was in a twilight state due to lactopsychosis. They clearly alluded to the standpoint
that the patient had had for many years already: not having to give birth—and they were
directed against a second child.
Closely related to the exertions of caution are the phenomena of doubt, of
vacillation, and of indeciseveness in the neurotic, to which we have called attention
earlier in this book. They always set in when reality influences the fiction in such a way
that contradictions begin to appear time and again in the latter—when reality threatens
with the danger of a defeat, of a loss of prestige. Three ways are then generally left
open to the neurotic, depending on the strength of the fictional final goal, so that the
developed neurosis acquires an aspect corresponding to one of these. One way is by
stabilizing the doubt and vacillation and making them into an operational basis, which
is found most clearly in neurasthenicsm in the form of a disguised complete stagnation,
and as scepticism in psychasthenics. In this case a complete or partial operational
standstill will be the result. The second way leads to psychosis by hypostasizing, by
deifying the fiction by means of the construction of a feeling for truth4 and the
abandoment of logic.5 The third way leads to a change of form of the fiction and the
creation of a certain distance towards the tasks of life by an arrangement of anxiety,
weakness, pain, etc., in short, it leads to a neurotic circuitous way in which neurotic
expedients are used to attain superiority.
The mature art of the Individual Psychologist will also manifest itself in that he
understands not only the phenomena of neurosis and psychosis, but ‘normal’ life as
well, both in its permanent contradictions and in its social sense. He will feel the
ridiculous shame that exists in the defiant attitude of selfimportance of the weakling,
detect in obstinacy and in cruelty the conquerors of obedience and weakness, in the
ostentatious masculinity boasting of its strict rules he sees also the horror of being
subjected, and in the frenzy of power and its paroxysms there is for him the fear of
defeat. And he will test all of these from the standpoint of the community feeling, just
as the psychic life of human beings (according to a beautiful phrase of Jerusalemb)
approaches the phenomena of life with the question of Joabc: “Do you belong to us or to
our enemies?”
3 See A. Adler, ‘Syphilidophobie.’ In: Praxis und Theorie, l.c.
4Kanabich, ‘Zur Pathologie der intellektuellen Emotionen’ (In: Psychotherapie. N.

Wirubof, [Hrsg.] Moskau 1911), has approached this point of view closely. (see
endnote)
5Since in the psychosis action on the useful side towards a solution of the three

problems of life (community, occupation, love) is as good as entirely given up, what
activity will remain will be ‘illogical.’
One should not expect a neurotic to follow a line that says: “Your communication
is yea-yea, nay-nay, for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”d In the rigid
antithetical line of his acting and thinking, which gives expression to the stronger fight
for recognition, there is no room for such simplicity. Without interfering with the unity
of his striving for power, sometimes the ‘below,’ sometimes the ‘above,’ depending on
the current trend, will gain more prominence in the antithetical line. Or a certain
characteristic trait will be lying partly or wholly in ‘the unconscious,’ depending on the
requirements of the unity of the personality. However, even when he is conscious, he is
unconscious in the individual-psychological sense, since the patient, innocently-guiltily,
closes his eyes for the consequencess, for the stranglehold of the community feeling.
Therefore, one will often be in a position to find phenomena which cannot as such be
fitted into the customary scheme of the characteristic traits, which will only betray their
origin in a wider context. If I put three padlocks on my barred doors, keep firearms,
dogs and a police manual in my room, and then happily assure you that I am not at all
anxious—then that is true and untrue at the same time. My anxiety is hidden in the
padlocks. We have seen that in depression, in the anxiety for diseases, for death, for
open spaces, there may be hidden an enormous selfoverestimation, in the preference for
the parental home there may be hostility towards the spouse, in the choice of a certain
profession, a characteristic trait, in coming late, in stammering, the fear of decisions,
etc. Only a crank would want to try to capture the human psyche in a scientific
laboratory. In the end, Individual Psychology is an artistic feat.
Endnotes for Practical Part II-X
a Fuchs, Eduard
Die Frau in der Karikatur. Munich: Langen 1906.
b Jerusalem

See endnote on page xxiii.

(footnote 4) Kanabich/Wirubof
See: Zur Pathologie der intellektuellen Emotionen. Psychotherapia. Moscow 1911. N.
Wirubof was publisher of ‘Psychotherapia’
c Joab The leader of King David’s armies, according to Samuel 1 and 2.
d ‘your communication is yea-yea, nay-nay, for whatsoever is more than these cometh of

evil.’
Words of Jesus in Matthew 5, 37.
Conclusion
Our study has shown that the traits of character, their fundamental representation
in the life of the individual, develop according to the nature of guiding lines for
thinking, feeling, willing and acting as expedients of the human psyche, and that they
are brought into stronger relief as soon as the person wants to leave the phase of
insecurity in order to achieve the fulfillment of his fictional guiding line. The material
for the formation of the characteristic traits is widely available in the psyche and its
hereditary differences vanish in the face of the unifying effect of the guiding fiction.
Goal and direction, the fictional purpose of the traits of character, may be recognized
best by the original, direct, militant-aggressive lines. Want and difficulties of life force
the character to certain changes, in which only those constructions will find favor that
are in harmony with the feeling of selfworth. This is how the more cautious, hesitating
character traits are formed that deviate from the direct line, but whose pursuit
simultaneously reveals their dependence on the guiding line.
The neurosis and the psychosis are attempts at compensation, constructive
products of the psyche that are the result of an accentuated and exaggerated guiding
idea of a child with a very strong inferiority feeling. The insecurity of these children in
regard to the future and their success in life forces them to make stronger efforts and
safeguards in their fictional plan of life and to avoid the problems of life. The more
cautious they become in doing this, the more they will weave threads of thought that go
beyond their own person into the future, organizing as outposts of their psychic
dispositions at the periphery of these threads, where the clash with the outside world
must follow, the necessary character traits. With its extraordinary sensitiveness the
fundamental neurotic characteristic trait attaches itself to reality in order to
subsequently change it according to the personality ideal, or to subject it to the latter. If
defeat threatens, the neurotic predispositions and symptoms come into force, blocking
the progress of the action.
The scanty significance of the congenital substratum in the formation of the
character is also proved by the fact that the guiding fiction gathers and coherently
arranges only those useful psychic elements, only those abilities and memories that
appear to be well suited for the finale. In the neurotic rearrangement of the psyche the
guiding fiction has unlimited power and it makes use of experiences as it sees fit, as if
the psyche were a static, concrete material. It is only when the neurotic perspective is
activated, when the neurotic characters and predispositions are fully developed and the
way to the guiding ideal has been safeguarded, that we may recognize the individual as
neurotic. For the neurotic psyche teaches us more clearly than the normal psyche:
“Through the great Being that surrounds us and penetrates us deeply, a great Becoming
is moving, striving towards complete Being.” (Hildebranda)1
1[Rudolf Hildebrand: Gedanken über Gott. die Welt und das Ich: ein Vermächtnis. Hg.

v. G. Berlitt. Jena 1910, S. 102] (see endnote)

Thus we find the character in the form of an ‘intelligent pattern’ that has found
application by means of the guiding image and which is used by the safeguarding
tendency, as well as by the predispositions for emotional disturbance and disease. It is
the task of comparative Individual Psychology to comprehend the significance of these
patterns, to understand them from their original and, in our sense, their analogical
structure, to understand them as a symbol of the plan of life, as a metaphor. For by
means of the thorough analysis of character, in which the line of the impetus towards
the guiding ideal may always be pursued, we come to know, compressed in a single
point: past, present, future and the intended finale, all at the same time.
One will always find in neurotics that they cling tenaciously to their safeguarding
patterns. Their resistance will become even greater when the patient anticipates his
defeat, a sense of being ‘below,’ or an emasculation in the disengagement from his
patterns and in the change of direction of his plan of life under influence of someone
else. The next step in the psychotherapeutic course of treatment accordingly must be:
the revelation that this strictly antithetical behavior, the patient’s resistance towards the
physician, is nothing but the old neurotic pattern, an exaggerated masculine protest,
and, subsequently, the removal of the neurotic prejudice.
Consequently, we are allowed to put forward here as a final conclusion,
elucidating, as it were, our point of departure: the fate of inferior organs and neurotic
phenomena are the symbol of formative forces attempting to fulfill a self-imposed plan
of life by means of increased efforts and expedients.
One of these fates is the psycho-neurosis, a pattern of behavior in conflict with the
community feeling and adaptation, a route of irreconciliation and discouragement
which makes it impossible to achieve the full ability to live. The psycho-neurosis is
enforced by vanity and its final purpose is to safeguard the individual for the collision
with his tasks of life, with reality, to prevent him from the revelation of the dark secret of
his inferiority.
It is only by means of this fundamental realization that the unity of neurosis and
psychosis has been established.
Our Individual Psychology, in its very essence a ‘psychology of position’ in contrast to
all ‘psychologies of disposition,’ has disclosed that the significance of the constitution
for the life of the psyche is that of temptation. No ‘psychology of disposition’ can ever
replace it, because it either fails to notice the relations between organ inferiority and
psychic life by means of the inferiority feeling — or silently presupposes them. How
pampering and a lack of affection may give cause to similar inferiority feelings in the
style of life of children has been sufficiently demonstrated.
Endnotes for Conclusion
 a Hildebrand, Rudolf
(1824 – 1894 Leipzig): German philologist and pedagog, from 1969
professor in Leipzig. As a founder of semantics he emphasized image and meaning as
contents of language, as is shown in his cultural and historical monographs of words,
for instance, the entry ‘Geist’ in the German dictionary of the Grimm brothers, in
which he cooperated partly also as editor. Besides this he was also active in
modernizing the teaching of German. Adler’s attention was probably caught by a
review of Hildebrand’s book ‘Gedanken über Gott, die Welt und das Ich’ (1910). See:
Ansbacher, Heinz L.: Rudolf Hildebrand: A Forerunner of Alfred Adler.
Journal of Individual Psychology 18, 1962, 12-17. 1962)
Index
A
above · xviii, 3, 12, 14, 16, 26, 33, 35, 36, 47, 50, 57, 64, 70, 87, 89, 91, 92, 95,
107, 109,
112, 113, 126, 128, 129, 139, 141, 143, 149, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 167, 170,
174, 178, 181, 185, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 213, 215,
221, 222, 224, 228, 229, 242, 243, 244, 252, 253, 255
abuse · 22, 23, 94
accusation · 10
Accuse · 112
achievement · 7, 34, 41
acquisition · 14, 110, 173, 184
activity · viii, ix, xviii, xix, xxi, 2, 3, 10, 14, 34, 43, 49, 58, 69, 73, 74, 86, 91, 134, 142,
159, 162, 220, 242, 252, 254
active · vi, xiii, xv, xvii, xix, 6, 14, 23, 30, 36, 42, 48, 50, 56, 65, 73, 81, 83, 91, 97, 99,
100, 106, 127, 128, 130, 140, 141, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151, 155, 167, 171, 178, 187,
191, 211, 222, 223, 235, 238, 239, 242, 243, 259
adapt · 41, 43, 59, 72, 153
adaptation · viii, xxi, 22, 56, 65, 90, 104, 109, 223, 258
addiction · 113, 142
adjustment · 4, 70
adolescence · 68
affect · 53, 66, 70, 181
affection · x, 21, 102, 105, 106, 118, 120, 142, 236, 241, 243, 251, 258
affectivity · xix, 5, 33, 51, 78, 193
aggression · xvii, xx, 8, 13, 33, 35, 44, 46, 63, 67, 74, 91, 106, 113, 134, 161, 170, 173,
176, 190, 191, 193, 197, 202, 209, 214, 225
aggressive drive · 87, 97, 151, 173, 198
agoraphobia · 96, 113, 115, 130, 138, 151, 182, 198, 216, 238
alcohol · 25, 23, 113, 130
alcoholism · 130, 176, 216
alienation · xv, 79
altruism · 24
ambition · xxi, 5, 8, 15, 33, 44, 63, 90, 91, 106, 113, 121, 133, 139, 140, 158, 189, 190,
197, 198, 201, 206, 209, 214, 215, 219, 221, 242, 243
ambitious · 16, 88, 90, 152, 177, 197, 204, 217, 243, 252
ambivalence · xv, xxi, 30, 143, 151
analogy · 8, 9, 12, 59, 64, 69, 70, 72, 99, 112, 117, 133, 136, 159, 169, 178, 180, 181,
185, 209, 210, 243, 244
anger · 176, 183, 197, 198, 215, 253
anthropology · 75
antithesis · xvii, 12, 15, 54, 55, 107, 126, 131, 185, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 221, 239,
252, 253
antithetical · 12, 15, 29, 37, 47, 58, 64, 95, 172, 176, 185, 198, 200, 206, 215, 221, 252,
255, 258
Anton, Gabriel · 2, 18, 77
anxiety · 7, 9, 10, 44, 53, 65, 100, 102, 105, 108, 115, 122, 131, 134, 135, 138, 141,
142,
152, 155, 156, 159, 160, 168, 176, 201, 212, 214, 216, 231, 237, 238, 254, 255 anxious
· 8, 10, 13, 38, 106, 115, 127, 160, 167, 181, 199, 221, 238, 240, 255 apperception · xvi,
xx, 23, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17, 35, 37, 47, 50, 59, 67, 69, 92, 95, 96, 99, 109,
126, 130, 131, 135, 141, 149, 156, 172, 181, 221, 228, 252
archetype · 8, 35
Aristotle · 12, 29, 163
arrangement · xvii, 3, 13, 34, 50, 55, 58, 65, 86, 87, 93, 102, 109, 113, 115, 118, 130,
132, 137, 141, 159, 161, 162, 167, 168, 171, 176, 197, 201, 210, 214, 216, 236, 237,
247, 251, 254
arrogance · 46, 162
art · vi, 37, 62, 78, 112, 128, 133, 149, 163, 166, 186, 220, 223, 226, 230, 254 artist · 33,
57, 107, 128, 222, 223
artists · xiii, 28, 144, 181, 183
as if · viii, xvii, 3, 6, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 22, 34, 36, 42, 45, 46, 54, 58, 59, 63, 64, 65, 67,
69,
70, 71, 79, 89, 95, 98, 100, 104, 108, 109, 111, 117, 119, 124, 126, 128, 129, 139, 140,
143, 161, 167, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 180, 181, 182, 184, 188, 192, 198, 199, 201,
203, 204, 211, 212, 214, 215, 219, 220, 225, 227, 228, 229, 236, 245, 247, 257
asceticism · 222, 223, 239
Asnaourow, Felix · vii, xiii, 248
assertion · 31, 55, 130, 137
assertiveness · 35
association · v, 22, 16, 23, 49, 77, 78, 85, 92, 106, 141, 145, 195, 214, 226 assumption ·
x, xv, xvii, 8, 58, 169, 170, 177, 189, 240
assumptions · 97
asthma · 74, 171, 212, 218
attention · xvi, xviii, xix, 4, 5, 9, 16, 35, 38, 42, 46, 48, 54, 63, 64, 66, 70, 74, 88, 89,
98,
101, 102, 103, 105, 107, 126, 127, 128, 132, 134, 141, 142, 150, 152, 153, 159, 162,
