Alfred W. Adler..... the nearly forgotten psychoanalyst

 Alfred W. Adler..... Vienna 07-02-1870 - Aberdeen 28-05-1937

one of the three great psychoanalytics.

He was an austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist and founder of the school of individual psychology.

He, being a Jew, did not allow to become a prisoner of Christianity.

This is one of the reasons, why he is nearly forgotten.

He wanted, that his work would have value for the eternity..... "sub specie aeternitatis"..... borrowed from Spinoza.

Besides, he had not a beautiful "artist 's head", like Nietzsche, Freud, Schopenhauer or Marx.

When he was 20 years old, in 1890, he wasn't a psychoanalyst yet, but he was surely a socialist.

He was not a pupil or follower of Freud, he wanted to go his own way.

No doubt about it, that he must have had knowledge of Hans Vaihinger and his phylosophy of the thinking in "As if". Because, Adler used the "fictional finalism" in his work.

Until a few decades, Adler was well-known. His nowadays followers seems to be members of a cult.

His ideas about "Gemeinschaftsgefühl" has been translated into common sense or "empathy".

Almost nobody knows nowadays that the idea of compensation, to go from a minus to a plus, comes from Adler.

His ideas about sexual disorders had been rejected, long ago.

In other words, about whom do we talk?

Tja.....

He has introduced group therapy in America. He worked with prisoners, of course in groups, because the taxpayers didn't want to contribute too much for this kind of people. Usually psychiatrists worked with one patient at a time, like Freud. His patients were well to do.

The worse reason why he is almost forgotten, has to do with his political view: he was socialist!!!

No, this can not been said about Carl Gustav Jung. Everybody knows something about him. Does people also know, that he has never rejected fascism?! By doing so he belongs in my view to the people that I call fellow-travellers. That is something nobody will hear about.

Everything, really everything has to do with politics, also the fact that Adler almost has been forgotten.

It needs a lot of courage to recognize this!

Leefse= Keep alive

Aleke.

P.S. English is not my native language!