The science of living / by Alfred Adler.

  • Alfred Adler
Date:
[1930]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The science of living / by Alfred Adler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/270 page 22
    the human soul, and that we dare not merely add to that vanity by assuming ourselves to be mirac¬ ulous exceptions ? Adler’s reply is that we should preserve a certain attitude to all our experience, which he calls the attitude of “half-and-half.” Our conception of normal behaviour should be to allow the world or society, or the person with whom we are confronted, to be somehow in the right equally with ourselves. We should not de¬ preciate either ourselves or our environment; but, assuming that each is one-half in the right, affirm the reality of ourselves and others equally. This applies not only to contacts with other souls, but to our mental reactions towards rainy weather, holidays or comforts that we cannot afford, and even to the omnibus we have just missed. Rightly understood, this is not an ideal of difficult and distasteful humility. It is in reality a tremendous assumption of worth, to claim exactly equal reality and omnipotence with the whole of the rest of creation, in whatever particular manifestation we may be meeting with it. To claim less than this is a false humility, for what results from any contact we make does in fact
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3