168, 170, 174, 177, 181, 183, 184, 197, 214, 216, 221, 222, 224, 226, 230, 241, 242,
251, 254, 259
attitude · x, xi, xvii, xx, 7, 9, 16, 19, 28, 32, 34, 38, 41, 43, 45, 46, 55, 66, 67, 68, 71, 78,
83, 86, 89, 91, 92, 94, 97, 103, 106, 109, 115, 117, 120, 130, 132, 136, 137, 140, 142,
148, 154, 161, 162, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 203, 206, 209, 212, 215, 216, 222,
224, 225, 230, 231, 234, 238, 243, 244, 247, 252, 253, 254
avarice · xxi
avoiding · xvii, 63, 67, 246
avoidance · 14, 41, 79, 130, 142, 178, 206, 217, 221
awareness · vi, 106, 215
awkward · 205
awkwardness · 41, 44, 59, 128, 214, 220
B
Baader, Franz von · xvii, 24
Banquo · 238, 248
Bartel, Julius · 3, 4, 5, 20, 22, 24, 26, 242, 246, 249, 250
Baschkirzewa, Marie · 154, 165
Baudelaire, Charles · 220, 232
Bauer, Julius · 2, 18, 22
beauty · 57, 98, 158
becoming · 36, 74, 91, 94, 118, 134, 137, 150, 156, 158, 217, 227, 240
being · ix, xviii, xix, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 14, 15, 19, 28, 30, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 47, 48, 53, 54,
55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 78, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, 93, 95, 96,
97,
106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113, 121, 123, 126, 128, 129, 130, 136, 137, 149, 158, 159,
160, 162, 170, 172, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 181, 185, 190, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197,
198, 200, 202, 203, 204, 205, 210, 212, 214, 216, 222, 224, 225, 226, 229, 231, 237,
238, 241, 242, 243, 245, 248, 251, 254, 255, 258
belief · 58, 81, 113, 135, 204, 207, 209, 215, 217, 248
belonging · 23, 67, 113, 117, 223
below · 23, 14, 33, 63, 64, 68, 69, 100, 126, 136, 149, 167, 182, 205, 221, 229, 239,
242,
243, 253, 254, 255, 258
Berger, Alfred · 28, 201, 208
Bergson, Henri · 43, 75, 203, 208
Bezzola, Dumeng · 134, 145
Bickel, Adolf · 6, 28
Birk, Walther · 19, 25
biting · 39, 94
Bleuler, Eugen · xv, xxi, 22, 25, 12, 30, 51, 77, 78, 104, 108, 143, 145, 147, 151, 165
blind · 26, 50, 114, 156, 162, 181
blindness · 23, 128
Bloch, Iwan · 150, 164
blushing · 74, 110, 113, 128, 178, 184, 210, 214, 252
body · 2, 59, 72, 79, 102, 124, 128, 139, 140, 161, 162, 164, 215, 228
Bossi, Luigi · 102, 123
Bouchard, Charles Joseph · 2, 19
Breuer, Josef · xvi, 22, 23
C
case · xviii, 1, 4, 6, 10, 13, 14, 21, 29, 33, 34, 36, 39, 44, 47, 48, 50, 54, 57, 60, 62,
63,
68, 69, 71, 79, 88, 89, 92, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 112,
113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 120, 124, 128, 129, 131, 132, 136, 137, 139, 141, 142, 143,
149, 151, 152, 154, 155, 156, 159, 160, 161, 164, 167, 168, 170, 173, 175, 176, 177,
178, 181, 183, 184, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 201, 205, 210, 214, 224, 226, 228, 237,
239, 241, 244, 245, 251, 252, 253, 254
cases · xix, xx, 5, 6, 8, 13, 15, 20, 26, 27, 33, 34, 43, 44, 51, 54, 60, 62, 65, 68, 73, 80,
81, 87, 88, 89, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 112, 113, 114, 117, 126,
127, 129, 130, 131, 133, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 148, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 157,
159, 160, 162, 172, 176, 178, 181, 182, 183, 184, 193, 201, 205, 209, 211, 214, 215,
216, 217, 226, 241, 244, 246, 252, 253
castration · 35, 36, 67, 106, 123, 131, 140, 172, 178, 212, 214, 223
catatonic · 160, 241
causality · 22
caution · xviii, 14, 16, 33, 35, 43, 58, 62, 63, 90, 100, 135, 137, 141, 143, 162, 176, 182,
196, 201, 205, 214, 219, 228, 253, 254
central nervous system · 1, 2, 6
change · xii, xvii, 23, 24, 9, 54, 56, 64, 67, 69, 72, 82, 90, 94, 102, 103, 104, 112, 113,
118, 131, 137, 167, 170, 176, 191, 198, 199, 203, 210, 219, 224, 227, 231, 238, 245,
246, 253, 254, 257, 258
character · vi, viii, ix, xv, xvii, xix, xx, 1, 4, 6, 10, 16, 17, 18, 29, 36, 37, 39, 50, 53, 55,
57, 58, 60, 68, 69, 70, 72, 84, 86, 87, 101, 106, 108, 112, 114, 132, 137, 139, 140, 142,
155, 168, 176, 182, 186, 189, 190, 192, 193, 209, 213, 214, 219, 221, 231, 236, 238,
239, 240, 241, 248, 251, 252, 257, 258
character traits · 168, 192, 257
characteristics · vi, ix, xv, xvi, xviii, xix, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39,
55, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 76, 80, 86, 87, 88, 91, 94, 96, 97, 102, 106, 109, 110,
112, 115, 117, 118, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 146, 148, 149,
150, 151, 154, 155, 159, 161, 167, 171, 176, 177, 178, 179, 186, 189, 191, 192, 197,
201, 203, 206, 210, 214, 216, 221, 222
Charcot, Jean-Marie · xiii, xxi, 22, 43, 75, 163
child · vi, xix, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 20, 25, 26, 27, 32, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 48, 49, 50,
55, 58, 61, 62, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 74, 89, 96, 99, 103, 106, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117,
118, 120, 127, 128, 132, 136, 137, 138, 142, 154, 162, 169, 171, 178, 179, 180, 182,
183, 189, 195, 200, 202, 203, 211, 219, 224, 228, 231, 236, 241, 242, 243, 245, 257
children · vi, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 32, 38, 43, 44, 55, 59, 65, 66, 71, 72,
74, 81, 88, 98, 99, 102, 103, 106, 111, 115, 116, 120, 121, 127, 128, 130, 138, 146, 148,
152, 155, 157, 162, 175, 181, 182, 184, 189, 191, 195, 196, 198, 206, 209, 210, 214,
216, 222, 228, 238, 240, 241, 243, 247, 257, 258
choice · 5, 14, 32, 43, 48, 74, 90, 156, 162, 179, 182, 184, 189, 196, 207, 209, 219, 240,
245, 255
Chvostek, Franz · 4, 21, 22, 24
Claudius · 144, 181, 187
clean
cleaning · 176
cleanliness · xviii, 64, 106, 111, 176, 223
climacteric · 97, 98, 99, 100, 122, 154
cognitive · xxi, 24
colic · 5, 74
collective · vii, 21
common sense · 76
community · ix, xi, xiii, xvi, xviii, 11, 14, 16, 30, 35, 41, 49, 51, 53, 56, 59, 60, 62, 71,
79, 97, 98, 100, 113, 129, 132, 137, 139, 141, 159, 162, 167, 189, 191, 192, 198, 205,
220, 223, 227, 238, 241, 251, 252, 254, 255, 258
community feeling · ix, xi, xvi, 11, 14, 35, 49, 51, 53, 56, 59, 62, 71, 98, 113, 129, 132,
137, 141, 159, 167, 189, 192, 205, 223, 238, 241, 255, 258
comparison · vi, ix, xix, 6, 70, 72, 148, 173, 174, 182, 205, 228, 240
compensation · vi, xiii, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 17, 18, 28, 35, 43, 48, 50, 56, 57, 60, 61, 88, 103,
117, 129, 131, 155, 156, 159, 173, 200, 206, 219, 224, 239, 246, 252, 253, 257
compensatory · xx, 3, 6, 15, 32, 39, 44, 53, 70, 72, 73, 90, 91, 126, 127, 129, 140, 161,
182, 189, 193, 199, 201
competition · 211, 212
complex · iii, 4, 23, 27, 35, 36, 55, 77, 106, 121, 128, 136, 150, 177
compulsion · xvii, 4, 9, 15, 33, 35, 37, 45, 49, 53, 67, 93, 104, 117, 132, 149, 183, 190,
199, 201, 203, 206, 214, 217, 223, 224, 238
compulsive · 28, 46, 63, 68, 93, 106, 115, 126, 132, 133, 154, 167, 184, 190, 199, 201,
204, 210, 212, 214, 223, 231, 238, 240, 252
concentrate · 133, 154
concentration · 4, 16, 22, 24, 121
concept · xxi, 2, 15, 25, 28, 49, 56, 58, 75, 76, 77, 79, 84, 116, 122, 123, 145, 155, 166,
172, 185, 195
conception · vi, 46, 48, 89, 118, 178, 212
conflict · 10, 18, 115, 145, 155, 160, 168, 169, 177, 180, 185, 196, 199, 217, 258
conscience · xxi, 11, 29, 34, 35, 63, 132, 159, 191, 192, 194, 201, 237, 250 conscious ·
7, 13, 37, 45, 46, 47, 48, 61, 86, 89, 102, 109, 113, 128, 136, 145, 208, 217,
229, 237, 245, 255
consciousness · xxi, 12, 37, 40, 46, 53, 76, 86, 87, 98, 105, 131, 145, 151, 154, 156,
157, 179, 188, 215, 221, 239
constitution · 3, 5, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 84, 139, 163, 208, 258
constitutional inferiority · 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 17, 89, 168
contact · xix, 6, 10, 16, 71, 82, 118, 146, 173, 234
contempt · 198
contentiousness · 173
contrariness · 222
contribution · iii, x, 3, 26, 50, 57, 87, 130, 248
contrition · 239, 241
convulsion · 21
convulsions · 5, 21
cooperate · vii, 249
cooperation · xiii, 46, 113, 214, 226
coprology · 215
coquetry · 129, 130, 148, 149, 151, 152, 168, 176, 215
counter-fiction · 56, 60, 61
courage · 45, 63, 118, 168, 171, 225
coward · 198
cowardice · xv, 46, 68, 140, 168, 171, 214
craving · 60, 100, 112, 126
craving for power · 100
creative · 30, 126, 187, 220
crime · 11, 28, 113, 129, 179
criminal · xix, 44, 68, 92, 126, 129, 164, 176, 230
criminality · 62, 191
critical · iv, x, xvi, xviii, 22, 23, 24, 16, 22, 48, 50, 76, 93, 113, 121, 153, 208, 226, 238,
239
cruel · xviii, 92, 120, 168, 189, 245
cruelty · 29, 45, 62, 68, 129, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 255
cry · 44, 107, 109, 168, 180, 244
crying · 128, 130, 134, 135, 142, 169, 170, 191, 202, 216, 239, 244, 245 cryptorchism ·
92, 102
culture · 61, 103, 107, 149, 183, 190, 195, 246
cure · 22, 23, 13, 18, 45, 94, 96, 108, 115, 165, 169, 175, 203, 212, 230, 233
cyclothymia · 14, 221
Czerny, Adalbert · 2, 5, 19, 26, 27, 212, 218
D
Dalton, John · 78
Darwin, Charles · xiii, 78
de Vries · iii
deaf · 4, 181, 183
deafness · 128
death · iii, 14, 21, 35, 36, 49, 81, 97, 127, 131, 158, 165, 180, 185, 195, 203, 205, 208,
221, 222, 227, 236, 240, 245, 246, 250, 255
defeat · 34, 58, 60, 63, 65, 68, 94, 104, 108, 118, 130, 131, 134, 137, 138, 143, 151,
152,
153, 159, 160, 167, 168, 171, 176, 180, 181, 185, 192, 196, 201, 203, 206, 211, 220,
221, 225, 228, 229, 254, 255, 257, 258
defense · 41, 76, 81, 109
defiance · 41, 198, 251
defiant · 254
deficiency · 5, 9, 28, 55, 60, 65, 79, 115, 128, 133
delirium · 59
delusion · 25, 64, 104, 138, 141, 142, 226
delusions · 36, 70, 130, 199, 246
democracy
democratic · xiii, 187, 249
Demosthenes · xiii, 183, 188
dependence · xx, 44, 45, 108, 120, 135, 180, 257
dependency · 93
depersonalization · 59, 79
depreciation · xix, xx, 9, 13, 16, 36, 45, 53, 55, 67, 74, 86, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 98,
103, 104, 105, 106, 109, 110, 112, 113, 117, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 135, 138,
149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 158, 160, 161, 168, 169, 174, 175, 177, 178, 185, 193,
197, 198, 199, 201, 205, 210, 214, 216, 217, 219, 221, 224, 227, 228, 229, 230, 236,
240, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 253, 254
depreciation of others · 94, 150, 193
depreciation tendency · 36, 55, 98, 168, 169, 174, 175, 193, 197, 199, 205, 210, 215,
219, 221, 224, 227, 228, 230, 240, 253
depression · 36, 87, 97, 104, 113, 128, 130, 151, 167, 175, 201, 212, 214, 216, 224, 238,
255
depressed · 87
deprivation · 13, 49, 54, 74
depth · 22
depth psychology · 22
desire to dominate · xv, 47, 87, 88, 97, 129, 130, 153, 161, 202, 205, 215, 219, 229
despair · 168, 247
Dessoir, Max · 66, 81, 140, 146, 147
destruction · 33, 45, 135, 196, 220
dethronement · 224
detour · 15, 126
development · vi, viii, ix, x, xi, xii, xviii, 1, 3, 4, 9, 10, 32, 35, 37, 40, 41, 42, 48, 54, 55,
57, 58, 61, 62, 65, 66, 68, 70, 73, 77, 78, 81, 83, 84, 89, 91, 116, 117, 122, 124, 127,
140, 149, 154, 156, 161, 162, 164, 168, 177, 180, 183, 193, 195, 196, 202, 208, 214,
223, 227, 241, 243, 248, 252
dexterity · 128
dexterities · xix
diagnosis · 145, 217
dialectic · 246
dialectics · 95, 121, 253
difficulty · xviii, xix, 4, 5, 10, 45, 46, 59, 98, 101, 152, 227, 229, 244, 245 difficulties ·
xvii, 8, 9, 10, 38, 42, 57, 62, 63, 95, 101, 103, 109, 148, 153, 158, 159,
222, 227, 238, 244, 257
discontent · 14, 71, 219
discouraged · 199
discouragement · 27, 172, 258
disease · vii, 2, 4, 13, 14, 19, 23, 26, 29, 34, 35, 50, 63, 76, 81, 87, 102, 104, 109, 113,
118, 122, 127, 132, 133, 134, 135, 169, 175, 180, 183, 184, 195, 201, 216, 236, 241,
245, 251, 258
disposition · x, xix, 5, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 26, 46, 57, 65, 72, 74, 89, 97, 102, 103, 127,
131, 152, 155, 160, 176, 185, 197, 223, 239, 240, 241, 245, 251, 252, 258
disputatiousness · 86, 130, 172, 212, 217, 253
distance · xvii, 25, 28, 32, 39, 69, 71, 76, 97, 111, 115, 130, 170, 181, 199, 220, 243,
253, 254
distrust · 15, 33, 92, 94, 98, 115, 129, 130, 149, 175, 216, 230
dog · 73, 152, 205
dogs · 205, 255
dogma · vii, 14, 49, 100, 123, 229, 234
dominance · 35, 43, 44, 46, 55, 63, 74, 93, 98, 101, 111, 120, 127, 137, 148, 150, 151,
153, 160, 161, 168, 170, 183, 184, 190, 192, 197, 198, 212, 251, 253
dominant · 24, 112, 127, 131, 143, 170, 241
Don Juan · 127, 144, 220, 232
double vie · xv, xxi, 36, 40
doubt · x, xvi, xix, 9, 13, 33, 35, 38, 55, 63, 66, 98, 102, 114, 131, 154, 161, 174, 176,
177, 178, 179, 192, 201, 211, 216, 220, 226, 230, 237, 239, 248, 254
doubtful · xx, 108, 211
doubting · 196, 245
dream · iii, 15, 57, 59, 68, 69, 70, 78, 95, 96, 111, 112, 117, 119, 134, 135, 142, 153,
156,
157, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 184, 185, 186, 197, 198, 202, 203, 204,
205, 212, 214, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 242, 243, 246, 247
dream theory · 78, 226
dreams · xvii, 5, 9, 16, 32, 34, 58, 59, 60, 68, 69, 70, 71, 86, 87, 94, 101, 114, 117, 118,
119, 131, 135, 136, 139, 140, 149, 152, 157, 158, 169, 170, 177, 178, 185, 192, 196,
197, 202, 203, 204, 205, 212, 215, 216, 221, 226, 228, 229, 231, 233, 237, 246, 251
dreams · xvii, 5, 9, 16, 32, 34, 58, 59, 60, 68, 69, 70, 71, 86, 87, 94, 101, 114, 117, 118,
119, 131, 135, 136, 139, 140, 149, 152, 157, 158, 169, 170, 177, 178, 185, 192, 196,
197, 202, 203, 204, 205, 212, 215, 216, 221, 226, 228, 229, 231, 233, 237, 246, 251
drive · xvi, 49, 78, 91, 97, 179, 211, 219, 220, 223
drug
drugs · 25
Drug · 18
E
eating · 62, 74, 89, 101, 106, 162
economy · xvii, 53, 78
economic · 14, 30
educability · xix, 41, 75
education · 13, 27, 37, 56, 75, 121, 198, 199, 204, 249
educator · 138
educators · 189
effeminacy · 13
ego · xvi, 37, 81, 86, 107, 139, 235, 238
egotism · 63, 98
emotion · 13, 33, 49, 56, 99, 156, 185
emotional · 37, 41, 44, 56, 58, 76, 92, 96, 97, 106, 129, 141, 175, 176, 179, 184, 185,
 186, 189, 190, 191, 192, 197, 211, 215, 227, 230, 258
empathy · 10, 53, 145
encourage · 59
encouragement · iii, 57, 225
endocrine · 116
enemy · 10, 89, 114, 130, 147, 218, 225, 230
enemies · 255
energy · x, xviii, 41, 80, 115, 120, 201
enuresis · 5, 128, 133, 168, 169, 170, 175, 245
eneuresis · 39
environment · xviii, xix, 6, 7, 10, 13, 37, 43, 44, 56, 58, 67, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 106, 112,
118, 127, 128, 152, 153, 162, 175, 190, 201, 215, 223, 236, 241, 251, 252, 253, 254
envy · xviii, 11, 34, 36, 45, 55, 63, 86, 92, 97, 101, 104, 106, 111, 113, 129, 130, 137,
162, 189, 211
epileptic · 75, 79, 114, 183
epilepsy · 21, 113, 183, 190, 199
epoch
epochs · 14
Eppinger, Hans · 2, 22, 27
equal · 63, 91, 92, 96, 97, 99, 104, 111, 113, 117, 119, 127, 135, 151, 167, 170, 173,
177,
193, 197, 200, 202, 221, 227, 252
equality · 30, 89, 91, 112, 120, 128, 130, 149, 151, 154, 155, 178, 179, 184, 252
equilibrium · 97
Erckmann, Emile · 72, 84
error · xvii, 12, 44, 123, 230
Esau · 210, 218
escape · xviii, 6, 8, 42, 54, 65, 89, 93, 94, 96, 108, 116, 120, 126, 151, 171, 178, 200,
206,
211, 222, 223, 225, 241
Escherich, Theodor · 2, 4, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25
ethics · vii, 30, 80
Eve · 163, 221, 232
evil · 29, 62, 81, 86, 189, 192, 220, 225, 230, 237, 239, 255, 256
evolution · viii, 78
exaltation · 128
examination · viii, 6, 29, 47, 85, 112, 127, 137, 148, 151, 154, 182, 210, 223
examinations · 105, 178
exclusion · 69, 83
excuse · 11, 39, 44, 54, 135, 151, 152, 160, 199, 209, 222, 247
excuses · 54, 209
exhibitionism · 139, 141, 215, 224
Exner, Sigmund · 62, 80
expectation · xix, 11, 14, 41, 46, 62, 90, 115, 136, 140, 150, 156, 157, 158, 202, 209,
214,
215, 221
expecting · 87, 118, 247, 253
experience · xvii, xix, xx, 8, 13, 27, 35, 43, 47, 48, 49, 53, 58, 59, 60, 61, 71, 75, 79, 89,
92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 103, 106, 116, 139, 140, 143, 150, 156, 174, 178, 181, 185, 189,
