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.

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    happen, but, like the prophet Jonah, it predicts what will happen in order that it should not happen. The science of Individual Psychology devel¬ oped out of the effort to understand that mys¬ terious creative power of life—that power which expresses itself in the desire to develop, to strive and to acheive—and even to compensate for defeats in one direction by striving for success in another. This power is teleological—-it ex¬ presses itself in the striving after a goal, and in this striving every bodily and psychic movement is made to co-operate. It is thus absurd to study bodily movements and mental conditions ab¬ stractly without relation to an individual whole. It is absurd, for instance, that in criminal psy¬ chology we should pay so much more attention to the crime than to the criminal. It is the crimi¬ nal, not the crime that counts, and no matter how much we contemplate the criminal act we shall never understand its criminality unless we see it as an episode in the life of a particular individual. The same outward act may be crimi- t nal in one case and not criminal in another. The important thing is to understand the individual
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