Superiority and Social Interest: A Collection of Later Writings

by Alfred Adler, Heinz Ludwig Ansbacher (Editor), Rowena R. Ansbacher (Editor)

“This compilation establishes Adler beyond doubt as one of the wisest psychologists of this century.” ―Gordon W. Allport Two key ideas in Alfred Adler’s thinking are reflected in these twenty-one the individual’s striving toward some kind of individually conceived superiority, perfection, or success and the healthy person’s need to connect that striving with social interest―concern for the common good. The selections provide a survey of the wide range of Adler’s theories and clinical experience and they include a long essay on religion and individual psychology and Adler’s account of his differences with Freud. Each selection is given in its entirety, and the volume contains a biographical essay on Adler by his earliest important co-worker, Carl Furtmüller, and an extensive bibliography of Adler’s writings.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Psychoanalysis

464 pages, Paperback

First published March 22, 1973

About the author

Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler rejected emphasis of Sigmund Freud on sexuality; his theories that personality arises in subconscious efforts and that from overcompensation for perceived inferiority results neurotic behavior and psychological illness base an Adlerian psychological school.

People recognize emphasis of this medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of individual on the importance of the complex as isolating an element, which plays a key role in development.

This Viennese of the best-known in the western world held a chair in the United States of America. His special merit made clear the interaction between external influences and internal dispositions. He therefore pioneered a holistic approach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_...

Reviews

[Riley Holmes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The bad: Adler can be a judgmental homophobe.

The good: He had a deep, incisive understanding of people's motivations. This lead to his clinical success and all the useful theorizing in these essays.

The best: His description of the structure of Neurosis

[Sheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did NOT read this whole book; I just finished two other Adler books and read just the section on Religion and Individual Psychology as a way to fill out my understanding of Adler's work. This is pg 271-308 of the version of the book that I grabbed.

In general, Adler's thinking on God is not much different from his other topics; he explains the existance of religion as the embodiment of the ideal to which we all strive. Religion fosters our necessary social feeling and God represents the ideal acquisition of social feeling.

Some potent quotes below:
"The idea of God and its immense significance for mankind can be understood and appreciated from the viewpoint of Individual Psychology as a concretization and interpretation of the human recognition of greatness and perfection and as commitment of the individual as well as of society to a goal which rests in man's future and which in the present heightens the driving force by enhancing the feelings and emotion."

"When two persons act the same, it is not the same; but also when two persons think, feel, or wat the same things, differences exist."

"he found God, who points the way, who is the harmonious complementation in the goal for the confined, contradictory groping and erring movements on the path of life."

"the fact that an increasingly large part of mankind resists religion does not arise from its essential nature. This resistance rather originates from the contradictions which have resulted between the work of the power apparatus of the religions and their essential nature, and probably also fro the not infrequent abuses of religion."

"One may call it conflict when a person outfitted with an erroneous life plan founders on the social necessities of life; call it crisis when he is in the process of change; call it grace when he finds the new way."

"This incontrovertible clarification of the errors in a life styel, certainly no easy task, persuades and produces the new life stay, which is actively adapted, not entirely to the existing reality, but to the growing, becoming reality."

"By nature, man is netiher good nor evil. All his traits show themselves as socially oriented and thus betray their origins in the relationship to his environment."

"In our view, socially poorly-prepared persons will not in this situation strive for a solution of the problem at hand, for which more social interest is required than they possess. Rather they find relief by coming to terms with the disturbance which has arisen, remain with it and use it as justification for declining a solution because they fear defeat more than they expect success."

"The only salvation from the continuously driving inferiority feeling is the knowledge and the feeling of being valuable which originates from the contribution to the common welfare. This feeling of being valuable cannot be replaced by anything else."

"The healing process must begin with winnin the erring human child for cooperation. But the cure occurs as the very own work of the subject treater, after he has gained adequate understanding."