What Life Could Mean to You

by Alfred Adler

  (3) N. L., oldest son, badly brought up, lame in one foot, takes the place of father to his younger brother.

  We can recognize this tie, too, as a goal of superiority, till now probably on the useful side. Perhaps, however, it was pride and a desire to show off. Later on, he drove his mother out of the house to beg, saying, “Be off with you, you beast." We can be sorry for this boy: he is not interested even in his mother. If we had known him as a child we could have seen how he was developing towards a criminal career. For a long time he was out of work. He had no money. He contracted a sexual disease. One day, on his way home from a futile search for work, he killed his younger brother in order to gain control of his small income. Here we see the limits of his cooperation — no work, no money, a sexual disease. There are always these limits, beyond which the individual feels incapable of proceeding.

  (4) A child who was early orphaned was given over to a foster mother who spoiled him beyond belief.

  In this way he is a pampered child. He develops badly in later years, is very clever at business, constantly tries to impress everybody, always wants to be in front. His foster mother encourages him and falls in love with him. He turn into a liar and a swindler and gets money wherever he can. His foster parents belong to the lesser nobility: he puts on aristocratic airs, squanders all their money and drives them out of their house. Bad training and pampering have spoiled him for honest work. He sees his task in life as if he must overcome by lying and cheating. This makes everyone an enemy to be outwitted. His foster mother preferred him to her own children and to her husband. This treatment gave him the feeling that he had a right to everything, but his low estimate of himself is shown in the fact that he does not feel able to succeed by normal means.

  We have pointed out already that there is no reason why any child should suffer from this discouragement, this deep inferiority feeling that it is useless to cooperate. No man need be defeated before the problems of life. The criminal has chosen the wrong means; we must show him where he has chosen them and why, and we must train him in the courage to be interested in others and to cooperate. If it were fully recognized everywhere that crime is cowardice and not courage, I believe that the greatest self-justification would be taken away from criminals and no child would choose to train himself for crime in the future. In all criminal cases, whether they are correctly described or not, we can see the influence of a mistaken childhood style of life, a style showing a lack of the ability to cooperate. I should like to say that this ability to cooperate must be trained. There is no question of its being hereditary. There is a potentiality for cooperation, and this potentiality must be regarded as inborn; but it is common to every human being, and to be developed it must be trained and exercised. All other points of view about crime seem to me unnecessary, unless we can produce persons who were trained in cooperation and yet became criminals. I have never met such a person, and I have never heard of anybody who had met one. The right protection against crime would be the right degree of cooperation. So long as this is not recognized, we cannot hope to avoid the disaster of crime. Cooperation can be taught in the same way that geography can be taught; for it is a truth and we can always teach the truth. If a child, or an adult, is tested in geography and he is not prepared, then he fails. If a child, or an adult, is tested in situations which need a knowledge of cooperation and he is not prepared, then he fails. All our problems need a knowledge of cooperation.

  We have come to the end of our scientific investigations of the problem of crime; and now we must be courageous enough to face the truth. After thousands and thousands of years, mankind has still not found the right method of coping with this problem. The means that have been applied seem all to have been useless and this disaster is still with us. Our investigation has told us why: the right steps have never been taken to change the criminal style of life and to prevent the development of mistaken styles of life. Short of this, no measures can be really effective.

  Let us recall our results. We have found that the criminal is not an exception to the human race; he is much like other people and his behavior is a comprehensible variety of human behavior. This is a very important conclusion: if we understand that crime is not an isolated thing in itself but the symptom of an attitude to life, and if we can see how this attitude arises, then, instead of having an insoluble problem before us, we can set to work with the confidence that we can accomplish a change.

  The criminal, we discovered, has trained himself for a long time in non-cooperative thoughts and actions; and the roots of this lack of cooperation go back to his early childhood, the first four or five years of his life. During those years a block occurred in the development of his interest in others. We have described how this block is connected with his relation to his mother, his father, and his fellow children, with the social prejudices around him, with the difficulties of his environment and with other such factors. We have found that the greatest common denominator among all the greatest varieties of criminals and among all failures of every kind is this lack of cooperation, lack of interest in other people and in the welfare of mankind; and, if we are to do anything at all, this ability to cooperate must be trained and taught. There is no other way of accomplishing a result. Everything depends from this single factor, the ability to cooperate.

  The criminal differs from other failures in one point. Through his old and continuous training against cooperation he has lost, as the others have also lost, the hope of achieving success in the normal tasks of life; he retains, however, a certain activity, and he throws this remainder of activity on the useless side of life. He behaves actively enough on the useless side, and to a certain extent he can cooperate there with those whom he sees as like himself, with his own type, with other criminals. Here he differs from the neurotic, the suicide or the drunkard. He is very much limited, however, in his sphere of activity; sometimes nothing is left but the possibility of crime; and not even the whole territory of crime, but just one kind of crime, which he commits over and over again. This -is the size of his world of action; he is kept and trapped in this narrow stable. We can see in this circumstance how much he is lacking in courage; and he is bound to lack courage, for courage is only a part of the ability to cooperate.

