7 - Adler visits the US

Up to now: After splitting with Freud in 1911, Adler forms Individual Psyuchology which he and his followers develop into one of the most significaqnt and influential psychologies of the 20^th century. He become known around the world for ideas he presents in books, lectures, and classes. American schools soon want him to come and speak.

A number of American universities had invited him to speak, including Harvard, Brown, and Chicago. So, despite misgivings about sailing so far away, he in September 1926, took the S.S. Majestic from Southampton, England  to New York. He spent his time perfecting his English so he could address his audiences in their own language. (In his only appearance in the US, Freud spoke only in German, which had to be translated for his American audience at Clark University in Massachusetts.) 

Adler spent his first few weeks lecturing at New York hospitals and churches and in meeting new friends, among them Dr. Ira Ewile, a pediatrician and educator who had established a child guidance clinic attached to Mt. Sinai hospital.

When reporters heard he was in town, they interviewed him about Europe’s political woes. To one he provided the headline, Mussolini Spurred to his Fight for Power by Pique Over Inferiority as a Child, Says Dr. Alfred Adler.”

Important to Individual Psychology was his statement to one reporter that “the behavior patterns of persons can be studied from their relation to three things: to
society, to work, to sex.” These would become the three tasks of life in Adlerian
thought, and which he expanded in his lecture on January 11, 1927, to the
prestigious New York Academy of Medicine.

Adler spend the next weeks lecturing, and also meeting with admirers who would go on to become key leaders in American education. He then went to Chicago, where he received an enthusiastic reception: More than 2500 applications for tickets were turned down due to lack of space in the Field Museum, which seated just over that number!

After additional Midwest lectures with similar sold-out receptions, he returned to
New England for more lectures and meetings, then to New York, and sailed for
home on April 11, a very satisfied man.

Adler assumed his second US visit in 1928 would be like the first. So he was surprised to find a large crowd awaiting him as he left the ship, and a major press
conference for him at his hotel. His way had been prepared by the publication of Understanding Human Nature, a runaway best-seller with more than one hundred thousand copies in three printings in only six months.

His 1929 American tour began with lectures in California and then back in New York. He taught two classes of forty lectures each, demonstrated his interviewing
method (which became The Pattern of Life) and established parent-education centers, with over forty thousand parents taking part in the first six months.

Next time: Adler settles in the US; dies on tour of Europe