The practice and theory of individual psychology / [Alfred Adler].

  • Adler, Alfred, 1870-1937.
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The practice and theory of individual psychology / [Alfred Adler]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    agoraphobia. As Berger says in another place, Eysen- hardt in his sense of incomplete manhood has a presenti¬ ment that just as his father had defeated him so now he would succumb again. % A lower incisor loosens and breaks off while eating. The symbolical influence of this event interpreted by Eysenhardt as another sign of inadequacy, the loss of some bodily possession damaging to his masculine power, strikes him with all the force of a superstitious impulse or, whatever it is, that intellectual people con¬ ceal in its place. The approaching end! All is vanity ! The truth overwhelms him almost at the very moment of his ardently-longed-for triumph, the triumph for which he had worked throughout life, toward which his whole life-plan had been directed ! The old uncertainty holds him in its vice. What if his intellectual powers, his main weapons disappear? So again he takes re¬ course to his old method, the method to which he was accustomed. He wants some proof of his powers, some certainty, an examination. By means of the self-criticism to which he subjects himself it is within his power either to lower or raise his prestige. What he is most afraid of is not reality but the semblance of reality, i.e. whether he is to be deprived of his worldly power. In this condition of hypochondriac doubt his construction of fear spurs him on to take even greater precautions. A sensation of pressure on the heart, slight attacks of anxiety these are but intensified hallucinatory safeguards and warnings. The magnificently constructed role of the self-complacent ego has, however, been shaken to its foundations. When disappointment follows and his triumph, em¬ bodied in the post of minister of justice miscarries this comes upon a man who is already sick, a prey to un¬ certainty and who has been cut loose from his old safeguarding constructions. What will happen in all these instances where the path to victory has been cut off and the harrowing feeling of decreasing manhood seeks some way of pull¬ ing itself together again? Attempts and preparations come to the front to demonstrate that the personality once possessed has not really suffered and that, on the contrary, it is now even more firmly fixed. The motor habits of Eysenhardt take him more frequently to Kaertner-strasse and its side-streets than before. We