Understanding Human Nature

by Alfred Adler

Book Overview

Long-regarded as the handbook of Individual Psychology, Understanding Human Nature provides an accessible introduction to Adler's key concepts, with which he moved away from his colleague Freud's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000GSA632
• Release Date: January 1965
• Publisher: Fawcett Premier Books, Fawcett World Library
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.34 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology

Written 1993, subsequently shortened Alfred Adler (1870-1937), the first heretic of psychoanalysis, barely scraped through childhood. The second of six children of a Viennese grain merchant, he suffered from rickets and spasms of the glottis. He almost died on several occasions from pneumonia and street accidents. In the cot alongside him when he was three, his nearest younger brother did actually die of diphtheria. Undaunted, however, by his diminutive stature (5' 2") or by his maths' teacher's pessimistic forecasts, he succeeded in medical school, in ophthalmology, in family life and eventually, despite Freud's preferring to advance the established Gentile psychiatrist, Carl Jung, in popularising a form of psychoanalysis. True to his own history, Adler would see competition between peers for resources as much more important than incestuous infantile sexuality. Now there is a pleasant yet authentic, new, and of course 'non-sexist' translation of one of his best-known works. Today, some of Adler's proposals are admittedly a little creaky. Adler tended to maintain that 'lifestyle' crystallizes by one's first birthday. He held intelligence testing (even of the 'g' factor) to be "unreliable"; and genetic inheritance of intelligence (or of anything else psychological) was a "superstition". Adler feared 'labelling' effects by which he believed he himself had almost been retarded. Homosexuality involved a rift with the *opposite*-sex parent. Educational streaming was unhelpful. Smaller classes would improve educational standards. And full employment would reduce the crime problem until teachers trained in Adlerian theory solved it in perpetuity. More alarming to likely readers of the present volume will be several deviations from Adler's general utopian idealism and political correctness. Adler favours free society's notorious 'division of labour' and the provision of relevant specialist education: he is even content to educate girls differently from boys, in view of girls' forthcoming life-tasks. Monogamy-plus-children is the only marital arrangement worth considering, and wicked old European psychiatrists were wrong to recommend that their patients take lovers. Pre-marital intercourse is discouraged. And 'pampering' is ceaselessly denounced by Adler as yielding later 'whingeing' and 'whining' "neurotics, criminals, drunkards and perverts." Nevertheless, there are three main propositions of Adler's that are, with qualification, especially consonant with modern understandings and researches. (1) Individuality. Twin and adoption studies of the 1980's showed people are indeed 'radically individual', as Adler maintained. Only for general intelligence do biological relatives other than identical twins much resemble each other; and unrelated adoptees who grow up together show virtually no psychological similarities at all by adulthood. 50% of eminent people (U.S.Presidents, British Prime Ministers, first-rank world-class philosophers, em

Provocative!

An amazing overview of what was considered a very young and questionable science in 1927. A must read for anyone who has interest in psychology.

Very Good, yet somehow unsatisfying

Adler is an excellent writer, and his simple language and the clarity of his thoughts make this a great read, but his advice and theories leave me with a bit of a hole. It seems that he too often illustrates all the negative aspects of certain types of human behaviour stemming from various childhood experiences without offering any type of solution to the problems. He might throw in a short paragraph of advice at the end of a passage but overall it is a negative message he seems to be sending out. With his thinking, it seems like any above-average human like an actor or a musician is not a gifted person, but someone who wasn't given enough attention when they were young and is now overcompensating for this. That is a very pessimistic outlook and I don't neccesarily think we can simplify it like that. All of this intellectual and scientific thinking only belittles the human spirit and drive and makes it seem like we are machines rather than souls. Overall, though this is a fine book, but dont look for any solutions of how to be a great social person, read it if you want to understand what kind of a person you don't want to be.