  All the time the criminal is preparing his thoughts and emotions for his criminal career: he plans during the day and he dreams during the night in an attempt to break down the last remnant of his social interest. He always looks for excuses and justifications, for extenuating circumstances and for reasons that "force" him to be a criminal. It is not easy to pierce through the wall of social feeling; it offers a great resistance; but if he is to commit a crime he must find a way — perhaps through brooding over his wrongs, perhaps through intoxication — to get rid of this hindrance. This helps us to understand how continuously he is making an interpretation of his circumstances which will confirm him in his attitude; helps us to understand, also, why we can achieve nothing by arguing with him. He sees the world with his own eyes, and he is prepared with a lifetime of argument. Unless we can discover how his attitude developed we cannot hope to change it. There is one advantage we possess, however, in which he cannot compete: it is our interest in others, which will allow us to seek out the real way in which we can help.

  The criminal begins to plot and prepare a crime when he is in a difficulty, has not the courage to face it in a cooperative way, and looks for an easy solution. It is especially likely to occur, for example, when he is confronted with the need to make money. Like every human being he is looking for a goal of security and superiority. He is wishing to solve difficulties and overcome obstacles. His striving, however, is outside of the framework of society: his goal is a goal of imaginary personal superiority, and he will try to achieve it by feeling himself the conqueror of the police, of our laws, of the organization of society. It is a kind of game he is playing with himself — to break the laws and escape detection, to be so cunning that no one finds him out. He will believe, for examp
le, that it is a great personal victory to use a bottle of poison; and he will fool and intoxicate himself all the time. He has generally some success before he is convicted for the first time; and his only thought when he is discovered is, “If I had been cleverer, I should have escaped."

  In all this we can see his inferiority complex. He is running away from the conditions of labor and from the tasks of life in association. He feels himself incapable of normal success. His training away from cooperation has genuinely added to his difficulties — the majority of criminals are unskilled laborers. He hides his feeling of inadequacy by developing a cheap superiority complex. He thinks how brave and how exceptional he is; but can we call a man a hero when he is a deserter from the front of life? The criminal is really carrying out his life in a dream: he does not know reality; he must fight against knowing reality or he would be forced to give up his career. We find him thinking, therefore, “I am the strongest man in the world, because I can shoot everybody”; or, “I am cleverer than everybody else, because I can commit crimes without being found out."

  We have identified, also, the roots of the criminal pattern: how criminals come from among those children who were overburdened in their first years of life, or from among the children who were spoiled and pampered. Children who suffer from imperfect organs need especial care to direct their interest towards others: otherwise they will become interested only in their own persons and will be unable to develop in the right way. Neglected children, unwanted, unappreciated, or hated children, are in a similar situation: they have never experienced the cooperation of others; they have not learned that it is possible to be liked, to win affection, to solve problems by cooperation. Pampered children have not been taught to gain things by their own effort; they think that it is sufficient that they should want something and that the world should hasten to fulfill their demands; and if they are not given everything they want, they feel unfairly treated and refuse to cooperate. Behind every criminal we shall be able to trace a history of this kind. They are not trained in cooperation; they are not yet capable of it; and wherever they meet problems they do not know how to approach them. We know, therefore, exactly what we must do. We must train them in cooperation.

  We have the knowledge, and by now we have enough experience. I am convinced that Individual Psychology shows us how we could change every single criminal. But consider what a work it would be to take every single criminal and treat him so that we changed his style of life. Unfortunately, in our culture, the majority of men would exhaust their ability to cooperate if their difficulties went beyond a certain point, and we find that in hard times the number of criminals always increases. I believe that if we were to be sure of abolishing crime in this way we would have to treat a great part of the human race, and I am not sure that it would be practicable to have an immediate aim of making every criminal or potential criminal a fellow man.