192, 200, 203, 207, 209, 211, 219, 223, 225, 226, 228, 241
F
failure · x, 1, 47, 79, 88, 152, 154, 174
fairy tale · 32, 104, 120, 123, 140, 148, 162, 211, 232
family · 6, 8, 24, 27, 41, 44, 63, 71, 88, 90, 97, 117, 120, 130, 131, 132, 133, 138, 144,
152, 160, 169, 173, 178, 180, 183, 189, 206, 210, 213, 219, 241, 242, 243, 250,
251 fantasy · xvii, 50, 57, 63, 72, 106, 113, 123, 139, 142, 159, 161, 162, 180, 190, 206,
219,
222, 236, 240
fate · xvii, 5, 6, 44, 53, 107, 148, 199, 203, 215, 217, 243, 251, 253, 258 father · iii, xvii,
6, 7, 19, 32, 38, 42, 44, 46, 47, 55, 57, 63, 66, 71, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92,
103, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 127, 131, 135, 136, 137, 139, 148, 158,
175, 176, 177, 178, 180, 183, 184, 185, 186, 196, 197, 201, 209, 218, 220, 231, 243,
244, 245, 251
fatigue · 111
fear · xix, 8, 9, 11, 14, 26, 34, 46, 50, 55, 58, 60, 63, 68, 71, 93, 94, 95, 96, 104, 108,
111,
112, 113, 114, 116, 120, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 135, 137, 138, 142, 148, 150,
151, 155, 158, 160, 161, 162, 172, 175, 176, 178, 180, 181, 182, 185, 191, 193, 196,
198, 200, 201, 202, 205, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 216, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 226,
227, 228, 229, 230, 233, 236, 238, 240, 244, 245, 251, 252, 255
fear of being alone · 130, 216
fear of decision · 11, 209, 220, 255
fear of falling · 182, 229
fear of reality · 113
feeling · vi, x, xvi, xviii, xix, xxi, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 29, 32,
33,
34, 35, 36, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67,
68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 79, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106,
109, 112, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136,
137, 139, 141, 142, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 167,
168, 170, 171, 173, 176, 177, 179, 181, 183, 184, 185, 189, 190, 191, 197, 198, 199,
200, 202, 203, 205, 206, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 220, 224, 226, 228, 229,
230, 233, 234, 236, 237, 238, 239, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 251, 252, 254,
257
feeling of inferiority · x, 2, 6, 9, 11, 15, 17, 32, 45, 46, 74, 89, 92, 100, 117, 118, 129,
150, 151, 178, 203, 224, 226, 252
feeling of superiority · xx, 10, 54, 101, 128, 157, 160, 168, 184, 226, 239 fellatio · 142
fellow man · 80, 129
female · xxi, 22, 34, 55, 65, 71, 93, 94, 103, 109, 117, 122, 129, 131, 133, 134, 139,
141,
142, 146, 148, 154, 156, 163, 168, 170, 172, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 183, 196,
197, 200, 205, 214, 216, 220, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 229, 236, 238, 240, 253, 254
feminine · xvii, 23, 12, 13, 15, 30, 35, 36, 47, 50, 56, 58, 65, 67, 68, 69, 71, 82, 95, 96,
107, 108, 109, 112, 117, 118, 119, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 142,
150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 158, 161, 164, 170, 171, 172, 175, 176, 179, 185, 188, 189,
198, 200, 203, 205, 208, 212, 214, 215, 216, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 231, 238, 239,
246, 252, 253
Féré, Charles · xiii, xvii, 24
Ferrero, Gugliemo · 191, 194
fetish · 60
fetishism · 126, 140, 193, 201, 215
fiction · xvii, 7, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 30, 33, 37, 42, 46, 47, 48, 50, 53, 54, 55, 60, 61, 62,
63,
65, 67, 69, 70, 74, 89, 94, 95, 99, 100, 103, 109, 120, 123, 126, 136, 140, 149, 151,
152, 156, 161, 167, 174, 176, 180, 181, 182, 184, 191, 195, 196, 200, 203, 204, 208,
209, 211, 214, 215, 220, 221, 236, 254, 257
fictional · viii, xv, xvii, xviii, xx, 64, 68, 69, 72, 74, 86, 87, 89, 92, 96, 102, 109, 126,
129, 130, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 142, 148, 152, 156, 158, 171, 173, 185,
186, 192, 193, 203, 209, 211, 215, 216, 220, 223, 224, 252, 254, 257 fictitious · 3, 15,
17, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 42, 43, 45, 46, 48, 54, 56, 58, 60, 61, 123, 136, 141
fictitious goal · 38, 43, 54
flagellation · 223, 240
Fliess, Wilhelm · 81, 164, 165
forget
forgetfulness · 101, 160, 174, 175
form · x, xvi, 8, 9, 12, 15, 21, 28, 30, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 47, 53, 54, 59, 61, 63,
65,
67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 76, 78, 83, 88, 90, 91, 94, 95, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 120, 128, 130,
131, 134, 137, 139, 141, 146, 150, 154, 155, 157, 159, 160, 168, 169, 170, 172, 174,
176, 178, 180, 181, 182, 191, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 210, 211, 222, 223,
224, 225, 231, 233, 234, 238, 239, 242, 244, 245, 251, 252, 253, 254, 258 free will · 8
freedom · 99, 250
Freschl, Robert · vii, 57, 79
Freud · v, x, xvi, xvii, xxi, 3, 9, 16, 18, 25, 30, 35, 46, 48, 49, 54, 55, 67, 69, 70, 76, 78,
80, 81, 82, 83, 99, 102, 103, 104, 106, 118, 121, 122, 123, 124, 134, 135, 146, 147,
149, 154, 164, 165, 170, 174, 180, 193, 226, 246, 249
Freytag, Gustav · 57, 79, 183, 188
friendship · 112, 133, 134, 205, 210, 211
frigidity · 47, 93, 115, 130, 151
fugue · 127
Furtműller, Aline · 209, 218
Furtműller, Carl · 159, 165
future · vi, vii, viii, xix, 6, 10, 11, 32, 38, 41, 42, 49, 56, 59, 69, 71, 72, 89, 90, 101, 108,
115, 128, 138, 140, 154, 155, 157, 162, 196, 197, 200, 203, 205, 219, 220, 221, 222,
228, 230, 239, 243, 252, 257, 258
G
gait · 111
game · 88, 102, 211, 225, 230, 243
games · 127, 138, 196, 211, 219, 243
Ganghofer, Ludwig · 228, 230, 233, 234
genital · 172, 215, 229, 242
genitals · 4, 13, 44, 90, 91, 96, 99, 102, 133, 151, 153, 162, 175, 211, 214, 229
genius · vi, 24, 28, 33, 82, 208, 227
glance · 169, 216, 236
glands · 2, 4, 13, 21, 82, 116, 124, 162
globus · 108, 124
goal · iv, vi, viii, ix, xiii, xv, xvi, xviii, xix, xx, 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 32, 33, 34,
35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 48, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 63, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71,
72,
83, 86, 87, 89, 93, 94, 95, 98, 103, 118, 126, 128, 130, 132, 134, 137, 140, 142, 150,
151, 156, 158, 167, 169, 171, 172, 173, 176, 179, 182, 183, 184, 189, 191, 197, 203,
205, 206, 211, 213, 214, 215, 219, 221, 223, 225, 226, 227, 229, 236, 242, 245, 254
God · ix, 36, 48, 57, 70, 161, 176, 180, 222, 229, 239, 241, 248
Goethe · xiii, 33, 40, 66, 78, 81, 82, 84, 97, 121, 124, 188, 208
Gogol, Nikolay Vassilyevich · vii, xiii, 231, 235
greed · 6, 11, 55, 63, 74, 86, 87, 88, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 101, 103, 112, 113, 127,
129, 159, 162, 189, 222, 237
grief · 184, 186, 206, 240, 251
Grillparzer, Franz · 222, 233
Groos, Karl · 37, 40, 42, 75, 196, 207, 215, 218
Gross, Otto · 2, 18, 249
Grosz, Siegfried · 249
group · 2, 22, 37, 97, 128, 179, 211, 254
guessing · 37, 156
guidance · iii, vi, 41, 208
guiding fiction · xvi, 8, 9, 11, 17, 32, 38, 42, 43, 45, 46, 48, 50, 56, 57, 58, 63, 65, 68,
103, 113, 149, 155, 156, 159, 161, 167, 168, 170, 174, 176, 186, 189, 191, 200, 211,
224, 251, 252, 253, 257
guiding line · vii, xix, xx, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 16, 33, 35, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 45, 48, 49, 50,
53, 56, 58, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 96, 98, 99, 100, 103, 105,
106, 107, 108, 113, 114, 117, 123, 126, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 141, 150, 152,
158, 159, 161, 167, 168, 170, 176, 186, 190, 191, 192, 193, 196, 198, 200, 206, 210,
212, 214, 215, 221, 228, 230, 239, 246, 251, 252, 254, 257
guiding principle · 7, 33, 99, 182
guilt · 11, 35, 44, 58, 62, 68, 91, 103, 132, 135, 159, 176, 191, 201, 237, 248
H
habit · 18, 161, 204, 215
Halban, Josef von · 67, 82, 132
hallucination · 61, 138, 156, 157, 158, 198
 hallucinations · 34, 53, 58, 59, 60, 142, 149, 151, 156, 157, 158, 178, 196, 201,
216, 241
Hamburger, Franz · 5, 19, 25, 27
happy · xvi, 15, 216
happiness · 81, 144, 222, 238
hate · xix, xxi, 11, 36, 105, 114, 161, 210, 216
hated child · 62, 130
hate · 87, 210, 240
headache · 74, 198
headaches · 87, 100, 112, 128, 178, 183, 184, 197, 198
heart · 58, 113, 118, 214, 231, 248
Hebbel, Christian Friedrich · 60, 79
Herder, Johann Gottfried · xiii, 202, 208
heredity · 2, 13, 22, 27, 44, 87, 183, 222
hero · 10, 42, 119, 183, 191, 211, 231
heroism · 46
Hertz, Wilhelm · 231, 235
hesitiation
hesitating attitude · 101
Hildebrand, Rudolf · 257, 259
Hirschfeld, Magnus · 82, 140, 146, 147, 164
Hochwart, Lothar Frankl Ritter von · 4, 5, 23, 26
Holzknecht, Guido · 74, 85
homosexuality · 36, 83, 141, 146, 147, 154, 164, 193, 212, 229
homosexual · 15, 81, 92, 141, 149, 211, 252
hostility · 15, 43, 62, 148, 191, 255
hostile · 7, 8, 16, 17, 38, 42, 44, 46, 55, 59, 61, 62, 70, 86, 87, 90, 91, 97, 98, 107, 134,
135, 140, 151, 159, 191, 206, 210, 211, 221, 239, 241
human · iii, vi, ix, x, xi, xiii, xvi, xvii, 8, 11, 12, 32, 37, 38, 42, 48, 55, 56, 59, 72, 73,
78,
80, 81, 84, 87, 89, 95, 129, 130, 134, 148, 155, 159, 179, 191, 193, 195, 200, 210, 222,
230, 233, 235, 239, 248, 255, 257
human nature · ix, 12, 84, 191
humiliation · 8, 58, 101, 168, 177, 178, 223, 224, 241, 243
humility · xviii, 56, 168
hunger · 26, 49, 78, 87, 88, 243
hurting · 46
hydrocephalus · 4
hypersensitiveness · 6
hypersensitivity · 58, 110, 115, 116, 117, 143, 153, 193, 199, 219
hypnosis · 23, 36, 81, 146
hypnotic · 48
hypothesis · 29, 48, 134
hysteria · xxi, 23, 24, 75, 118, 143, 145, 163, 167, 190
I
 Ibsen, Henrik · 82, 86, 121, 127, 144
idea · vi, viii, xiii, xvi, 11, 12, 15, 21, 23, 30, 37, 40, 50, 54, 56, 59, 67, 72, 76, 79, 80,
82, 90, 93, 95, 100, 103, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 116, 118, 119, 120, 126, 131, 133,
136,
149, 151, 154, 158, 163, 170, 172, 176, 177, 178, 181, 183, 185, 193, 197, 198,
199,
200, 201, 202, 204, 205, 209, 210, 211, 213, 215, 219, 220, 222, 224, 225, 229, 231,
233, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 252, 257
ideal · xvi, xvii, xx, 14, 29, 33, 34, 35, 44, 47, 48, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64,
67, 69, 70, 71, 74, 86, 88, 89, 90, 95, 96, 106, 112, 127, 129, 130, 133, 134, 140, 143,
148, 150, 156, 158, 161, 162, 165, 167, 171, 173, 176, 177, 189, 211, 216, 220, 222,
231, 235, 257, 258
idealism · 207
idealistic positivism · 30
identification · 36, 57, 58, 173, 177
Iliad · 221, 232
illness · 10, 30, 43, 62, 88, 105, 106, 107, 110, 151, 152, 169, 197, 202, 211, 212, 246
image · 6, 41, 42, 50, 55, 56, 59, 66, 67, 69, 87, 89, 92, 106, 113, 133, 135, 136, 140,
141,
143, 149, 156, 164, 165, 169, 172, 180, 185, 192, 193, 197, 199, 200, 202, 203, 215,
222, 229, 234, 238, 254, 258, 259
images · 8, 33, 42, 106, 149, 161, 167, 172, 173, 180, 182, 192, 195, 197, 206, 221, 243
imagination · 11, 33, 42, 53, 91, 191, 249
imaginary · xvii, 9, 42, 54, 91, 101, 102, 127, 197
imitation · 38, 90, 127, 215
Immermann, Karl · 144
immortality · 38, 50, 221
impatience · xix, 14, 34, 98, 111, 186, 209, 219
impatient · 74, 135, 185, 252
imperfection · xxi, 151
imperfect · 51, 226
impotence · 11, 34, 36, 46, 74, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 115, 130, 160, 206, 211, 237, 247
inborn · x, xix, 41, 47, 108, 116, 130, 178, 191, 192, 193
incest · xvii, 46, 55, 95, 119, 136, 137, 177, 193, 220, 233
incomplete · ix, 51, 61, 68, 95, 103, 163, 210
incompleteness · xxi, 1, 18
incontinence · 4
independence · xviii, xx, 41, 43, 44
independent · v, x, 3, 9, 11, 41, 44, 73, 101, 107, 109, 115, 179, 184, 224 Individual
Psychology · ix, x, xi, xii, 3, 11, 25, 27, 32, 34, 53, 79, 81, 83, 95, 100, 103,
116, 119, 144, 146, 166, 183, 206, 207, 255, 258, 259
individuality · 76, 80, 251
indolence · 5, 34, 244
infantile · ix, xvii, 2, 8, 12, 13, 17, 20, 21, 24, 55, 61, 70, 95, 105, 117, 241 infantilism ·
5, 44, 76
inferiority · vi, ix, x, xvii, xviii, xx, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 23, 24, 32, 34, 38, 39, 43,
44,
45, 47, 48, 50, 56, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 70, 71, 72, 88, 89, 92, 93, 94, 97, 99, 101,
102, 104, 106, 108, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132,
133, 135, 139, 149, 150, 155, 159, 162, 168, 171, 172, 173, 178, 182, 183, 184, 189,
190, 191, 192, 193, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 205, 209, 210, 211, 214, 215, 221,
223, 224, 226, 228, 229, 237, 242, 246, 257, 258
inferiority feeling · vi, ix, x, xvii, xx, 7, 8, 12, 13, 39, 43, 44, 47, 50, 56, 58, 61, 62, 64,
65, 70, 71, 88, 89, 92, 97, 99, 101, 102, 104, 117, 118, 119, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130,
133, 139, 149, 159, 162, 168, 173, 182, 183, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 196, 197, 198,
200, 201, 205, 209, 210, 211, 214, 215, 223, 224, 226, 246, 257, 258 infidelity · 215,
229
inner conflict · 111
insane · 227, 230, 246
insatiable · xviii, 149, 230
insatiableness · 216
insecurity · vi, xvii, xviii, xix, xx, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 32, 33, 35, 38, 41, 42, 48,
54,
56, 61, 63, 64, 65, 70, 74, 89, 97, 99, 100, 104, 108, 115, 116, 118, 120, 126, 127, 129,
133, 138, 140, 141, 159, 161, 178, 180, 182, 183, 191, 193, 198, 200, 206, 211, 213,
214, 216, 220, 221, 222, 228, 236, 244, 245, 246, 253, 257
insight · vii, 1, 32, 51, 54, 86, 174, 181, 193
insomnia · 99, 105, 111, 130, 131, 151, 153, 179, 201, 203, 224, 225
instinct · 26, 29, 70, 150, 177
intelligence · xvii, 22, 26, 155, 205, 244
intelligent · 10, 48, 61, 113, 226, 242, 258
intention · v, 43, 134, 149, 155, 180, 223, 237, 238, 253
intentions · 88, 173
interest · xv, xvi, 5, 7, 11, 14, 17, 31, 65, 79, 122, 139, 150, 152, 154, 159, 164, 174,
189,
215, 222, 230, 234, 236
intestinal disorder · 5, 88, 93
intolerance · 5, 36
intolerant · 158
introspection · 4, 6, 80
intuition · 6, 75
irritability · 4, 5, 212
isolation · 8, 64, 132, 157, 178
J
Jacob · 210, 218
James, William · xiii, 43, 75, 76, 124
Janet, Pierre · xiii, xv, xvi, xvii, xxi, 22, 24, 59, 79, 142, 147, 236, 248 Jassny · 129,
145, 191, 194
jealousy · 92, 97, 113, 130, 131, 162, 199, 201, 205, 210, 212, 216, 219, 230
 jealous · 120, 130, 199, 210, 212, 216
Jerusalem, Wilhelm · xvi, 23, 255, 256
Jewish · 22, 24, 25, 28, 90, 91, 209, 230, 241, 248
Jew · 22, 24, 25, 28, 90, 91, 209, 230, 241, 248
Jodl, Friedrich · 61, 80
Joel, karl · 30, 207
joke
jokes · 221, 228
joking · 231
Jolowicz, Ernst · 188
Jones · 181, 187
joy · 57, 72, 161, 195, 198, 239
Jung,Carl Gustav · xxi, 9, 18, 77, 145, 219, 233
justice · iii, 80, 99, 120, 183, 201, 250
K
Kahane, Max · xvi, 22
Kant. Emanuel · xiii, 23, 30, 42, 43, 49, 75, 77, 82, 123, 182, 188, 200, 208 Kaus, Otto ·
vii, xiii, 231, 235
Kipling, Rudyard · 180, 187
Kisch, Enoch Heinrich · 100, 122
Klages, Ludwig · 84
Kraepelin, Emil · xix, 22, 25, 24, 46, 77
Kramer, Josef · 196, 207
Kretschmer · x, xix, 2, 18, 72, 84, 130, 145, 242, 249
L
language · iii, 39, 72, 74, 83, 93, 106, 107, 108, 133, 170, 172, 173, 248, 259
laughter · 190
law · 14, 24, 90, 91, 101, 188, 199, 211, 223
laws · 23, 78
laziness · 68, 128, 197, 198
leadership
leader · 22, 25, 82, 145, 256
learning · 48
Lenau, Nikolaus · 144, 230, 234
Leonardo da Vinci · 107, 123
lesbian · 175
Lewandowsky, Max · 76
libido · x, xvi, 46, 49, 67, 104, 106, 137, 146, 149, 173, 176, 193, 238
Lichtenberg, George · xiii, 69, 83, 239, 248
limping · 128
Lipps, Theodor · 131, 145, 182, 188
liveliness · 5
logic · ix, x, 12, 29, 30, 59, 69, 130, 167, 217, 223, 248, 252, 254
Lombroso, Cesare · xiii, 9, 12, 28, 30, 96, 121, 191, 194
love · xvi, xviii, xix, xxi, 11, 13, 16, 26, 35, 41, 49, 60, 63, 78, 80, 81, 90, 93, 95, 98,
99,
110, 112, 114, 118, 119, 120, 121, 126, 127, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 140,
148,
149, 150, 153, 160, 161, 164, 165, 170, 172, 173, 176, 177, 180, 181, 187, 190, 193,
