Medicine: Man with a Will

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The night before his first (1926) voyage from Vienna to the U.S., "the legitimate father of the inferiority complex," as Alfred Adler once described himself, dreamed that he was "on a ship traveling to an unknown destination with all that he had acquired in the way of treasures during his lifetime. A collision took place and the boat sank; everything he possessed was lost; but he himself, after a long struggle, succeeded in reaching shore."

In terms of Adlerian psychology, this dream revealed both pessimism and courage. It was also a pretty accurate prophecy. Adler made the U.S. his home for the last three years of his life, but in collision with both Freudians and Jungians, his fame and influence took a hard beating. Today, 21 years after his death in Scotland (where he was lecturing), Adler's Individual Psychology is still the Cinderella of depth psychology's Big Three. To Freudians, Adler's views are superficial and inadequate; to more mystical Jungians, they seem earth-bound and unimaginative. But in a new, revised edition of Alfred Adler (Vanguard; $5), British Novelist Phyllis (Private Worlds, The Mortal Storm) Bottome, biographer and longtime friend of Adler, sets out the principles of Individual Psychology so clearly and completely as to suggest that the Adlerian boat is not only still afloat but still carrying riches in its neglected cargo. Adler's theories are perhaps most fascinating for the light they cast—by contrast—on Freudian teachings; for unlike the Freudians, Adler emphasizes man's free will and his individual moral responsibility.

As-lf Philosophy. Freudian man stems largely from the great Victorian period of machine genius: the psyche is a systematic motor, complicated but explicable in its deep and unconscious workings. The motor is controlled beyond the individual's power, largely by environment and sex, and can be tinkered with only with the help of that indispensable repairman, the analyst. Adler's starting point is evolution, as interpreted by philosophical Darwinians. Like Darwin, Adler saw man as an evolving species but like Samuel Butler and Nietzsche, he rated man's will far above man's environment and physical heredity.

Man, as Nietzsche sees him, may will himself to supermanly heights, provided his goal is proportionately lofty. But man cannot ever be absolutely certain whether his inspired goal is true or false, concluded Germany's Hans Vaihinger (Adler's "special favorite" among contemporary philosophers); the best he can do is follow it as if it were true.