4: The debates with Freud

Up to Now: Adler joins with Freud (1902) to create treatments for neurosis. Adler’s star rises among other members, Freud is jealous. Demands all agree with him on sex as the sole determinant of personality. Adler refuses, others seek debates, Jan. 4, 1911, Adler argues that over-compensation to overcome inferiority feelings is another way to explain neuroses.

The next several meetings were devoted to discussing Adler’s talk. Freud had others speak for him. Paul Federn remarked that “if sexuality is not the cause of the neuroses, then Adler’s views represent a danger for he has aligned himself with Freud’s opponents.” (Clearly this was not any kind of formal debate, since Freud never spoke except to say a few things that were standard psychoanalytic theory.)

Adler gave his second talk February 11: “The Masculine Protest as the Central Problem of Neurosis.” He began with praise for Freud’s original insights, but immediately introduced other ways to consider the formation of personality and neurosis:

-- The influence of the “ego instinct” as it moves the individual in the direction
of importance, power, and dominance.

-- That neuroses are formed by “The beginning of a feeling of inferiority, and
fear of a feminine role.”

-- That feminine and masculine roles are defined and limited by the dominant male culture. Women have no way direct way to challenge these limits within their cultural setting, and so “act out” their inner conflicts in indirect (neurotic) ways.

Adler distinguished neurotic personality from normal personality by the actions people take to overcome feelings of inferiority. Most people compensate within a normal range; others over-compensate and cross the line to neurosis.

Adler didn’t use the term Psychology of Use in this debate, but it became a major principle in Adler’s theory. Why does a neurotic behave as he does? For Adler, “why” had to do with future goals, not past causes. So neurotic behavior is aimed at results. Because each person is created by the human community, the results sought are social results. The neurotic does what he does in order to gain
something from others in his social world: pity, compliance, control, power, or
whatever else is needed. Neurotic behavior is not compelled but is chosen to
suit the person’s social needs, needs that cannot be gained in direct or normal
ways.

Freud had heard enough.

He accused Adler of taking psychoanalytic concepts and renaming them. He described Adler’s approach as being of great harm to psychoanalysis. He warned that by down-playing sexuality he may gain followers in the short run, but lose them in the long run. In what we can assume was intended as scathing criticism, Freud concluded:

“Instead of psychology, it presents biology. Instead of the psychology of the unconscious, it presents ego psychology. Instead of the psychology of the libido, of sexuality, it offers general psychology. It is ego psychology, deepened by the knowledge of the psychology of the unconscious.”

Next time: Adler leaves Freud, forms Individual Psychology