199, 201, 202, 205, 210, 211, 214, 216, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 228, 231, 234, 235,
246, 247, 252, 254
lying · xvi, 5, 11, 57, 98, 102, 108, 110, 126, 134, 135, 136, 144, 170, 226, 238, 255
Lysistrata · 230, 234
M
Maeder, Alphonse · 226, 233
male · xxi, 65, 139, 146, 148, 150, 151, 153, 154, 172, 173, 177, 178, 179, 181, 190,
196,
204, 206, 210, 211, 214, 215, 216, 222, 228
malice · 189, 197
malingering · 128, 145
manic-depressive · 25
mania · 14, 36, 79, 104, 126, 157, 221, 229, 241, 243
mankind · 13, 42, 159, 195, 250
Marholm, Laura · 200, 207
marriage · xvii, 14, 34, 46, 63, 90, 93, 97, 100, 108, 112, 115, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134,
136, 137, 148, 149, 150, 151, 155, 158, 162, 170, 178, 179, 184, 199, 200, 201,
202,
204, 210, 216, 219, 222, 223, 237, 247, 251, 252
marry · 133, 134, 158, 201, 204, 205, 213, 247
Martius, Friedrich · 3, 22
masculine protest · xvi, xviii, 13, 15, 35, 36, 47, 50, 53, 60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 71,
90,
91, 93, 94, 98, 99, 104, 106, 109, 112, 113, 114, 117, 120, 128, 129, 132, 133, 134,
135, 136, 139, 141, 142, 143, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 160, 161, 162, 167,
168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 178, 179, 185, 191, 193, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200,
201, 212, 214, 216, 221, 223, 229, 237, 239, 240, 241, 243, 245, 246, 253, 258
masculinity · 13, 33, 35, 36, 64, 65, 68, 90, 94, 104, 131, 133, 135, 139, 161, 168, 171,
173, 178, 179, 181, 182, 186, 197, 210, 214, 215, 228, 229, 231, 243, 245, 255
masculine · xvi, xviii, 23, 12, 13, 15, 16, 30, 34, 35, 36, 38, 44, 46, 50, 53, 55, 56, 58,
60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 82, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 98, 99, 103, 104, 106, 109, 112,
113, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 126, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 139,
140, 141, 142, 143, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 158, 160, 161, 162, 164, 167,
168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 190, 191,
193, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 203, 208, 210, 212, 214, 215, 221, 222, 223, 225,
226, 228, 229, 237, 239, 240, 241, 243, 245, 246, 252, 253, 258
masochism · 83, 154, 164, 193, 223
mastery · 134
masturbation · 11, 14, 39, 46, 55, 102, 132, 137, 149, 151, 159, 161, 204, 206, 212, 214,
216, 231, 237, 240
materialism · 27
mathematics · 123
mature · 254
May, Karl · ix, 28, 245, 249
megalomania · 44, 63, 137
melancholia · 24, 79, 126, 234
melancholy · 35, 98, 100, 139, 221, 234, 237
memory · xvii, xix, 6, 8, 17, 38, 41, 42, 45, 47, 50, 53, 57, 69, 77, 79, 80, 96, 113, 115,
119, 132, 137, 139, 154, 156, 157, 158, 196, 199
Mendel, Kurt · 99, 122
menstruation · 14, 100, 122, 158, 175, 183
mental disorder · vii
mental health · xviii, 56
Meschede, Franz · 154, 165
metaphor · xvii, 47, 220, 258
migraine · 20, 74, 100, 115, 128, 177, 183, 184, 185, 190, 212, 240
mind · xv, xviii, 6, 14, 26, 32, 43, 54, 72, 75, 112, 116, 118, 154, 202, 228, 239 mistrust
· xviii, 201, 202, 205, 219, 247
modesty · 56, 168, 214
Moebius, Paul Julius · 149, 163
Moll, Albert · 141, 146, 184, 188
mood · 24, 11, 17, 34, 46, 71, 216, 234, 238
moodiness · 5, 142, 161
morality · vii, 29, 38, 40, 80, 110, 121, 141, 182, 222, 250, 253
Morel, Auguste Benedicte · 5, 24, 29
Moro, Ernst · 2, 19, 26
moroseness · 5
Morpheus · 226, 233
morphine · 113, 241
mother · xvii, 6, 7, 10, 32, 38, 42, 44, 46, 47, 55, 63, 71, 87, 90, 92, 95, 102, 107, 111,
112, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121, 136, 137, 138, 152, 153, 158, 161, 168, 169,
170, 171, 176, 177, 178, 180, 183, 184, 185, 196, 197, 198, 210, 211, 212, 220, 221,
224, 228, 233, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245
motivation · xx, 137, 229
motives · 26, 34, 121
movement · xiii, 12, 26, 28, 54, 56, 59, 81, 106, 110, 114, 124, 128, 152, 157, 161, 185,
196, 203, 208, 239, 241, 253
murder · 246
murderer · 106, 248
muscles · 20, 27, 124
music · 30, 116, 151
musical · 30, 116, 119, 152
musician · 183
Mutschmann, Heinrich · 4, 23
myopathy · 5
mythology · 121, 164, 207, 234
myths · 37, 40, 123, 140, 220
N
Naecke, Paul · 150, 164
nagging · 199
narcissism · 150, 164, 224
nation · 24
national · 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 188, 234
nausea · 102, 104, 106, 128, 241
necrophilia · 149
need · iii, xviii, 5, 6, 18, 25, 26, 41, 43, 47, 70, 75, 78, 93, 99, 102, 103, 106, 148, 153,
157, 167, 191, 206, 228, 250
negativism · 44, 106, 224, 230, 253
neglect · 8, 26, 244
neuralgia · 20, 100, 190
neurasthenia · xxi, 24, 163, 167
neurosis · ix, x, xv, xvi, xviii, xxi, 1, 3, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 24, 32,
33,
34, 35, 36, 43, 44, 45, 46, 53, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74,
76,
86, 87, 89, 92, 93, 95, 97, 99, 100, 102, 106, 108, 112, 114, 115, 116, 126, 128, 131,
132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157,
158, 159, 160, 162, 167, 168, 172, 173, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185,
236, 238, 240, 246, 251, 252, 253, 254, 257, 258
neuroses · vi, viii, x, xv, xvi, xvii, xxi, 5, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 23, 25, 27, 35, 43, 46, 54,
81, 100, 122, 130, 139, 155, 156, 167, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 190, 203, 210, 249
neurotic · viii, ix, x, xv, xvi, xviii, xix, xx, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16,
17, 20, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 53, 55, 56,
58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 76, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94,
95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 112, 114, 115, 116, 120, 122, 126,
127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 148, 149, 150,
151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 167, 170, 171, 173, 176, 177,
178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 186, 189, 190, 191, 192, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201,
203, 206, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 227, 228,
229, 230, 231, 236, 237, 240, 241, 242, 243, 246, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 257, 258
Neusser, Edmund von · 132, 145
Nietzsche, Friedrich · xiii, xvi, 11, 12, 15, 28, 29, 30, 31, 40, 45, 55, 71, 74, 77, 78, 83,
84, 85, 103, 121, 123, 138, 146, 179, 187, 192, 194, 233
nightmare · 233
nightmares · 196, 226, 233
normal · vii, xv, xvi, xix, 7, 47, 62, 67, 68, 72, 83, 103, 127, 128, 132, 142, 164, 170,
174,
192, 193, 196, 219, 223, 225, 241, 254, 257
normality · 56, 117
O
 obedience · xviii, 7, 252, 255
objective · 46, 61, 70, 123, 155, 203
obstacle · 35, 90, 91, 104, 133, 152, 158, 160, 227
obstinacy · 7, 14, 34, 39, 43, 44, 71, 74, 76, 106, 111, 140, 142, 152, 168, 171, 176, 180,
186, 189, 197, 198, 202, 252, 253, 255
obstipation · 74, 85, 102, 106, 108, 157
occupation · 16, 113, 133, 254
Oedipus complex · 46, 47, 118, 119, 120
old age · 97, 98, 230, 235
onanism · 159
only child · 33, 113, 184
opinion · v, xv, xxi, 3, 4, 10, 27, 54, 84, 88, 97, 119, 121, 123, 143, 149, 167, 169, 175,
191, 240, 246
Oppenheim (Hermannn and David) · 181, 188, 196, 207
opponent · 27, 130, 147, 172, 191, 209
orator · 90, 183, 188
organ · vi, viii, x, xiii, xix, xx, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 13, 17, 23, 24, 26, 28, 37, 41, 43, 50, 51, 58,
72, 73, 106, 116, 130, 147, 156, 162, 172, 173, 178, 182, 183, 201, 203, 211, 229,
236,
242, 246, 258
organ inferiority · vi, viii, x, xiii, xix, 1, 3, 4, 23, 24, 28, 37, 50, 51, 73, 106, 116, 130,
162, 182, 183, 211, 242, 246, 258
orientation · 8, 12, 16, 37, 41, 42, 47, 48, 49, 52, 70, 90
overcoming · 9, 10
oversensitivity · 14, 190
overcompensation · xvii, 1, 4, 24, 56, 62, 107, 173, 182, 223
Ovid · 140, 146, 165, 233
P
pain · xvii, 7, 15, 38, 48, 50, 53, 56, 65, 74, 92, 93, 102, 127, 128, 152, 156, 164,
179, 184, 198, 202, 229, 236, 241, 254
palpitation
palpitations · 110, 113
pampering · 7, 74, 110, 140, 181, 184, 258
pampered · 6, 43, 44, 62, 88, 105, 118, 130, 162, 169
pantomime · 63, 68, 172, 173
paralysis · 14, 9, 75, 124, 160, 179, 204, 216
paranoia · 42, 139, 153, 157, 217, 221, 237
parent · 137
parents · 8, 13, 26, 27, 41, 44, 65, 67, 74, 88, 91, 102, 103, 111, 112, 117, 118, 120, 128,
137, 138, 148, 178, 180, 189, 195, 199, 206, 212, 236, 237, 241, 243, 244, 245, 247,
251
parsimony · 88, 222
Pascal, Blaise · 239, 248
passivity · xviii, xxi, 13, 34, 56
passive · 15, 36, 132, 154
patient · xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, 24, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 27, 34, 35, 36, 45, 46, 54, 58, 59,
60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 69, 82, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102,
103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 126, 130,
131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153,
154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 167, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177,
178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 190, 193, 197, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205,
210, 211, 212, 214, 217, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 236, 237, 238, 240, 241, 242,
243, 247, 252, 254, 255, 258
patricide · 114
pattern · 16, 258
Paulsen, Friedrich · 41, 75
Pavlov, Iwan · 48, 77
peace · xviii, 56, 65, 101, 105, 175, 223, 236, 238
pedantry · 10, 14, 34, 106, 160, 209, 222
penis · 102, 133, 172
perception · 33, 34, 43, 47, 49, 56, 61, 75, 80, 149, 172, 200, 201, 225, 242
perfection · 16, 38, 188
personality · vi, viii, xv, xvi, xviii, xix, xxi, 9, 16, 35, 42, 47, 48, 50, 51, 54, 55, 57, 58,
59, 61, 62, 64, 67, 69, 71, 74, 79, 81, 87, 88, 90, 95, 98, 104, 105, 106, 127, 129, 133,
216, 219, 222, 245, 246, 255, 257
perspective · 70, 135, 136, 176, 192, 219, 222, 243, 257
pertussis · 245, 250
perverse · xvi, 3, 11, 34, 44, 46, 81, 141, 142, 149, 172, 176, 193, 202, 211, 212, 241
perversion · 3, 71, 113, 139, 142, 149, 164, 193, 212, 216
pessimism · xix, 9, 11, 44, 79, 96
Pfister, Oskar Robert · 157, 165
Pflaunder, Meinhard von · 5, 19, 25, 26, 27
philosophy · xvi, xxi, 23, 24, 30, 37, 40, 49, 64, 75, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 121, 163,
165, 166, 198, 203, 207, 227, 234, 248, 250
phobia · 93, 138, 229
phobias · xxi, 182
photophobia · 4
physician · xiii, xix, 4, 13, 18, 39, 87, 94, 96, 99, 101, 104, 108, 115, 118, 122, 134,
143, 145, 150, 152, 174, 175, 177, 189, 198, 202, 203, 222, 225, 227, 237, 241, 242,
249, 253, 258
physics · 14
Pineles, Friedrich · 4, 24
pity · 90, 210, 216
Plato · 24, 80, 121, 123, 200, 208, 219, 232
play · vi, xv, 10, 11, 15, 32, 36, 38, 45, 56, 59, 62, 74, 76, 86, 93, 95, 121, 126, 133,
138, 153, 155, 170, 176, 189, 199, 209, 210, 211, 215, 222, 227, 229, 230, 232, 234,
235, 236, 238, 240, 243, 250, 254
pleasure · xvi, xvii, xxi, 15, 16, 25, 33, 38, 41, 46, 48, 49, 50, 62, 64, 71, 72, 107, 130,
139, 179, 202, 223, 240
poet · 23, 146, 232
poetry · 187, 208, 221, 222, 228, 248
Poggio, Bracciolini · 231, 235
polarity · xv, xxi
politics · 30, 205, 235, 250
Ponfick, Emil · 2, 19
possession · 86, 89, 112, 113, 114, 115, 127, 152, 172
poverty · 46, 91, 126, 167, 222
power · ix, xi, xv, xvii, xviii, xx, 8, 9, 15, 16, 25, 29, 30, 33, 35, 38, 41, 46, 53, 56, 58,
60, 74, 80, 86, 88, 89, 93, 97, 98, 101, 114, 115, 118, 119, 121, 130, 133, 134, 137, 140,
141, 144, 151, 152, 154, 155, 159, 160, 168, 172, 177, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 189,
190, 192, 196, 200, 201, 204, 205, 215, 216, 217, 219, 220, 221, 223, 228, 230, 255,
257
practical · viii, xx, 22, 30, 33, 40, 43, 68, 75, 103, 108, 121, 132, 171, 179
pragmatism · 76
praise · 54, 241
precocious · 74
precocity · 4, 5, 137, 189
predestination · 57, 59, 113, 161
pregnancy · 106, 109, 110, 138, 150, 158, 172, 178, 212
pregnant · 109
prejudice · vii, xxi, 53, 99, 123, 185, 187, 258
preparation · vii, xviii, 10, 37, 39, 57, 60, 90, 114, 136, 140, 169, 190, 198, 202, 217,
228 prestige · ix, 98, 104, 138, 224, 228, 252, 254
Preuss, Konrad Theodor · 207
pride · 13, 26, 34, 45, 46, 59, 62, 63, 77, 112, 113, 117, 130, 150, 154, 209, 212, 217,
251 primitive · 8, 12, 14, 16, 37, 49, 54, 60, 63, 95, 184, 195, 207
probability · 64, 134, 182, 246
problem · vi, xv, 1, 15, 23, 29, 33, 48, 68, 69, 74, 78, 84, 91, 113, 115, 142, 154, 162,
169, 175, 181, 182, 185, 198, 203, 205, 206, 209, 222, 226, 228, 246
profession · 5, 32, 34, 38, 74, 92, 118, 189, 220, 224, 255
proof · xviii, 58, 67, 71, 94, 140, 151, 155, 161, 176, 184, 192, 202, 204, 206, 212, 214,
216, 220, 223, 238, 239, 248, 251, 252
prostitute · 205
prostitution · 119, 179, 216
protection · 2, 35, 36, 96, 104, 138, 172, 176, 181, 191, 203, 212
prototype · 38, 160, 201
pseudomasochism · 154
psyche · vi, vii, viii, ix, x, xv, xvi, xviii, xix, 1, 2, 3, 5, 11, 32, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44,
48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 78,
87, 89, 97, 98, 102, 106, 108, 116, 128, 130, 135, 137, 143, 155, 156, 169, 170, 171,
172, 179, 183, 184, 193, 206, 214, 220, 229, 230, 231, 236, 239, 245, 246, 252, 255,
257, 258
psychic · vi, viii, ix, x, xiii, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13,
15, 16, 17, 26, 29, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 55, 61,
63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72, 73, 76, 77, 79, 81, 84, 86, 89, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 100, 104,
107, 115, 117, 119, 123, 127, 128, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 140, 141, 142, 148, 154,
156, 157, 158, 160, 167, 170, 172, 178, 179, 182, 183, 195, 196, 198, 203, 205, 210,
212, 229, 243, 245, 246, 247, 252, 254, 255, 257, 258
psychology · iii, v, vi, vii, viii, ix, x, xii, xv, xvi, xxi, 16, 35, 40, 45, 46, 54, 64, 75, 76,
77, 79, 80, 81, 136, 145, 155, 164, 181, 182, 197, 203, 237, 250, 258
psychological · iii, vi, viii, xv, xvi, xvii, 1, 2, 8, 27, 32, 55, 65, 80, 82, 91, 97, 108, 172,
173, 177, 195, 200, 203, 251, 255
psychosis · 3, 13, 14, 32, 36, 37, 42, 43, 46, 53, 58, 59, 68, 79, 89, 116, 126, 139, 150,
167, 168, 173, 179, 180, 191, 211, 238, 241, 254, 257, 258
psychotic · 2, 9, 54, 64, 74, 76, 96, 103, 127, 143, 157, 189
psychotherapist · iii, 50, 83, 101, 134, 145, 159, 173, 174, 185, 188, 201, 222, 249
puerperium · 100
punctuality · 177, 209
punishment · 26, 29, 58, 106, 216, 242, 245
purpose · xvi, xviii, xx, 24, 32, 35, 36, 44, 48, 52, 54, 63, 69, 73, 87, 102, 104, 120, 126,
130, 132, 136, 141, 175, 177, 183, 189, 190, 197, 203, 214, 216, 230, 236, 239, 251,
252, 257, 258
purposeful · xviii, 46, 61, 93, 182
pyromania · 190
Pythagorean · 12, 30
R
race · 28, 158, 159, 203, 205, 209, 210, 222
rage · 5, 112, 120, 168, 176, 191, 197, 215, 223, 229
Raimann, Emil · 142, 147
rational · 70, 121, 123, 248
readiness · viii, 75, 89, 142, 159, 162, 191
reality · vi, xv, xvi, xx, 7, 10, 14, 26, 30, 31, 32, 37, 42, 43, 48, 49, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59,
61,
64, 68, 69, 74, 75, 89, 96, 100, 103, 108, 109, 113, 126, 129, 130, 133, 136, 141,
142,
148, 149, 150, 151, 162, 167, 170, 173, 176, 180, 189, 192, 193, 196, 211, 215, 216,
219, 220, 221, 223, 234, 247, 254, 257, 258
reason · ix, x, xviii, xix, 11, 14, 20, 27, 30, 33, 53, 55, 69, 71, 73, 75, 78, 90, 91, 96, 99,
105, 117, 137, 143, 167, 169, 196, 198, 205, 208, 213, 226, 238, 244, 248
reasonableness · 56
reasoning · ix, xi, 9, 15, 29, 37, 69, 70, 85, 92, 132, 139, 152, 186, 193, 200, 208, 229
rebellion · 152
recollection · 96
reflex · 3, 19, 70, 242
reflexes · 5, 6, 73, 77, 242
refraction · 4
regression · xviii, 60, 70
Reich, Julius · 14, 6, 28, 182, 188
rejection · 16, 130, 154, 204
religion · vi, 24, 80, 159, 195, 222, 239, 248, 250
religiosity · 11, 35
