ADLER AND FREUD
ALFRED ADLER AND SIGMUND FREUD – AN OEDIPAL DRAMA
From 1902 to 1911, Alfred Adler was a member of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical ‘Wednesday Society’ and, despite increasing contentual differences, one of his most important colleagues. After breaking with Freud, Adler founded the Individual Psychology, which is now once again regarded as a school of psychoanalysis in many countries.
Dear colleague
A small group of colleagues and supporters would like to give me the great pleasure of meeting at my place once a week in the evening (½ 9h postcoenam) to discuss topics of interest to us, namely psychology and neuropathology. I know of Reitler, Max Kahane and Stekel. Would you be so kind as to join us? We have set next Thursday as the date and I look forward to hearing from you as to whether you would like to come and whether this evening suits you.
With warm collegial regards
Yours Dr. Freud
In 1902, Sigmund Freud invited Alfred Adler to join the group that would later become the psychoanalytical ‘Wednesday Society’. Freud saw his younger colleague as a beacon of hope for the future of the psychoanalytical movement. From 1906 onwards, Adler began to develop his own ideas. Freud became increasingly critical of this, viewing it as a betrayal of the basic assumptions of psychoanalysis. For example, Adler questioned the central importance of sexuality in the development of neuroses.
The break came in 1911, after Adler presented his views and was heavily criticised by Freud and his followers. Adler resigned from all his positions. Freud wrote to Jung, the new hope for the future: ‘Somewhat weary of struggle and victory, I inform you that yesterday I forced the entire Adler gang (6 members) to resign from the association. I was harsh, but hardly unjust.’ (Freud-Jung 1974, p. 493)
By 1910, tensions between the two were already considerable, as a letter from Freud to C.G. Jung shows: ‘Adler, a very decent and intellectually superior man, is paranoid about this, pushing his barely comprehensible theories in the ‘Zentralblatt‘ in such a way that they are bound to confuse all readers. He constantly argues about his priorities, gives everything new names, complains that he is disappearing in my shadow, and pushes me into the unpleasant role of an ageing despot who does not allow young people to come to the fore.‘ (Freud-Jung 1974, p. 412) Nevertheless, Freud proposed that Adler be elected chairman of the Vienna branch of the International Psychoanalytical Association.
Freud’s comment on Adler’s death shows how bitter he remained until the end: ‘For a Jewish boy from a Viennese suburb, dying in Aberdeen, Scotland, is an incredible career and proof of how far he has come. His contemporaries have truly rewarded him handsomely for the merit of having contradicted analysis.’ (Handlbauer 2002, p. 178)
Invitation front
Invitation back