This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 Excerpt: …against it. Because of this everlasting seeking after fictitious aims, after unreality, the neurotic can never give himself up to the risk of a real emotion, as he must do, if by means of it he is to redeem himself. All that has to do with the erotic, remains for him just as unreal as everything else in his life, –a fantasy, an arrangement, a pose, a part to play. Because of this Adler believes that it is preposterous to ascribe such a causal significance to neurosis-formation, even where the patient himself shoves such significance into the foreground and when at superficial consideration it seems to play a chief part. The deciding factors are, instead, all those things which drive the neurotic into a life of unreality and impede his emancipation. Even if Freud’s sexual-doctrine may not be eliminated from scientific consciousness in so convenient a way, Adler’s point of view contains nevertheless very much of value. It can not be denied that the libidinous satyr-play is often an external phenomenon, deep under which the tragedy of the manly protest works the destruction of the individual. Strindberg, whose life and work are an inexhaustible well-spring for the exemplification of Adler’s view-point is, in this regard, singularly instructive. One of Adler’s most faithful adherents, Freschl, has recently devoted himself'to a study of Strindberg’s book, For Pay. This points out how, for the author, everything was a question of power, an effort to demonstrate his superiority. He feels his inferiority in regard to woman and marries three times in hope of finally becoming master over some one. At the bottom of his inclination to endow woman at one and the same time with irresistible charm and with the most horrible qualities, l…