religious · 10, 26, 30, 81, 85, 149, 185, 195, 208, 215, 229, 230, 239, 241, 245 remorse ·
44, 192, 201, 238, 239, 240
repression · 3, 81, 112, 151, 174, 212, 237, 238
repressed · 13, 81, 135, 137, 151, 214, 220, 238
resentment · 29, 238
resistance · x, 15, 20, 41, 78, 94, 102, 149, 150, 171, 174, 176, 222, 235, 241, 258
responsibility · iv, v, 201
responsible · 58, 72, 122
restlessness · 5, 76, 97, 131, 149
retreat · 59, 63, 65, 131, 152, 162, 180, 202, 214
retreating · 231
return of the identical · 28, 225, 233
revenge · 35, 98, 99, 114, 128, 130, 143, 160, 216, 232, 235, 246, 250
revengefulness · 106, 113, 130
revolution · xiii, 83
revolutionary · 22
ridicule · 58, 231
rigid · 12, 153, 159, 200, 219, 220, 221, 255
rigidity · 37, 55, 198
role · x, xv, xvii, 10, 11, 13, 15, 19, 20, 27, 32, 45, 55, 56, 58, 65, 66, 67, 71, 76, 86, 87,
88, 89, 91, 92, 96, 103, 105, 108, 109, 113, 114, 116, 117, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135,
136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 150, 151, 152, 154, 155, 158, 162, 165, 172, 175, 176,
178, 179, 180, 183, 195, 200, 203, 205, 206, 210, 214, 215, 216, 222, 224, 225, 226,
227, 228, 229, 235, 236, 238, 239, 241, 242, 243, 254
roughness · 158, 168
round shoulders · 4
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques · 83, 240, 248
rule · 7, 10, 34, 38, 80, 131, 150, 157, 160, 212, 216, 243
rules · 30, 60, 230, 231, 248, 255
S
sadism · 11, 36, 83, 141, 164, 190, 193, 224
sadistic · 62, 92, 97, 111, 113, 140, 141, 150, 182, 189, 190, 206, 212, 223
safeguarding · xiii, xviii, xix, xx, 4, 9, 14, 17, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 46, 50, 53,
57, 58, 60, 62, 63, 69, 70, 72, 73, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 96, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 108,
109, 114, 120, 135, 136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158,
159, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 176, 180, 182, 183, 190, 191, 192, 196, 198, 200, 203,
205, 206, 210, 214, 215, 216, 219, 220, 223, 225, 227, 228, 231, 237, 238, 239, 240,
241, 244, 245, 251, 258
safeguarding tendency · xiii, xix, xx, 17, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 50, 53, 57, 58,
60, 62, 69, 70, 88, 89, 92, 94, 100, 101, 120, 135, 137, 138, 141, 151, 153, 155, 156,
157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 176, 182, 183, 192, 196, 198, 200, 205, 206, 225, 227, 237,
238, 239, 240, 241, 244, 245, 251, 258
safeguards · 4, 14, 15, 16, 44, 58, 63, 66, 68, 72, 92, 98, 114, 132, 133, 149, 153, 156,
168, 176, 180, 192, 201, 206, 211, 216, 225, 237, 244, 257
safety · 72, 76
salvation · 44, 248
Sand, Georges · 169, 187
Saul · 181, 187
scheme · xx, 17, 32, 35, 36, 37, 42, 47, 50, 52, 53, 58, 67, 69, 79, 86, 95, 100, 103, 108,
109, 112, 114, 136, 157, 160, 170, 185, 198, 200, 255
Schiller, Friedrich · xiii, 49, 77, 233
schizophrenia · 22, 25, 61, 77, 161
Schmidt, Rudolf · 4, 23, 73, 84, 122
school · xv, xxi, 8, 18, 19, 20, 23, 26, 49, 67, 75, 91, 99, 117, 123, 127, 138, 139, 165,
177, 181, 199, 204, 206, 210, 231, 241, 242, 243, 244
Schopenhauer, Arthur · xiii, 67, 82, 149, 163, 221, 232, 233
Schrenck-Notzing, Albert Freiherr von · 149, 164
Schulhof, Hedwig · xiii, 66, 81
Schumann, Clara · xiii, 128, 144, 183, 188
science · v, vi, vii, viii, xiii, 18, 54, 83, 86, 107, 122, 123, 155, 163, 204, 211, 228, 235
second child · 8, 88, 254
security · vi, xvii, xviii, 42, 46, 49, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 64, 67, 70, 72, 76, 93, 95, 97, 109,
112, 113, 128, 129, 132, 138, 171, 180, 181, 182, 184, 191, 212, 221, 222, 225, 227,
230, 236, 245
seduction · 24
self · vi, xv, xvi, xviii, xix, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35,
36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68,
69, 72, 76, 78, 79, 80, 86, 87, 89, 91, 92, 95, 97, 98, 101, 104, 106, 114, 115, 118, 121,
126, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 142, 153, 154, 155, 156, 159, 160,
164, 168, 170, 173, 177, 179, 183, 184, 185, 190, 191, 192, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201,
204, 206, 208, 209, 210, 212, 214, 215, 216, 220, 222, 223, 226, 230, 233, 236, 237,
238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 246, 247, 248, 254, 255, 257, 258
self-aggrandizement · 104
self-assertion · 2, 223, 245
self-confidence · 92, 216
self-esteem · 2, 7, 32, 37, 44, 45, 50, 56, 61, 63, 91
self-evaluation · vi, 32, 159, 192
self-preservation · 30, 38, 49, 72, 78
self-reproach · 236, 237
self-torture · 192, 236, 237, 238, 239, 244
self-training · 191
self-worth · xvi, xviii, xix, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 33, 35, 36, 38, 42, 43, 44,
45, 46, 50, 53, 54, 56, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 86, 87, 89, 91, 95, 97, 98, 106,
114, 118, 126, 129, 130, 131, 132, 136, 137, 138, 139, 142, 153, 155, 156, 159, 160,
168, 170, 173, 177, 179, 183, 185, 190, 191, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 204, 206, 209,
210, 212, 214, 215, 216, 220, 230, 236, 238, 242, 243, 246, 247, 257
Seneca · xiii, xv, xxi, 123, 144
sensation · 26
sensitive · xix, 6, 16, 73, 114, 190, 242
sensitiveness · 257
sex · 13, 36, 55, 71, 81, 93, 115, 132, 141, 145, 146, 154, 155, 169, 177, 214, 216, 219,
220, 223, 229, 231
sexual · x, xvi, 2, 3, 5, 14, 15, 23, 27, 36, 46, 54, 60, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 81, 82, 89, 92,
95, 96, 98, 99, 102, 106, 108, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 129, 131, 135, 136, 137, 139,
140, 146, 148, 150, 151, 152, 154, 155, 160, 162, 164, 165, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174,
175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 182, 189, 192, 193, 200, 201, 206, 207, 208, 211, 213, 214,
215, 216, 220, 221, 222, 223, 228, 229, 230, 235, 240, 244, 246, 247, 249, 251, 253
sexuality · xvii, 36, 46, 49, 81, 98, 104, 113, 122, 126, 132, 133, 141, 149, 151, 159,
173, 191, 202, 206, 212, 216, 219, 220, 227, 237
Shakespeare · xiii, 246, 248, 250
shame · 63, 68, 90, 178, 204, 214, 222, 236, 253, 254
shock · 76, 93, 181, 182, 188
Shylock · 237, 248
shyness · 63, 68, 152, 178, 214, 252
sickness · 65, 217
significance · x, 3, 53, 66, 104, 137, 141, 153, 154, 156, 158, 159, 169, 198, 210, 214,
226, 235, 236, 237, 241, 245, 247, 252, 253, 254, 257, 258
significant · 41, 95, 154, 193, 225, 242
Silberer, Hans · 50, 78
silence · 136, 174, 175, 216, 224
Simmel, Georg · 149, 163
simplicity · 255
simplification · 12, 103, 123
simulation · 89, 107, 181, 182, 241, 254
sin · 167, 195
Singer, Gustav · 74, 85
skin · 24, 5, 19, 238, 242
sleep · 5, 69, 99, 105, 111, 152, 153, 156, 169, 184, 202, 225, 226, 227, 244, 245, 246,
253
sleepiness · 5
sleep · 69, 113, 227, 243
sleepsleeplessness · 102, 112, 202, 240
smell · 149, 197
social · ix, x, xiii, xxi, 11, 14, 18, 26, 27, 38, 53, 56, 72, 79, 80, 89, 91, 101, 105, 112,
114, 122, 123, 130, 133, 137, 142, 145, 162, 178, 180, 187, 205, 211, 212, 214, 216,
222, 235, 248, 249, 251, 254
social science · xiii
socialism · 25, 199
society · xi, 23, 24, 16, 20, 21, 55, 56, 59, 66, 72, 87, 98, 105, 110, 131, 152, 181, 200,
206, 210, 211, 226, 230, 241, 248, 251
sociology · 75
Socrates · xiii, 63, 80, 121
Socratic · 80
solitude · 161, 212, 251
somnambulism · 197
sophists · 96, 121
Sophocles · 77, 95, 121
sorrow · 29
soul · iii, 30, 40, 57, 70, 91, 114, 127, 149, 163, 179, 230
speech · 4, 5, 15, 44, 47, 60, 106, 128, 187, 197, 226
sperm · 162
squinting · 5
stage fright · 153, 178
stammer · 90
stammering · 87, 88, 90, 91, 113, 121, 128, 133, 178, 247, 255
standing still · 62
stature · 4, 13, 210
status · 2, 3, 5, 8, 14, 20, 21, 73, 132, 145, 168
Steinach, Eugen · 67, 82
Stendhal · 228, 234
Stern, William · xv, 22, 43, 76, 242, 249
Stiller, Berthold · 2, 18
stomach · 73, 74, 85, 88, 110, 124, 157, 158, 241, 242
Stransky, Erwin · 5, 27
stress · 1, 132, 134
Strindberg, August · 149, 163
striving · ix, xi, xvi, xvii, xx, 8, 11, 12, 18, 29, 35, 37, 41, 44, 48, 50, 54, 59, 61, 62, 64,
68, 69, 80, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 105, 107, 109, 118, 119, 127, 133, 139, 151, 159, 167,
168, 169, 177, 186, 192, 196, 197, 198, 200, 202, 204, 219, 240, 252, 253, 254, 255,
257
striving for security · xvii
stupid · 44, 197
stupi · 5, 68, 128, 197
stuttering · 4, 39, 174, 175
style of life · 69, 121, 219, 224, 226, 258
subjective · 30, 38, 41, 44, 64, 80, 83, 123
sublimation · 84
submission · xviii, 7, 36, 43, 55, 56, 65, 97, 107, 158, 184, 189, 226, 239
submissiveness · 168, 220
success · xix, 13, 28, 34, 82, 83, 98, 101, 112, 115, 184, 257
sucking · 39, 73
suffering · 7, 45, 70, 86, 92, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 115, 126, 135, 156, 157, 161,
169, 179, 181, 184, 191, 199, 204, 216, 236, 241, 243, 245
suggestibility · xv, 36, 76, 142, 147, 153
suggestion · 90, 96, 142, 143, 212
suicide · 14, 22, 26, 34, 35, 78, 98, 131, 139, 179, 180, 224, 233, 236, 237, 245, 246,
250 suicides · xix, 5, 19, 237, 246
super-ego · 48
superiority · ix, xviii, xix, xx, 7, 9, 11, 15, 35, 36, 38, 55, 56, 62, 66, 68, 70, 73, 90, 91,
93, 97, 102, 105, 107, 113, 117, 128, 129, 130, 134, 136, 140, 150, 152, 153, 157, 160,
161, 162, 163, 169, 173, 175, 176, 183, 184, 185, 190, 192, 196, 197, 200, 202, 204,
205, 206, 209, 210, 214, 216, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 228, 229, 236, 239, 240,
241, 251, 252, 254
superior · xvii, 43, 73, 88, 103, 104, 107, 128, 133, 136, 160, 170, 182, 185, 186, 190,
197, 203, 204, 213, 223, 225, 228, 238, 239, 243
superman · 104
superstition · 159, 253
suspicion · 62, 63, 159, 205, 216, 217, 230, 243
Swift, Jonathan · 190, 194
syle · iii, iv, 54, 62, 69, 121, 168, 219, 224, 226, 235, 258
symbol · vi, viii, 15, 36, 47, 53, 69, 71, 72, 84, 98, 102, 106, 107, 109, 115, 117, 132,
139, 140, 144, 153, 157, 161, 200, 203, 212, 229, 258
symbols · xvii, 42, 46, 54, 78, 106, 167, 201
symbolism · xvii, 30, 36, 50, 54, 70, 72, 84, 126, 172
sympathy · 24, 118, 149, 181, 216
sympathetic · 152, 182, 188, 211, 236, 238
symptom · xvi, 58, 72, 77, 84, 88, 90, 108, 131, 168, 171, 181, 197, 198, 202, 203, 210,
239
symptoms · viii, ix, xv, xviii, xix, 10, 34, 35, 45, 53, 58, 65, 74, 77, 86, 87, 97, 100, 101,
107, 109, 112, 115, 128, 130, 131, 133, 134, 138, 139, 142, 151, 152, 173, 174, 178,
180, 181, 184, 186, 193, 196, 203, 215, 216, 221, 224, 236, 257
T
Tandler, Julius · 242, 249
tardiness · 174
teacher · xxi, 16, 32, 42, 90, 93, 127, 161, 165, 175, 189, 190, 199, 207, 208, 228, 242
teachers · 25, 27, 121, 149, 153, 175, 199, 210, 211
teeth · 162, 252
teleology · 48, 76
teleological · 22, 49, 233
telepathy · 164
temperament · 25
tendentious apperception · 141, 149
tenderness · 41, 75, 148, 189
tension · xxi, 15, 46, 61, 77, 79, 182, 199, 223
the question · xvii, xviii, 32, 37, 50, 87, 127, 136, 140, 155, 227, 230, 248, 252, 255
theoretical · xii, 30, 68, 78, 99, 100, 108
thinking · iii, x, 7, 14, 30, 37, 41, 42, 49, 50, 56, 58, 60, 69, 76, 80, 83, 86, 95, 103, 106,
115, 134, 137, 142, 156, 163, 181, 197, 198, 202, 205, 207, 209, 213, 225, 226,
227,
239, 245, 251, 253, 255, 257
thirst · 34, 66, 113, 124
thought · vi, xvii, xviii, 5, 6, 8, 15, 30, 32, 33, 38, 40, 44, 53, 60, 63, 66, 78, 93, 94, 105,
117, 119, 154, 155, 158, 173, 175, 177, 196, 198, 199, 202, 203, 205, 207, 210, 214,
221, 224, 226, 227, 230, 231, 236, 238, 244, 247, 257
thymus · 21, 162
thyroid · 2, 162, 183
time · iv, x, xviii, xix, 2, 3, 4, 10, 12, 16, 17, 24, 25, 35, 39, 41, 42, 44, 46, 48, 49, 51,
59,
63, 66, 67, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97,
99, 101, 102, 104, 107, 108, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 121, 122, 132, 133, 134, 135,
137, 140, 141, 142, 143, 151, 152, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 168, 169, 172, 174, 175,
177, 178, 179, 181, 184, 185, 187, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 198, 200, 202, 203, 206,
207, 208, 211, 212, 213, 215, 219, 221, 222, 225, 228, 230, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238,
241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 249, 252, 253, 254, 255, 258
timidity · xv, 5, 10, 59, 90
Tolstoy, Nikolayevich · 61, 80, 82, 235
tooth · 142, 201, 241
training · 4, 6, 35, 37, 47, 54, 183, 195
trait · 10, 42, 72, 114, 150, 162, 189, 190, 205, 209, 215, 221, 230, 236, 253, 254, 255,
257
traits · xv, xx, 13, 50, 56, 58, 65, 76, 86, 100, 101, 117, 128, 143, 147, 148, 152, 161,
167, 168, 171, 179, 189, 191, 193, 195, 202, 211, 214, 215, 216, 219, 222, 230, 237,
243, 251, 252, 254, 255, 257
transference · 114, 134
trauma · 20, 53
traumatic · 101, 188
treatment · 7, 15, 23, 26, 27, 44, 71, 87, 88, 93, 94, 96, 101, 104, 108, 111, 117, 118,
132,
134, 135, 138, 140, 143, 148, 150, 151, 153, 167, 169, 170, 172, 174, 175, 185, 201,
202, 211, 212, 217, 222, 224, 225, 227, 240, 242, 245, 247, 253, 258
tremor · 128, 182, 204
trismus · 108, 124
truancy · 5, 244
truth · x, 16, 35, 37, 60, 80, 86, 114, 123, 130, 160, 161, 206, 213, 254
truth · 177, 254
typology · 84, 163
U
ugliness · 4, 168, 252
Ulysses · 173, 181, 187
uncertainty · 6, 66, 69, 116, 156, 192, 223
unchastity · 148
unconscious · 3, 8, 11, 37, 45, 46, 47, 74, 81, 91, 103, 105, 106, 109, 120, 130, 137,
146,
148, 175, 185, 193, 197, 199, 202, 210, 211, 214, 217, 238, 242, 243, 255
understanding · iii, vi, vii, x, xiii, xvi, xix, xxi, 4, 7, 14, 35, 42, 46, 50, 53, 57, 67, 68,
69,
70, 73, 78, 86, 91, 92, 95, 106, 109, 135, 138, 140, 152, 157, 159, 170, 172, 174, 182,
184, 188, 193, 195, 211, 216, 228, 236, 238, 252
unfaithful
unfaithfulness · 148
unhappy · 234, 247
unhappiness · 26, 223
unique · x, 29, 76, 95, 113
uniqueness · 238
unity · xiii, xv, xxi, 22, 37, 76, 78, 143, 207, 219, 255, 258
universe · 30
unruliness · 176
unsociability · 161
V
vaginism · 108, 124
vagotonia · 2, 22, 27
Vaihinger, Hans · xiii, 24, 15, 30, 32, 40, 54, 64, 78, 81, 103, 123, 182 vain · 115, 239
value · v, vi, viii, xx, 2, 14, 16, 31, 43, 44, 56, 58, 60, 63, 64, 72, 85, 98, 102, 104, 123,
129, 130, 134, 138, 139, 141, 160, 162, 167, 173, 184, 191, 198, 200, 210, 216,
221,
229, 230, 246
values · xvi, 38, 50, 64, 161, 167, 169, 178, 198, 211, 221, 239
vanity · 11, 16, 47, 113, 128, 154, 203, 237, 238, 243, 244, 258
virtue · 38, 46, 56, 86, 118, 121, 216, 220
vomiting · 73, 74, 104, 157, 243
W
Wagner, Richard · x, xiii, 4, 23, 82, 119, 124, 147, 227, 233
Wagner-Jauregg · x, 4, 23, 147
war · ix, 14, 43, 45, 79, 89, 147, 175, 234
wasting time · 238
weakness · x, xv, 2, 4, 7, 13, 32, 44, 45, 54, 58, 65, 93, 99, 104, 107, 113, 153, 168, 189,
190, 203, 212, 216, 223, 254, 255
weapon · 58, 171
Weber, Frederick · 26, 129, 144
weeping · 169, 170, 175, 204, 239
Weininger, Otto · 67, 81, 82, 149, 163
Wernicke, Carl · 220, 232
Wexberg, Erwin · vii, 1, 127, 144
Wild · 11, 130, 138, 245
Wildness · 176
will to power · xvi, 12, 15, 16, 29, 50, 53, 58, 61, 71, 78, 87, 88, 137, 159, 162, 215 will
to seem · xvii, 23, 174, 179, 187
winking · 39
wisdom · vi, 63, 222
wish · 8, 11, 35, 46, 50, 59, 64, 68, 70, 71, 89, 95, 101, 102, 113, 129, 135, 136, 138,
139,
158, 160, 170, 177, 180, 181, 183, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 202, 210, 212, 237,
246,
253
withdrawal · 22, 101, 155, 178, 191
woman · 15, 46, 55, 64, 82, 93, 96, 98, 99, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 117,
119, 129, 131, 136, 149, 151, 152, 155, 158, 160, 163, 165, 169, 170, 172, 177, 179,
183, 184, 185, 197, 200, 205, 206, 208, 210, 213, 214, 220, 221, 224, 228, 231, 232,
233, 240
work · iii, iv, v, vi, vii, viii, ix, x, xv, xxi, 1, 5, 7, 10, 15, 17, 23, 24, 30, 32, 34, 54, 55,
59,
63, 64, 68, 76, 78, 82, 83, 84, 97, 98, 104, 108, 113, 122, 132, 136, 138, 144, 145, 149,
163, 182, 187, 193, 195, 197, 199, 204, 220, 224, 233, 235, 248, 249, 250, 251 world ·
vi, ix, x, xx, 22, 24, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 24, 25, 29, 30, 35, 38, 41, 42,
