Page:Freud - The history of the psychoanalytic movement.djvu/48

 of men as well as their neurotic and psychotic maladies. As a matter of fact, Adler's theory is more adequate to any other field than to that of the neuroses, which he still puts in the first place because of the history of its origin. I had the opportunity of studying Dr. Adler many years and have never denied him the testimonial of having a superior mind, especially endowed speculatively. As proof of the "persecution" which he claims to have suffered at my hands, I can only say that after the formation of the Association I handed over to him the leadership of the Vienna group. It was only after urgent requests from all the members of the society that I could be prevailed upon to resume the presidency at the scientific proceedings. When I had recognized Dr. Adler's slight talent for the estimation of the unconscious material, I expected that he would know how to discover the connections between psychoanalysis and psychology and the biological bases of the impulses, a discovery to which he was entitled, in a certain sense, through his valuable studies about the inferiority of organs. He really did bring out some thing, but his work makes the impression as if—to speak in his own jargon—it were intended to prove that psychoanalysis was wrong in everything and that the significance of the sexual impelling forces could only be due to gullibility about the assertions of neurotics. Of the personal motive of his work I may also speak publicly, since he himself revealed it in the presence of a small circle of members of the Vienna group. "Do you believe," he remarked, "that it is such a great pleasure for me to stand in your shadow my whole life?" To be sure I see nothing objectionable in the fact that a younger man should frankly admit an ambition which one might, in any case, suspect as one of the incentives of his work. But even under the domination of such a motive a man should know how to avoid being "unfair" as designated by the English with their fine social tact. We Germans have only a much coarser word at our disposal to convey this idea. How little Adler has succeeded in not being unfair is shown by the great number of mean outbursts of anger which distort his writings, and by the feeling of an ungovernable mania for priority which pervades