The following Classical Adlerian quotations are from the Adlerian Translation Project Archives at the Alfred Adler Institute of San Francisco (AAISF/ATP). Selected works of Alfred Adler, Kurt Adler, Lydia Sicher, Alexander Mueller, Sophia de Vries, Anthony Bruck, Erwin Wexberg, Alexander Neuer, Sophie Lazarsfeld, Ida Loewy, Ferdinand Birnbaum, and other Classical Adlerians have been collected, translated, edited, and converted into electronic text. Sample quotations on a series of topics will be featured each week. Your comments and questions may be posted on the Classical Adlerian Psychology Discussion Forum. All of this material is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced without the expressed consent of Dr. Stein.
"It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them."(In "Alfred Adler: Apostle of Freedom," by Phyllis Bottome, ch. 5, 1939. The quote was used by Adlai Stevenson in a speech, August 27, 1952, in New York.)
"One thing can save us: the mistrust of any form of predominance. Our strength lies in conviction, in organizing strength, in a world view, not in the violence of armament and not in emergency laws. With such means other strong forces before us have fought in vain for their existence."
"War is not the continuation of politics with other means, but the greatest mass crime against man's belonging together. What sum of lies and artificial arousal of low passions, what thousandfold violence was necessary to suppress the indignant outcry of the voice of humanity!"
"The typical ideal of our time is still the isolated hero for whom fellow men are objects. It is this psychological structure which has made the World War palatable to people, lets them shudder in admiration before the unstable greatness of a victorious military leader."
"We need the conscious preparation and advancement of a mighty social interest and the complete demolition of greed and power in the individual and in peoples. What we all lack and for which we struggle relentlessly are new methods to raise the social sense..."
(From "Psychology of Power", written by Alfred Adler in 1928, published in the Journal of Individual Psychology, Vol. 22, pp. 166-172, 1966.)
"History judges human actions according to the degree of human solidary which is expressed in them. Without exception those deeds and events are regarded as great and valuable which are saturated with the sense of human solidarity, which promote the welfare of the whole. Lack of this sense of solidarity, always due to an increased sense of inferiority, drives the individual into neurosis or crime and groups and nations toward the abyss of self-extermination."
"The motives which actuate a crowd are always veiled in darkness and are always perceived and interpreted by the persons who are in the grip of the mass current as solutions of their individual needs and weaknesses. Of course this process is aided by the circumstance that the relation of large groups to life is uniform, and that the pressure of a group's inferiority complex somehow makes itself felt in each individual, be it in different ways and in reference to difficult personal problems."
".....All these factors increase the sense of inferiority, produce an exaggerated sensitiveness, and drive the individual to seek 'solutions'. Any outside interference appears to an individual in this state of mind a threat to his security and rouses him to active or passive self defense. The young men who murdered the Austrian heir to the throne were individuals at odds with themselves. The crowds which subsequently clamored for war as a solution, and the still larger crowds which accepted war as a solution, consisted similarly of individuals at odds with themselves."
"Most of the methods employed today to solve pressing problems in the lives of peoples or groups are obsolete and inadequate. They are mostly based on stimulating nationalistic and religious passions and lead to oppression, persecution, and war. An education based on the principles of individual psychology would eliminate these delusions of egotism and folly and would substitute a general zeal for common welfare. Individual psychology could rally all the latent forces for good which are inherent in groups just as it is already rallying such latent forces in individuals. War, national hatreds and class struggle, these greatest enemies of humankind, root in the desire groups to escape or compensate for the crushing sense of their inferiority. Individual psychology, which can cure individuals from the evil effects of this sense of inferiority, might be developed into a most powerful instrument of ridding nations and groups of the menace of their collective inferiority complexes."
(From "Salvaging Mankind by Psychology," Interview in the New York Times, Sept 10, 1925.)
"The evolution of our social life has been tending for two thousand years in the direction of equality (equal value) of the sexes. The subjugation of women came with the invention of war and the consequent rise in the importance attached to physical strength and endurance. The resulting mass attitude and movement was decidedly unfavorable to women, and has persisted to the present day, owing to mankind's inability as yet to put a stop to wars. The influence of the unequal value given to the sexes is stronger in warlike countries, where it has given rise to such unreasonable demands as that only those who can bear arms may enjoy full rights as citizens. But the higher development of technology, of science, and undoubtedly of love as well, unceasingly encouraged the rise of women and promoted their participation in public life. The conflict resulting from the attempt to subjugate women has played great havoc both in private and social life. Whenever the rights of women were strongly asserted, the masculine viewpoint of special privileges for the male always set itself athwart."
"To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman. But if a generation, or some part of one, grows up without an adequate sense of community, so that their personal desires loom larger than the general welfare, then war may seem a justifiable means of satisfying personal and selfish interests."
(From "Mass Psychology," International Journal of Individual Psychology, vol. 3, pp 11-120, 1937.)
"When Adler's main activity was the treatment of his patients and lecturing to bring about better personality education and prevention of neurosis, his main concern was the state of the world. He admonished that honest psychology cannot shut it's eyes to social conditions which prevent the child from becoming a part of the community and from feeling at home in the world. And which allow him to grow up as though he lived in an enemy country. Thus the psychologists must work against nationalism, when it is so poorly understood that it harms mankind as a whole. Against wars of conquest, revenge and prestige and against all other obstacles which interfere with the spreading of social interest in family, school and society at large. We should be concerned to create and foster the environmental influences which make it difficult for a child to get a mistaken notion of the meaning of life and to form a faulty style of life.""In his last book called 'Social Interest,' long before WWII and long before the atom bomb, he said that 'mankind might be doomed unless it developed more social feelings, nationally and internationally.' And he warned, 'to believe that the cosmos ought to have an interest in the preservation of life is scarcely more that a pious wish.'"
"Adler said we must work against Nationalism when it harms mankind as a whole--against wars of conquest, revenge and prestige, against unemployment which plagues/plunges people into hopelessness and against all other obstacles which interfere with the spreading of social interest. Adler said that we must not forget that it is the total circumstances, the total relation to the environment which send out the waves into the minds of the young, developing child. Then there is the fact of violence and war and its glorification in school, on television, in literature, in the movies and by the government. The child is in an under-developed social feeling from his home environment, and easily accommodate himself to such influences in the world, so that it is quite natural to compel men to fight with machines and poison gases. He learns to feel it is more honorable to kill as many of his fellow men he can, and he forgets that they too, would be of value for the future of mankind. Adler stated that we have sufficient experience to claim, with certainty, that such wars and racial persecutions are almost invariably followed by a deterioration of social life, comradeship, of love relation,s and by a big increase in crime and mental illness."
(From the transcription of an interview with Kurt Adler in 1987, in the AAISF/ATP archives.)
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