45, 47, 48, 50, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 69, 73, 76, 89, 98, 103, 109, 117, 121, 123,
146, 155, 157, 162, 168, 171, 172, 202, 207, 208, 209, 213, 216, 222, 224, 230, 231,
237, 257
Y
younger · 23, 33, 97, 99, 113, 133, 140, 197, 209, 211, 218, 224, 242, 243, 247 youngest
· 8, 44, 113, 121
youngest child · 8
Z Ziehen, Theodor · 48, 77
Appendix
Classical Adlerian Theory and Practice
by Henry T. Stein, Ph.D. and Martha E. Edwards, Ph.D.
Published in
Psychoanalytic Versions of the Human Condition and Clinical Practice Edited by Paul
Marcus and Alan Rosenberg, New York University Press, 1998.
Overview
Over the half century since Alfred Adler articulated his theory of personality and
system of psychotherapy, his ideas have gradually and persispersonality and system of
psychotherapy, his ideas have gradually and persis 648). The shift of psychoanalysis to
ego psychology reflected Adler's original thinking and Adler was "hailed by certain
psychoanalysts as a precursor of the later developments of psychoanalysis" (Ellenberger
1970, 638). Adler's observation that "human beings live in the realm of meanings"
reflects the social constructivist view of human behavior. An early feminist, he held that
both men and women suffered from our society's overvaluing of men and undervaluing
of women, and he believed the only positive relationship between men and women was
one of equality. His earliest work in which he argued for the unity of mind and body
was a precursor of psychosomatic medicine.
Even the findings of anthropologists, biologists, and physicists parallel Adlerian
concepts. Adler's view of the interconnectedness of all living beings and their natural
proclivities toward cooperation has been echoed by anthropologists (Ho 1993; Kim and
Berry 1993; Maybury-Lewis 1972), and biologists (Augros and Stancui 1988; Hamilton
1964; Simon 1990; Trivers 1971; Wilson 1975). His concept of the style of life, where
one central theme is reflected in every psychological expression, suggests the concept
in physics of the hologram, wherein each part of a whole is an enfolded image of that
whole (Briggs and Peat 1989). His concept of the final goal, a fictional future reference
point that pulls all movements in the same direction, is similar to that of a strange
attractor in chaos theory, a magnetic end point that pulls on and sets limits for a process
(Nelson 1991). He believed in the fundamental creative power of individuals and their
freedom to choose and change their direction in life; this is very similar to the
biological process called autopoesis which is the autonomous, self-renewing, and self-
directing nature of all life forms (Nelson 1991).
When sociologists, anthropologists, biologists, mathematicians, physicists, and
psychotherapists begin describing remarkably similar dynamics, one wonders if we are
on the brink of a new unified field theory. Forty years ago, Alexander Müller frequently
referred to Adler's body of work as "philosophical anthropology," and held that it had
the potential for providing the magnetic center that would draw other disciplines
together (Müller 1992).
The scientific paradigm shift and intellectual climate of the 1990's might well be
ripe for a re-discovery of Adler's original and full contribution to an understanding of
human beings and their relationship to the world. He created an exquisitely integrated,
holistic theory of human nature and psychopathology, a set of principles and techniques
of psychotherapy, a world view, and a philosophy of living.
In this chapter, we will first describe Adler's view of the human condition and his
ideas of personality development, including optimal development. Second, we will
outline his explanation of how this process goes astray and results in psychopathology.
Third, we will sketch the Adlerian levels of intervention which include not only
psychotherapy but also preventive programs in the areas of parenting and education.
The Human Condition and Personality Development
The core of Adler's integrated complex of philosophy, theory, and practice was a
vigorously optimistic, humanistic view of life. He offered a value-oriented psychology
that envisioned human beings as capable of profound cooperation in living together and
striving for self-improvement, self-fulfillment, and contribution to the common welfare.
Indeed, Adler predicted that if we did not learn to cooperate, we would run the risk of
eventually annihilating each other. Thus, if we were to distill his view of the human
condition into one main idea, it would be the concept of the Social Human, inextricably
interconnected with others and all of nature. The central problem that humans face is
how to live on this planet together, appreciating what others have contributed in the
past, and making life better for present and future generations.
Central Concept: Feeling of Community
Following from his view of the human condition, Adler based his psychology on
the central concept of (in German) Gemeinschaftsgefühl. It is a difficult concept to
translate adequately and has been translated by the phrases social interest, social
feeling, community feeling, and social sense (Ansbacher and
Ansbacher 1956, 134). Adler and many of his followers came to prefer the term
feeling of community (Bruck 1978). It is a multi-level concept. Individuals may
understand and put into practice some levels and neglect the development of others.
If people have developed social interest at the affective level, they are likely to feel
a deep belonging to the human race and, as a result, are able to empathize with their
fellow humans. They can then feel very much at home on the earth -- accepting both the
comforts as well as the discomforts of life. At the cognitive level, they can acknowledge
the necessary interdependence with others, recognizing that the welfare of any one
individual ultimately depends on the welfare of everyone. At the behavioral level, these
thoughts and feelings can then be translated into actions aimed at self development as
well as cooperative and helpful movements directed toward others. Thus, at its heart,
the concept of feeling of community encompasses individuals' full development of their
capacities, a process that is both personally fulfilling and results in people who have
something worthwhile to contribute to one another. At the same time, the concept
denotes a recognition and acceptance of the interconnectedness of all people.
These ideas of Adler's also speak to the current discussion of the relationship
between self and society. Unlike others, he saw no fundamental conflict between self
and society, individuality, and relatedness, self interest and social interest. These are
false dichotomies. The development of self and connectedness are recursive processes
that influence one another in positive ways. The greater one's personal development, the
more able one can connect positively with others; the greater one's ability to connect
with others, the more one is able to learn from them and develop oneself. This idea has
been rediscovered by recent authors (Guisinger and Blatt 1994).
Adler saw the connections among living beings in many different spheres and on
many different levels. An individual can feel connected with another, with family,
friends, community, and so on, in ever widening circles. This connectedness can
encompass animals, plants, even inanimate objects until, in the largest sense, the person
feels connected with the entire cosmos (Müller, 1992, 138). If people truly understood
and felt this connectedness, then many of the self-created problems of life -- war,
prejudice, persecution, discrimination -- might cease to exist.
The feeling of interconnectedness among people is essential not only for living
together in society, but also for the development of each individual person. It has long
been well known that if human infants do not have emotional connections with their
caregivers they will fail to thrive and are likely to die.
Furthermore, individuals need to acknowledge their connectedness both to the past
as well as to the future. What we are able to do in our lives depends very much on the
contributions made in the past by others. A critical question that Adler saw facing each
person was, "What will be your contribution to life? Will it be on the useful or useless
side of life?"
The title that Adler gave to his system, "Individual Psychology," does not
immediately suggest its social foundation. It does not mean a psychology of individuals.
On the contrary, Adler's psychology is very much a social psychology in which the
individual is seen and understood within his or her social context. Accordingly, Adler
devised interventions not only for individual clients but also for families and schools.
In German, the term Individualpsychologie means the psychology of the unique,
indivisible, and undivided person (Davidson 1991, 6). What Adler meant by this is that,
first, Individual Psychology is an idiographic science. How an individual develops is
unique, creative, and dependent on the subjective interpretations the person gives to
life. Second, Adler meant to convey that an individual behaves as a unit in which the
thoughts, feelings, actions, dreams, memories, and even physiology all lead in the same
direction. The person is a system in which the whole is greater than and different from
the sum of its parts. In this whole, Adler saw the unity of the person. In the symphony
of a person's behavior, he discerned the consistent melodic theme running throughout.
This theme may have many variations in tempo, pitch, or intricacy, but it is nevertheless
recognizable. Thus, to understand a person, we must look at the whole person, not at the
parts, isolated from one another. After we grasp the guiding theme, however, it is easy
to see how each individual part is consistent with the theme.
Development of Personality
How do we come to develop this guiding theme? It is an active and creative
process in which individuals attribute meaning to the life experiences they have faced.
They construct out of this raw material the subjective reality to which they respond.
Thus, they are not passive victims of heredity or environment (not objects) but active
constructors and interpreters of their situations (subjects).
This process begins in infancy as children become conscious of felt insufficiencies
in the face of normal, everyday tasks, especially when they compare themselves to
older children and adults. As a result, they experience what Adler called inferiority
feelings, which are the very normal reactions to the awareness of not being able to
function in a way that we wish. Adler also described this as experiencing a "minus
situation." These feelings become motivation for striving toward what he called a "plus
situation."
Individuals strive in this direction because of the "creative power of life, which
expresses itself in the desire to develop, to strive, to achieve, and even to compensate
for defeats in one direction by striving for success in another. This power is
teleological, it expresses itself in the striving after a goal, and, in this striving, every
bodily and psychological movement is made to cooperate" (Ansbacher and Ansbacher
1956, 92).
Influenced by the German philosopher Hans Vaihinger, Adler held that individuals
were not always guided in their actions by reality. They were also guided by fictions, or
what they believe to be true, though these beliefs are largely unconscious (Vaihinger
1925). These ideas formed the basis of Adler's concept of the final goal. The final goal
is a fictional creation of the individual--an imagined ideal situation of perfection,
completion, or overcoming. Movement toward the final goal is motivated by a striving
to overcome the feelings of inferiority. Although the final goal represents a subjective,
fictional view of the future, it is what guides the person in the present.
In an active, courageous individual possessing a strong feeling of community, the
striving toward the final goal to overcome inferiority feelings may be expressed as a
life-long movement toward optimal development -- with full realization that there is no
end point to this striving. This is quite similar to Abraham Maslow's view of individuals
striving toward self actualization -- toward the full realization of their potential
(Maslow 1970).
In dealing with inferiority feelings and developing the final goal, the influences of
the family (both parents and siblings) as well as external social influences may be
critical. Children learn to cope with and/or overcome difficulties in life through the
support and encouragement of significant others who promote their development,
cooperation, and interdependence. Adler considered the connection with and influence
of the mother as the primary factor in the early development of the feeling of
community. In our current social structure, fathers and caregivers are also recognized as
important influences. With this positive foundation, children are likely to grow up to
handle what Adler called the three foundation, children are likely to grow up to handle
what Adler called the three 18). As a result, they are likely to develop the courage and
ability to continue their growth and make a contribution to life. If, however, children do
not receive the proper encouragement and support and, as a result, their feelings of
inferiority become exaggerated, they are likely to be discouraged. They may adopt a
final goal that is equally exaggerated to compensate for their deeply felt inferiority.
Instead of developing themselves and overcoming difficulties, they pursue a goal of
imagined superiority and consequently must avoid real tests of themselves. Their final
goal would then be an egocentric one, on the useless side of life, rather than a goal of
cooperation with others and a feeling of community. The final goal is the result of a
process that is unique to each individual. Two persons with similar feelings of
inferiority -- e.g., a deeply felt lack of intelligence -- may develop very different goals.
One person's goal might be to enlist others in his or service, thus avoiding any tests of
intelligence that might be failed. The other's goal might be to outdo all others thereby
demonstrating her superior intelligence in all situations.
Adler called an individual's characteristic approach to life the style of life. In
various writings throughout Adler's career, he expressed this concept as self or ego,
personality, individuality, the unity of the personality, an individual form of creative
activity, the method of facing problems, one's opinion about oneself and the problems
of life, or the whole attitude toward life (Ansbacher and Ansbacher 1956, 174).
The style of life, then, becomes the way in which individuals approach or avoid the
three main tasks of life and try to realize their fictional final goal. In healthy persons,
this dealing with the tasks of life is relatively flexible. They can find many ways of
solving problems and, when one way is blocked, they can choose another. This is not so
for the disturbed individuals who usually insist on one way or no way.
Like others, Adler viewed the first five years of life as central in the development
of personality. By that time, children have experienced enough to have adopted a
prototype of their goal and style of life, although there can be some modification
throughout the rest of childhood and adolescence. After that, these ways of conceiving
of both self and the world seem to fashion for us a set of lenses through which we see
the world. Adler called this the scheme of apperception. Individual perception, then, is
limited, and there will always be a discrepancy between reality and the perception of it.