  There is plenty that we can do, however. If we cannot alter every criminal, we can do something to relieve the burdens of those people who are not strong enough to cope with them. With regard to unemployment, for example, and the lack of occupational training and skill, we should make it possible that everyone who wants to work can secure a job. This would be the only way to lower the demands of our social life so that a great part of mankind should not lose the last remnant of their ability to cooperate. It is unquestionable that if this were done there would be a decrease in the number of criminals. Whether our time is ripe for this relief to our economic conditions I do not know; but we should certainly work for this change. We should also train children better for their future occupation, so that they can face life better and with a greater sphere of activity. Such training can be given also in our prisons. To some extent steps have already been taken in this direction and perhaps all we need do here is to increase our efforts. While I do not believe it would be possible to give every criminal an individual treatment, we could contribute much by a mass treatment. I should propose, for instance, that we should have discussions with a great number of criminals on social problems, exactly as we have been considering them here. We should question them and let them answer; we should enlighten their minds and waken them from their lifelong dream; we should free them from the intoxication of a private interpretation of the world and so low an opinion of their own possibilities; we should teach them not to limit themselves and diminish their fear of the situations and the social problems which they must meet. I am very sure that we could achieve great results from such mass treatment.

  We should also avoid in our social life everything which can act as a challenge to the criminal or to poor and destitute people. If there are great extremes of poverty and luxury, those who are badly off become irritated and are challenged too much. We should therefore diminish ostentation: it is not necessary always to expand on how many millions an individual possesses. We have learned in the treatment of backward and problem children that it is entirely useless to challenge them to a trial of strength. It is because they think that they are engaged in a warfare with their environment that they persist in their attitude. The same thing holds with criminals. Throughout the world we can observe that police officers, judges, and even the laws we make challenge criminals and put them on their mettle. There should never be menaces, and it would be much better if we were more silent, did not mention the names of criminals or give them so much publicity. This attitude needs changing.

  We should not believe that either severity or mildness can change a criminal. He can be changed only if he understands his own situation better. Of course we should be humane; we should not imagine that criminals can be terrified by the thought of capital punishment: as we have seen, capital punishment sometimes only adds to the excitement of the game, and even when criminals are electrocuted they will think only of the mistake they made through which they were caught.

  It would be very helpful if we increased our efforts to discover those who were responsible for crimes. As far as I can see, at least forty per cent. of criminals, and perhaps far more, escape detection; and this fact is always at the back of the mistaken view of a criminal. Almost every criminal has experienced occasions when he committed crimes and was not found out. On some of these points we have already improved and we are going in the right direction. It is also important that criminals should not be humiliated or challenged either in the prison itself or after they leave prison. An increase in the number of probation officers would be useful, if the right type of man is chosen; and probation officers themselves should be enlightened on the problems of society and the importance of cooperation.

  By these means we could accomplish very much. We should still not be able, however, to decrease the number of crimes as much as we could wish. Fortunately we have another means and it is a method which is very practicable and very successful. If we could train our children to the right degree of ability to cooperate, if we could develop them in social interest, the number of criminals would diminish very considerably, and the effects would be shown in the near future. These children could not then be incited or allured: whatever troubles or difficulties they met in their life, their interest in others would not be wholly destroyed: their ability to cooperate and to solve satisfactorily the problems of life would be much higher than we find it in our own generation. The majority of criminals begin their careers very early. It is generally in adolescence that they start, and perhaps in the years between fifteen and twenty-eight crimes are most frequent. Our success, therefore, would be seen very soon. Not only so; I am sure if children were taught rightly they would influence their whole home life. Independent, forward-looking, optimistic and well-developed children are a help and consolation for their parents. The spirit of cooperation would be immediately spread over the whole world; and the whole social atmosphere of mankind would be raised to a much higher level. At the same time as we influence the children we should be influencing parents and teachers.

  The only question that remains is how we can choose the bes
t point of attack, what method we are to find to develop children so that they can stand the tasks and Problems of later life. Perhaps we could train all the parents? But no; this proposal does not give us much hope. Parents are hard to get hold of, and the parents who need training the most are the very people whom we never see. We could not reach them and so we must look for another way. Perhaps we could catch all the children, lock them up, put them under probation and keep careful guard over them the whole time? This does not seem a much better proposal.

  One way there is, however, a way which is practicable and promises a real solution. We can make teachers the instruments of our social progress: we can train our teachers to correct mistakes made in the family, to develop and spread the social interest of the children towards others. This is an entirely natural development of the school. Because the family is not able to bring up the children for all the tasks of later life, mankind has established schools as the prolonged arm of the family. Why should we not use the school to make mankind more sociable, more cooperative, and more interested in human welfare?

  You will see that our activity must be based upon the following ideas. I will put them very briefly. All the advantages which we enjoy in our present culture have been made possible by the efforts of people who have contributed. If individuals have not been cooperative, have not been interested in others, have made no contribution to the whole, their whole life has been futile, they have disappeared and left no trace behind them. Only the work of those men who have contributed survived. Their spirit continues and their spirit is eternal. If we make this the basis for our teaching of children, they will grow in a natural liking for cooperative work. If they are confronted with difficulties they will not weaken; but they will be strong enough to face even the most difficult problems and solve them to the common benefit.