For normal people, this discrepancy is relatively small; for psychologically disturbed
people, the discrepancy is much greater.
In an optimal situation of development, adults will win childrens' cooperation,
helping them to develop a sense of significance through contributing to others,
minimizing their inferiority feelings, stimulating their courage, guiding them to be
active, and helping them feel a part of the whole. These experiences will help children
identify and develop their capacities and become cooperative, productive, and satisfied
adults. They will be able to see and feel their interdependence with others and be
challenged to develop sufficient courage to deal with difficulties, to connect intimately
with others, and to improve themselves for the benefit of all. They may eventually be
guided by universal values or principles -- perhaps of justice, beauty, truth, etc. They
will be able to use their inferiority feelings as spurs for continued development. They
will strive for superiority over difficulties rather than superiority over others. They will
have solved the problems posed by the tasks of life in a mutually beneficial way.
This optimal development is different from what is commonly referred to as
"normal" or "average." Although many people are reasonably cooperative, they may do
just enough in relationships and in work to get by, living without deep commitment and
passion and not functioning at their maximum potential. They may be somewhat bored
and may endure chronic tension or "stress" without significant emotional or physical
symptoms. When they face particularly difficult challenges, they may not have
developed their courage and cooperation to the extent that they are able to cope
adequately. At that point, they may experience a shock that might trigger psychological
symptoms. Examples of challenges that might trigger such symptoms include layoffs,
illnesses, marriage, having children, divorce, middle-age, children leaving home, or
retirement.
One potential challenge for mental health professionals is to help these "normal"
individuals develop themselves to the maximum -- to set an ideal of mental health that
is seen as possible and inspiring, and to identify the steps needed to get there. This is
described later in this chapter.
Adler's View of Psychopathology
Adler's view of psychopathology is deceptively simple. He conceived of
psychological disturbances generally occurring in the presence of two conditions: an
exaggerated inferiority feeling and an insufficiently developed feeling of community.
Under these conditions, a person may experience or anticipate failure before a task that
appears impossible and may become "discouraged." Adler tended to use this term as
opposed to terms such as "pathological" or "sick." When individuals are discouraged,
they often resort to fictional means to relieve or mask--rather than overcome--their
inferiority feelings. What they are attempting to do is bolster their feelings of self by
"tricks," while they avoid actually confronting their seemingly impossible difficulties.
These tricks may give them a comforting but fragile feeling of superiority.
A man who was pampered a child may give up looking for work, become
depressed, and then depend on parents or public assistance for support. Forcing others
to provide for him may yield a secret feeling of power and superiority that compensates
for his feelings of inferiority. Unprepared for the normal challenges that might lead to
failure, he pays the price for his painful depression, but uses it to maintain his passive
self-indulgence and protect himself from a real test of his capacities.
A woman who was abused by her father as a child may choose to reject and
depreciate all men as vile creatures and never engage in a satisfactory love relationship.
She may feel lonely, but she can always feel morally superior to all abusive males who
are punished by her rejection. She would rather punish all men for the sins of her father,
than conquer her fears and develop the ability to love one man.
At a more extreme level, a profound and devastating feeling of inferiority might
lead to a grandiose psychotic delusion of being God.
What all of these situations have in common are adults whose inferiority feelings seem
so overwhelming and in whom the feeling of community is so underdeveloped that they
retreat to protect their fragile yet inflated sense of self. They employ what Adler called
safeguarding devices to do this (Ansbacher and Ansbacher 1956, 263-280).
Individuals can use safeguarding devices in attempts both to excuse themselves from
failure and depreciate others. Safeguarding devices include symptoms, depreciation,
accusations, self-accusations, guilt, and various forms of distancing. Symptoms such as
anxiety, phobias, and depression, can all be used as excuses for avoiding the tasks of
life and transferring responsibility to others. In this way, individuals can use their
symptoms to shield themselves from potential or actual failure in these tasks. Of course,
individuals may be able to do well in one or two of the tasks of life and have difficulties
in only one, e.g., in work, community, or love.
Depreciation can be used to deflate the value of others, thereby achieving a sense of
relative superiority through aggressive criticism or subtle solicitude. Accusations
attribute the responsibility for a difficulty or failure to others in an attempt to relieve an
individual of the responsibility and to blame others for the failure. Self-accusations can
stave off criticisms from others or even elicit comforting protestations of value from
them. Guilt may create a feeling of pious superiority over others and clear the way for
continuing harmful actions rather than correcting them. Distancing from tasks and
people can be done in many ways including procrastination, avoiding commitments,
abuse of alcohol and/or drugs, or suicide.
These safeguarding devices are largely unconscious and entail very real suffering on the
part of individuals who employ them. For them, however, the protection and elevation
of the sense of self is paramount, and they prefer to distress themselves or others rather
than reveal their hidden exaggerated feeling of inferiority.
There are three categories of influences that might stimulate the development of these
exaggerated inferiority feelings in children: (1) physical handicaps, (2) family
dynamics, and (3) societal influences (Adler 1992a).
Children can either be born with or develop physical handicaps (e.g., deformity, illness)
with which they may feel overburdened. The care and attention given to them because
of their difficulties may result in their expectation that others should always make their
lives easy and keep them the center of care and attention. They may never test their own
strengths. The pity or scorn they might also receive may negatively influence their self-
evaluations. In any case, their inferiority feelings are likely to become exaggerated.
Family dynamics, including parenting styles and position in the family constellation, is
the second category of influences on the development of the inferiority complex.
Parenting styles that cause trouble for children are divided into two main categories:
pampering, and neglect and abuse. Children who have been pampered have come to
expect being the focus of attention and having others serve their whims. They have
been trained to take rather than to give and have not learned how to face and overcome
problems by themselves. As a result, they have become very dependent on others and
feel unsure of themselves or unable to face the tasks of life. Thus, they demand undue
help and attention from others. These demands may be expressed through aggression
(e.g., commands) or through weakness (e.g., shyness), by positive (e.g., charm) or
negative (e.g., anger) means. Furthermore, when pampered children grow up and others
no longer do their bidding, they may interpret this refusal as aggression against them,
which may lead to their taking revenge on these others.
Children who have been neglected, rejected, or abused have not experienced love and
cooperation. They do not know what it means to feel a positive connection to others
and, as a result, often feel isolated and suspicious. When faced with difficulties, they
tend to overrate these difficulties and to underrate their own abilities. To make up for
what they did not receive as children, they may feel entitled to special consideration or
compensation. They may want others to treat them well but do not feel an obligation to
respond in turn. Remarkably, both pampered and neglected or abused children may
have similar expectations as adults. The first group expects the familiar pampering to
continue; the other demands pampering as compensation. Both may feel entitled to
everything and obligated to nothing.
In addition to the influences of the parents, Adler was one of the first to recognize that
children's positions in the family constellation of siblings could affect their
development in critical ways (Adler 1992b, 126-132). Being a significant member of
the family is important and children may become discouraged if they think they have a
disadvantageous position.
For example, oldest children's experience of being "dethroned" by their younger
siblings may stimulate them to decide that regaining their power is the most important
thing they could do. Later in life, the pattern of striving for preeminence may continue
at work, where they control subordinates excessively, and at home where they may
become domestic tyrants.
Second children, experiencing their older siblings as pacemakers, may respond by
continually striving to surpass and conquer them. If this appears to be too difficult,
these children may give up and withdraw from the competition. Youngest children have
many pacemakers and can become quite ambitious and accomplished, or they may not
develop the courage necessary to realize his or her ambitions and remains helpless
babies. Only children tend to spend their lives in the company of adults, frequently as
the center of attention. As a result, these children may fail to learn how to cooperate
with peers.
Of course, Adler realized that the examples listed above are only a few of many
possible outcomes. The objective position of the child is not the influencing factor;
instead, it is the psychological position and the meaning that the child gives to that
position. Thus, two children born several years apart may grow up in ways that are
quite similar to those of only children. On the other hand, if parents help their children
cope with the unique demands of their positions in the family constellation, and if there
is a cooperative rather than a competitive home atmosphere, the children are likely not
to develop the characteristics associated with each of the positions.
The third category of influence is the societal factors outside the family that also shape
how individuals develop their views of themselves and the world. Adler recognized the
school as a dominant influence and spent much of his time training teachers and
establishing child guidance clinics attached to the schools throughout Vienna.
Social discrimination on the basis of poverty, ethnicity, gender, religion, or educational
level can also exacerbate inferiority feelings. Adler emphasized that it was not just the
objective facts or influences that had an impact on the child, but the interpretation the
child gives to them. Children who are discriminated against because of physical
deformities or socio-economic status, for example, may find maintaining a positive
sense of self difficult. But doing so is possible if someone provides sufficient contact,
understanding, and encouragement.
Finally, in a way that was far ahead of many others of his day, Adler recognized the
destructive influence of our culture's archaic view of men and women. He observed that
women were typically devalued and this was a major influence in their exaggerated
feelings of inferiority. But he also realized that men, too, were adversely affected. The
over-valuing of men often leads to extremely high expectations, and when men begin to
see that they cannot meet these expectations, their inferiority feelings also increase.
Adler felt that the healthiest arrangement is a recognized equality of value between men
and women, which would then result in a higher level of cooperation between them
(Adler 1980).
Early experiences, both inside and outside the family, in combination with hereditary
attributes and physiological processes, are used creatively by children to form an
impression of themselves and life. A final goal of success, significance, and security is
imagined and a style of life is adopted to prepare for that goal. Individuals who are not
self-pampering or discouraged hold opinions of themselves and the tasks of life that are
reasonably close to what Adler called "common sense." These individuals feel
connected to one another and have developed their ability to cooperate.
People who do not feel connected to others and have not developed the ability to
cooperate will develop a private logic that becomes increasingly more skewed from
common sense. This private logic involves an antithetical scheme of apperception that
the person uses rigidly to classify self, others, and experience. In child development, an
antithetical scheme is related to children's need for security. They quickly slot their
perceptions into very simple categories, often based on whether the stimulus is
considered "good" or "bad." Under normal conditions of development, however,
children gradually develop the ability to perceive the subtle gradations of qualities in
themselves and others. Disturbed individuals, however, because of their heightened
feelings of insecurity, remain at the more primitive level of an antithetical scheme of
apperception. They may, for example, see only the antithetical extremes of absolute
stupidity or total brilliance. Thus, if others do not recognize their brilliance, they
assume that others think they are stupid. If they are not adored by all, they may feel
neglected or humiliated. If they are not totally powerful, then they must be totally
powerless.
While the scheme limits the person's ability to make realistic judgments, it does serve
the purpose of protecting the person's choice of a final goal and life style. If an
individual feels totally powerless, then it is perfectly logical (from the point of view of
his private logic) and is seemingly in his best interests to compensate by grabbing all
the power he can, even if this harms others. The person ignores or justifies this harm
because of his feeling of being totally powerless. In reality, however, he is not totally
powerless. But if he recognized this, he would lose the justification or motivation to
strive in the direction of the final goal.
Discouraged individuals may function relatively well for some time. Their functioning,
however, is based on a pretense of value or significance that emerges from their private
ideas which do not hold up in reality. Eventually, their private views clash with reality
and lead to a shock -- e.g., difficulties in work, friendships, love relationships, or family
-- which may lead to the development of symptoms.
These symptoms, however, are not the main focus of an Adlerian understanding of
psychological difficulties. What is important is how individuals use their symptoms.
Symptoms are actually the smoke covering the fire of inferiority feelings. The
symptoms create a detour around and distance from the threatening tasks of life,
protecting the pretense. Three factors distinguish mild psychological disorders from
severe disorders: the depth of the inferiority feelings, the lack of the feeling of
community, and the height of the final goal.
In focusing too much on the symptoms, per se, we run the risk of neglecting what
underlies the symptoms -- the inferiority feelings. Unless the severity of these
inferiority feelings is diminished, the client will continue to use the symptoms like a
crutch for an injured, unhealed limb. And until this process is uncovered and resolved,
the person may just substitute one symptom for another.
Adlerian Interventions
Adler's contributions to mental health included several levels of intervention.
While the art of psychotherapy was his primary work, he also had a major impact on the
field of education in efforts to prevent psychological disorders (Adler 1957). Adler
started by training parents, but realized that in order to reach the majority of children he
needed to switch his focus to teachers. In Vienna he spent a great deal of time lecturing
to teachers and demonstrating how to understand and influence children. In addition, he
was asked to establish child guidance clinics attached to the schools throughout Vienna.
He saw prevention through education as the first level of intervention and as a great
investment in the future. Continuing in these efforts, many of Adler's followers
simplified some of the ideas for use by teachers and parents (Dreikurs and Soltz 1964;
Dreikurs and Grey 1968), thus furthering Adler's influence.
The next level of intervention is counseling. Adlerian counseling is generally time-
limited, supportive therapy that is usually focused on specific problems. It leads to
moderate insight, attitude change, and behavioral change. Anthony Bruck, an associate
of Adler, developed brief counseling to a fine art, including the use of explanatory
graphics and charts (Bruck, 1978). Examples of the focus of counseling include
parenting, marital relationships, and career choice and development. These
interventions can help individuals cope with developmental milestones, life crises, and
change points in their lives. The potential for personality change at a deep level,
however, lies in psychotherapy.
The overall goal of Adlerian psychotherapy is helping an individual develop from
a partially functioning person into a more fully functioning one. Fully functioning
means solving each of the areas of life more cooperatively, more courageously, with a
greater sense of contribution and a greater sense of satisfaction. To do this, an
individual must identify and work toward becoming her best self. In other words, the
overall goal of therapy is to increase the individual's feeling of community. This is very
practical. It is not merely a matter of gaining insight, but of using that insight to take
concrete steps to improve relationships with family, friends, community, and work. In
its largest sense, the goal of therapy is not to improve just the client's life; the therapist
is working to improve the quality of life for everyone in the client's circle of contact, as
well as improving society through the client.
Thus, the first specific goal of therapy is not necessarily fulfilling the client's
expectation. The client may want instant, and somewhat magical, relief of symptoms or
to continue what he is doing without feeling so uncomfortable. The therapist has to be
sympathetic to this desire, but must clarify and establish, as quickly as possible, the
cooperative working relationship that is required for genuine improvement of a difficult
situation.
Adler suggested that we must provide a belated parental influence of caring,
support, encouragement and stimulation to cooperate. By reawakening courage and
creativity in the client, a new, unfamiliar feeling of community may develop as he
discovers that he has something valuable to offer. Some people have been cared for in a
mistakenly indulgent way and have absorbed it, but they have not learned to feel or
express a genuine caring for others. These people, although they need to be cared for in
a new encouraging way, also need to be challenged to start caring for others in this new
way.
Stages of Classical Adlerian Psychotherapy
For teaching purposes, Adlerian psychotherapy can be divided into twelve stages,
and within each stage, cognitive, affective, and behavioral changes are gradually
promoted (Stein, 1990). At the last three stages, the spiritual domain can also be
addressed. The stages reflect progressive strategies for awakening a client's
underdeveloped feeling of community. What we must remember, however, is that the
actual therapy is very spontaneous and creative and cannot be systematized into steps to
which we rigidly adhere. Empathy and encouragement, although emphasized at certain
points, are present in every stage of effective psychotherapy. A highly abbreviated
overview of the twelve stages follows.1
Stage One: Empathy-Relationship Stage
The initial therapeutic goal is to help the client become a more cooperative person,
and this starts with learning to cooperate in therapy. When the client's cooperation is
lacking, the therapist can diplomatically point to this. If the client attempts to endorse
full responsibility for change to the therapist, the therapist can suggest that the rate of
progress will depend on the degree of cooperation between them. Therapists may help
in the discovery of some new helpful ideas, but the ideas must be applied to improve a
situation. Initially, the client may need to express a great deal of distress with little
interruption. In response, the therapist offers genuine warmth, empathy, acceptance, and
understanding. To understand the uniqueness of each client, the therapist must be able
to "stand in the shoes" of the client and "see and feel" what the client is experiencing. If
the client is feeling hopeless, the therapist must be able to feel the client's hopelessness
without feeling sorry for her, but then step back and provide hope for change. Thus, the
therapist must be able to come close enough psychologically to the client in order to
empathize, but withdraw neutrally at some point in order to generate hope and discuss
possible improvements. An atmosphere of hope, reassurance, and encouragement
enables the client to develop feeling that things can be different.
Stage Two: Information Stage
The therapist gathers relevant information: the presenting problem and its history,
the client's level of functioning in the three life tasks, information about the family of
origin, early memories, and dreams. Religious and cultural influences may also have
significance. When appropriate, intelligence, interest, and psychological testing are
included.
 The information given always contains a degree of distortion, as well as significant
omissions. After studying the parallel patterns of childhood and the present and
analyzing the rich projective material in early recollections and dreams, the therapist
develops preliminary hypotheses about the inferiority feelings, goal, life style, private
logic, and antithetical scheme of apperception.
Stage Three: Clarification Stage
Socratic questioning clarifies the client's core beliefs about self, others, and life.
Then the consequences of these beliefs are evaluated and compared with new
possibilities. Mistaken ideas and private logic are corrected to align with common
sense. The client's ideas must be unraveled to trace how she first adopted them in
childhood. A client may have the idea that if his wife doesn't give him what he wants,
then she doesn't love him. The therapist might ask a series of questions to illuminate the
private logic behind this statement: "Is it your idea that love is only giving you what
you want? What if what you want is no good for you? Should your wife give you what
is unhealthy for you? Is that really being loving?" These questions will help the client
explore the meaning he gives to love and marriage and may come to change his private
views of these matters.
Symptoms may serve as excuses for avoiding something that the client is not
doing. One way that the therapist can ferret this out is to ask the question: "If you did
not have these symptoms, what would you do?" The client's answer is often quite
revealing about what she is avoiding.
Stage Four: Encouragement Stage
The therapist cannot give clients courage; they must find it within themselves. The
therapist can begin this process by acknowledging the courage in what the client has
already done: e.g., coming to therapy. Then therapist and client together can explore
small steps that, with a little more courage, the client might take. It is through actually
trying new behaviors and realizing that disaster is not an inevitable consequence that
the client's courage grows.
Clients may have exaggerated inferiority feelings that they want to eliminate
totally, believing that if they realize their goal these painful feelings will disappear. The
therapist must first reduce these feelings to a manageable level and then convince the
clients that normal inferiority feelings are a blessing that they may "use" as a spur for
improvement.
Genuine self-esteem does not come from the approval or praise of others. It comes
from the person's own experience of conquering difficulties. Therefore, small
progressive action steps, aimed at overcoming previously avoided difficulties, must be
taken, one at a time. For many clients, this is equivalent to doing the "felt impossible."
During and after these steps, new feelings about efforts and results are acknowledged
and discussed.
In attempting to avoid failure, discouraged people often decrease their level and
radius of activity. They can become quite passive, wait for others to act, and limit their
radius of activity to what is safe or emotionally profitable. Gradually, the level, radius,
and quality of a client's activity must increase. A move in the wrong direction is often a
necessary first step which can then be corrected after commending the attempt. Without
new activity and experimentation there will be little real progress. Some new success
must be achieved to prepare for the next stage.
Stage Five: Interpretation and Recognition Stage
Psychological movements are the thinking, feeling, and behavioral motions that
clients make in response to the external tasks facing them. Thus, in addition to listening
to what the client says, the therapist must be attuned to what the client actually has done
and currently does in relation to life tasks. Movements in therapy are the most visible.
Does the client come on time or late; get off the track; talk all the time and leave little
opportunity for the therapist to say anything; agree with everything but "forget" to put it
into practice between sessions? The therapist's job is to describe these movements
precisely and help the client identify the immediate goals or final goal to which they
lead.
Depreciation and aggression are tactics clients use to elevate artificially their self
esteem and punish others for not living up to their mistaken expectations. Clients are
often quite clever in adopting the weapon that will hurt others the most. The therapist
must show the client how ineffective or childish the weapons are or that they eventually
hurt the client more than they hurt the intended victim.
To dissolve the client's antithetical scheme of apperception, the therapist must
dialectically question it. However, the client will probably resist this dialogue because
the scheme provides certainty and supports the pursuit of the childlike, egocentric, final
goal. Clients' final goals represent visions of what they imagine will help them feel
absolutely superior, safe, significant, and secure. When faced with changing these final
goals, the alternative often looks like being nobody, worthless, and vulnerable. The
client's scheme uses cognitive rigidity to generate very strong feelings. It locks the
client into a dichotomized, superior/inferior way of seeing the world, evaluating
experiences, and relating to others. Thus, to dissolve the antithetical scheme of
apperception, the therapist must help the client see the real and subtly distinguishing
qualities of people and experiences rather than dividing impressions into "either-or,"
rigidly absolute categories.
All behavior is purposive and is aimed at moving toward the final goal. If clients
have goals that are on the useless side of life, then their emotions will also serve these
goals. Frequently, emotion is used to avoid responsibility for actions. This is reflected in
the often-heard claims of the client: "He made me angry; I couldn't help it." Each
individual's use of emotions is unique, and the therapist must be sensitive and precise in
identifying the underlying purposes of these emotions.
The final goal includes expectations of the roles that others should play. If the final
goal is to be adored, then others must play the role of adorers; if the final goal is to
dominate, then others must be submissive. The therapist must help the client identify
these expectations and their actual impact on relationships. Rather than having such
demands of others, clients need to learn how to generate selfdemand, determining what
they will do to contribute to their own development and to other people and situations.
After unfolding the meaning of the client's movements and their immediate goals,
the therapist eventually leads to interpreting the core dynamics of the client's inferiority
feeling, final goal, and style of life. Family constellation and experiences, current
behavioral patterns, early recollections, and dreams are integrated into a unique, vivid,
and consistent portrait.
In revealing the client's goal, diplomacy, good timing, and sensitivity are essential.
The client must feel the encouragement of new successes before she will feel open and
ready to face a clear picture of the mistaken direction she had previously followed. The
therapist helps the client evaluate the goal and discover what is really gained or lost in
this pursuit--using logic, humor, metaphors, reduction to absurdity, and what Adler
called "spitting in the soup." In this last strategy, the therapist makes the final goal --
e.g., being powerful, intimidating, and demanding respect -- "taste bad," perhaps by
comparing it to being a Mafia don. The discussion around the client's final goal reflects
a very vigorous form of thinking about the meaning of life and what the client is doing
with it and what else he could or should be doing.
Stage Six: Knowing Stage
Previously, the client relied on the therapist to interpret her movements and their
connection to the life style and goal. Now the client interprets situations, sharing his or
her insights with the therapist. Many clients are tempted to terminate at this point,
feeling that they know enough, even though they have not actually applied their insight
and changed their main direction in life.
Stage Seven: Missing Experience Stage
Some clients cling to strong negative feelings through powerful images and
memories from childhood. These feelings may inhibit or poison their contact with
people. Others may lack a depth of positive feeling in their work and relationships.
They try to do "the right thing" but do not have a feeling of enjoyment or affection in
the process. They may have sufficient insight but not have enough positive emotional
anticipation to take new action. While it is possible with some clients to promote
change through cognitive interpretation, with others an emotional breakthrough is more
effective. The therapist can use role-play, guided imagery, or eidetic imagery exercises
to dissolve negative imprints from parents and siblings and replace them with new
nurturing, encouraging experiences and images. Ongoing groups, or one-day group
marathons are preferable for role-playing techniques, utilizing group members for the
parental or sibling figures. Longer individual sessions can also be effective.
Stage Eight: Doing Differently Stage
Insight and newly found courage are mobilized to approach old difficulties and
neglected responsibilities. Small, experimental steps are ventured in the main arenas of
life. Initially, this is going to be hard for clients because they will not expect a positive
feeling as a result of taking steps in a new direction. However, it is possible to start with
what the person is willing to attempt and gradually make it more socially useful. A very
aggressive person who verbally attacks others might be encouraged to attack his
problems vigorously and productively instead.
Generally, all of the behavioral steps that clients are encouraged to take in therapy
are directed toward increasing their level of confidence and changing their life style.
However, profound change occurs after the client and therapist have together identified
and discussed the client's final goal and life style. On the basis of this insight, then, the
client can work to change the main direction of movement and approach to the three
main tasks of life (community, work, and love).
Stage Nine: Reinforcement Stage
Most of the client's actions have been egocentric, providing imagined protection or
self-enhancement, and neglecting the needs of others. The therapist helps clients learn
to let go of themselves and focus on others, on tasks, and the needs of situations.
All of these new positive actions are encouraged and supported. As the client
begins overcoming major difficulties that had been previously avoided, courageous
efforts, good results, and feelings of pride and satisfaction are affirmed. As a result, the
egocentricity gradually dissolves. Emotional coaching may be needed to experience and
express the new positive feelings.
Stage Ten: Community Feeling Stage
The therapist's feeling of community has been demonstrated to the client
continuously, since the very first meeting, by accepting him unconditionally as a fellow
human being, expressing a deep interest through listening and concern for his distress,
and indicating a willingness to help. Perhaps skeptical of the therapist's good will at
first, the client has felt and appreciated the genuine caring and encouragement.
The conquering of obstacles has generated courage, pride and a better feeling of
self, which now leads to a greater cooperation and feeling of community with the
therapist. This feeling should now be extended to connect more with other people,
cooperate with them, and contribute significantly to their welfare. As the client's new
feeling of community develops, she will become motivated to give her very best to her
relationships and her work.
Stage Eleven: Goal-Redirection Stage
When the client begins to let go of an old goal and life style of self-protection,
self-enhancement, and personal superiority over other people, he experiences a
temporary feeling of disorientation as a new horizon opens up. Now, after exploring and
experimenting, he may adopt a new, conscious life goal that is inspiring and socially
useful. He abandons his former direction and pursues the new one because it yields a
more positive feeling of self and greater appreciation from others.
Clients constantly observe their therapists and may use them as positive or
negative models. How therapists behave is critical, as it may interfere with the therapy
process if clients see that their therapists do not embody what they are trying to teach
the clients.
Maslow explored the characteristics of many fully functioning people and
concluded that what we usually refer to as "normal" or "average" functioning is actually
a commonly accepted form of very limited psychological development. He set the
standard of psychological health many notches higher than the benchmarks of most of
his contemporaries. Adler and Maslow were in agreement on this issue, which was not
to set our therapeutic sights merely on the "normal" or "average," but to aspire to the
ideal of what people could become. Not many clients may be willing to reach this far --
but some will be interested, and the therapist should be prepared to facilitate this
journey.
As clients improve, the therapist can help them see that they can use new, more
liberating and inspiring guides for their lives. These alternative guides are what Maslow
called meta-motivation or higher values -- e.g., truth, beauty, justice (Maslow 1971).
The values that individual clients choose will depend on their unique sensitivities and
interests.
Stage Twelve: Support and Launching Stage
The client has learned to love the struggle of overcoming difficulties, now prefers
the unfamiliar, and looks forward to the unexpected in life. Feeling equal to others, and
eager to develop fully, she expresses a spirit of generosity and wants to share what she
has accomplished. Now the client can become a generator of encouragement to other
people.
Feeling stronger and functioning better, the client may need a self-selected
challenge to stimulate the development of his best self. The very best in a person does
not simply flow out, but is a response to a healthy self-demand. It may be stimulated by
an unexpected situation or a chosen challenge. The therapist may prompt the search for
such a challenge and can help the client evaluate what would be a worthy, meaningful,
stimulating, and socially useful challenge -- one that is neither too big nor too small for
the client's capabilities. For some clients, it may be the recognition of a "mission" or
"calling" in their lives.
Therapeutic Techniques
The creative freedom inherent in Adlerian practice demands a variety of strategies
that suit the uniqueness of each client and capture the spontaneous therapeutic
opportunities the client hands to us in each session. Although the twelve stages
represent a conceptual center line of treatment, essentially, a unique therapy is created
for each client. The specific techniques used at any one time depend on the direction
that seems currently accessible. Four main strategies characterize current Classical
Adlerian therapeutic technique: assessment, Socratic questioning, guided and eidetic
imagery, and role-playing.2
Assessment. A thorough life style analysis serves as the guide to the therapeutic
process; generally this occurs during the first three stages of treatment. A central
technique that Adler pioneered to assess life style is the projective use of early
memories (Adler 1933). These memories, whether they are "true" or fictional, embody a
person's core beliefs and feelings about self and the world. They contain reflections of
the person's inferiority feelings, goal, scheme of apperception, level and radius of
activity, courage, feeling of community, and style of life.
In addition to these early memories, the therapist uses the following to do the
assessment: (1) description of symptoms, the circumstances under which they began,
and the client's description of what he would do if not plagued with these symptoms; (2)
current and past functioning in the domains of love relationships, family, friendships,
and school and work; (3) family of origin constellation and dynamics, and extended
family patterns, (4) health problems, medication, alcohol, and drug use, and (5)
previous therapy and attitude toward the therapist. While much of this information can
be collected in the early therapy sessions, it can also be obtained by asking the client to
fill out an Adlerian Client Questionnaire (Stein 1993). This permits the client to answer
in detail many important questions and increases the client's level of activity in the
therapy process. In addition, it saves some therapeutic time and enables the therapist to
obtain a binocular view from both the client's written and verbal descriptions.
 Socratic Questioning. The Socratic method of leading an individual to insight
through a series of questions lies at the heart of Adlerian practice (Stein 1990; Stein
1991). It embodies the relationship of equals searching for knowledge and insight in a
gentle, diplomatic, and respectful style, consistent with Adler's philosophy. In the early
stages of psychotherapy, the therapist uses questions to gather relevant information,
clarify meaning, and verify feelings. Then, in the middle stages of therapy, more
penetrating, leading questions uncover the deeper structures of private logic, hidden
feelings, and unconscious goals. The therapist also explores the personal and social
implications of the client's thinking, feeling, and acting, in both their short and long
term consequences. Throughout, new options are generated dialectically, examined, and
evaluated to help the client take steps in a different direction of her own choosing. The
results of these new steps are constantly reviewed. In the latter stages of therapy, the
Socratic method is used to evaluate the impact of the client's new direction and to
contemplate a new philosophy of life. The Socratic style places the responsibility for
conclusions and decisions in the lap of the client. The role of the therapist is that of a
"co-thinker," not the role of a superior expert. Just as Socrates was the "midwife"
attending the birth of new ideas, the Adlerian therapist can serve as "midwife" to the
birth of a new way of living for a client.
Guided and Eidetic Imagery. For many clients, cognitive insight and new behavior
lead to different feelings. Some clients need additional specific interventions to access,
stimulate, or change feelings. Guided and eidetic imagery, used in an Adlerian way, can
lead to emotional breakthroughs especially when the client reaches an impasse. Eidetic
imagery can be used diagnostically to access vivid symbolic mental pictures of
significant people and situations that are often charged with emotion. Guided imagery
can be used therapeutically to change the negative imprints of childhood family
members that weigh heavily on a client and often ignite chronic feelings of guilt, fear,
and resentment. These techniques are typically used in the middle stages of therapy.
Alexander Müller recommended the use of imagery when a client knew that a change in
behavior was sensible, but still didn't take action (Müller 1937). Some clients need a
vivid image of themselves as happier in the future than they presently are, before they
journey in a new direction that they know is healthier.
Role-Playing. In the middle stages of therapy, role-playing offers clients
opportunities to add missing experiences to their repertoire, and to explore and practice
new behavior in the safety of the therapist's office. To provide missing experiences --
e.g., support and encouragement of a parent -- a group setting is recommended. Group
members, rather than the therapist, can play the roles of substitute parents or siblings. In
this way, a client can engage in healing experiences and those who participate with him
can increase their own feeling of community by contributing to the growth of their
peers. When learning and practicing new behaviors, the therapist can offer coaching,
encouragement, and realistic feedback about probable social consequences. This is
somewhat equivalent to the function of children's play as they experiment with roles
and situations in preparation for growing up. Clients need to be treated with gentleness
and diplomacy, yet offered challenges that strengthen their confidence and courage.
Creativity in Psychotherapy
 Adlerian psychotherapy is an art, not a science, and must be practiced with the
same integrity of any artistic endeavor. Though it is based on theory, philosophy, and
principles, its practice must come honestly from the heart. It is not a mere technology
that can be practiced "by the numbers," nor is it bag of tricks that can be added
successfully to an eclectic pile of value-free tools.
The uniqueness of each client requires constant invention. Similarly, the
personality of each therapist makes his or her approach inimitable. However, as Adler
himself (Hoffman 1994) and his followers demonstrated, the personality of the therapist
must be congruent with the philosophy of the therapy3. Through a vigorous study
analysis, an Adlerian therapist assesses and reduces to a manageable level his own
inferiority feelings, identifies and redirects the final goal and style of life, and develops
on all levels a strong feeling of community. In addition, the person struggles with the
philosophical issues of life and engages with the study analyst in a search for higher
values that would be most uniquely suited to that individual.
Meta-Therapy
Maslow labeled this latter aspect of therapy "meta-therapy" (Maslow 1971). He
suggested that the fullest development of human potential might require a more
philosophical process, one that went beyond the relief of suffering and the correction of
mistaken ideas and ways of living. Müller described the last phase of therapy as a
"philosophical discourse" (Müller 1968). For those clients who need and desire this
experience, Classical Adlerian psychotherapy offers the psychological tools and
philosophical depth to realize their quest.
Summary
We summarize Adler's psychology in six central principles.4 (1) Unity of the
Individual: The individual is not internally divided or a battleground of conflicting
forces. Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are consistent with the person's style of life.
(2) Goal Orientation: A central personality dynamic originates from the growth and
forward movement of life itself. It is a future-oriented striving toward a goal of
significance, superiority, or success, which is frequently out of a person's awareness. In
mental health, it is a goal of superiority over general difficulties; in mental disorder, it is
one of superiority over others. The early childhood feelings of inferiority, for which an
individual aims to compensate, lead to the creation of a fictional goal. The depth of
inferiority feeling determines the height of the goal which then becomes the "final
cause" for the person's behavior. (3) Self-determination and Uniqueness: The goal may
be influenced by hereditary and cultural factors, but it ultimately springs from the
creative power and opinion of the individual. (4) Social Context: As an indivisible
whole, a system, the human being is also part of larger wholes or systems -- family,
community, culture, nation, humanity, the planet, the cosmos. In these contexts, we
meet the three important tasks of life: community, work, and love. All are social
problems. The way that individuals respond to the first social system, the family, may
become the prototype of their world view. (5) Feeling of Community: Each human
being has the capacity for developing the feeling of interconnectedness with other living
beings and learning to live in harmony with society. The personal feeling of security is
rooted in a sense of belonging and embeddedness in the stream of social evolution. (6)
Mental Health: Social usefulness and contribution are the criteria of mental health.
Maladjustment is characterized by an underdeveloped feeling of community, a deeply
felt inferiority feeling, and an exaggerated, uncooperative goal of personal superiority.
The goal of therapy is to increase the feeling of community, promote a feeling of
equality, and replace egocentric self-protection, self-enhancement, and self-indulgence
with self-transcending, courageous, social contribution.
Does psychotherapy directly benefit a society or only the individual? Adler
believed that the ultimate purpose of psychotherapy was to help people contribute to the
social evolution of mankind. Müller added a spiritual element to this idea. He suggested
that a human being's mission in life was to work in partnership with God to complete an
unfinished world (Müller 1992). However Adler's philosophy is expressed, in essence,
it offers a socially responsible answer to the question of what it means to be a human
being.
End Notes
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1
The stages were suggested by Sophia deVries who studied with Adler. They were then developed by Henry Stein.
2
These strategies are rooted in the original Adlerian treatment style and are enriched by the contributions of Sophia
deVries, Alexander Müller, and Henry Stein.
3
This comes both from personal knowledge of Sophia DeVries, Anthony Bruck, Alexander Müller, and Kurt Adler
and the description of Lydia Sicher's work (Davidson 1991).
4
Based on propositions listed in Ansbacher and Ansbacher 1956, 1-2.