The Science of Life, by Alfred Adler (1929: Garden City, NY)
I approached The Science of Life with admittedly high expectations. I have read with pleasure the writings of the other two-thirds of the psychoanalytic triumvirate of Freud, Jung, and Adler, and this was my first exposure to the works of Adler. Thus I was disappointed to find this book a muddied, rambling work: sometimes verging upon a coherent presentation of Adler’s core beliefs, but always then veering away towards unsubstantiated platitudes and — my least favorite trait of psychological literature — a telling overdependence upon anecdote and fictional “case studies”. Naturally these case studies always tend to underscore and ‘prove’ the author’s theories, expressed or implied, but in this case the underlying theory was either too obscure or banal, making it difficult to even find in the constant appeal to those cases an assortment of interesting stories.
When reading eighty-year-old books of any stripe, the reader wages constant struggle against the impulse to patronizingly look down upon the earlier views, as if modernity has reached a great height in the intervening years from which it can look down upon the so-called ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages with benignant and purer knowledge. This is especially the case with works of psychology — not because our received wisdom in this area is so much the greater, but because the topic itself is so effectively colored by the cultural milieu in which the reader finds him- or herself. We can look askance, therefore, at Phillipe Mairet’s introduction wherein he states that “homosexuality is always the consequence of incapability for love” [p. 19] — but do we really have any generally agreed-upon belief about homosexuality with which to oppose this categorical statement? Even making such allowance for the vast distance between Adler’s time and ours (he wrote this book in the interstice between the two World Wars), I found little in Adler’s chapters to either commend or condemn. Indeed, the most maddening aspect of the book for me was its dreary repetition of its key terms without any linkage to the broader stream of Adler’s thought.
The key points of Adler’s theory are here: the emphasis on the unity of each individual’s psyche, the insistence that the life direction is settled by the time a person has reached five years of age, the tripartite division of human life into the fields of social, occupational, and love relations. But these ideas are more cogently, more forcefully, and ultimately more persuasively presented in the Wikipedia article on Adler than in this 264 page book. Thirty of those pages are given over to the introduction by the aforementioned Phillipe Mairet — for me the most interesting part of the book and the reason I purchased it in the first place. The actual words (translated, one assumes, perhaps by Mairet himself) of Adler however are mushy and boring: pedantic without being instructive, illustrative without painting a clear picture. The most energetic passages are those where he declaims against narrowing human drives to solely sex or other reductionist views (this work was written a decade and a half after the break with, and purge by, Sigmund Freud).
To be sure, there are interesting, even intriguing ideas here. Adler is rightfully famous for his idea of inferiority complexes as the foundation of much maladjustment and neurosis. But The Science of Life takes a glib approach instead of accumulating evidence. I can believe that Adler saw this or that mechanism operating in the patients he treated, but I don’t see why I should believe it from the arguments presented here. Perhaps the problem lies with the translation. I found myself almost wishing this were the case, and shall report if I read a different version of the book in the future. But I find that my main resistance to the hardback’s contentions was the flow of argument rather than the exact words used. Though the chapters seem to paint a case for The Science of Life in the usual manner of presenting a thesis and then approaching its components — thus “The Inferiority Complex” is followed by its successor “The Superiority Complex” — in reality each chapter meanders over much of the same material covered before. Adler hearkens back, for example, to his idea of the “prototype” developed in early childhood to which a person’s energies are ever after devoted. Or he returns time and again to the idea that teachers must be trained in his method of Individual Psychology in order to identify and if possible correct early tendencies away from the “useful” directions in life. But the work as a whole is but a set of wandering streams of mumbling thoughts rather than a deep channel flowing inexorably to the conclusions Adler wishes us to draw.
According to one Web reference, this book was originally a set of lectures. If this be true, I only hope that those lectures were presented to the general public and not to men and women (Adler was an early proponent of the equality of sexes) of a more scientific bent, for I doubt the latter would get much out of the successive chapters that was not already covered in the first — with just as little evidence beyond “for example” stories. This characteristic method of presenting anecdote to explicate psychology has a long and storied career. In the hands of an author who can meld such tales to the needed background of science and experiment, evidence pro and con, it can be compelling and persuasive. Oliver Sacks is a good example of such a writer. It can degenerate, however, into mere story-telling with no more evidentiary merit than so-called “old wives’ tales”. Less, in fact, for those tales at least have the merit of supposed experience of hundreds or thousands of “old wives” whose communal wisdom is encapsulated therein, whereas the stories of shrinks are meaningless isolated without confirmation from other doctors, studies, or repeatable experiments. Marcello Truzzi wrote that “An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.” Now, Dr. Adler’s contentions are not as incredible as a belief that the sun stood still in the sky, but they are uncommonplace enough to require more proof than “I know” or “I can tell”. So, for example, when Adler claims that a person who habitually leans upon a chair for support “does not trust his own power, but wants to be supported” [p. 137], I can only think: perhaps true, perhaps not. Adler himself cautions against “judging solely by one consideration” [p. 136] but gives no evidence upon which to judge his theses.
A perfect example of this mess and mélange is his description of the characteristic psychologies of siblings. First-borns, he says, are more likely to develop neuroses and other issues; this because they have all the mother’s attention until the second child is born, after which they feel betrayed and abandoned. Second-born children are primed for success, however, for reasons I won’t go into here. It is an interesting concept. It may even be true. No actual evidence is given in support, however, beyond an appeal to the story of Esau and Jacob (who were twins, by the way, but let that pass). I myself would give the idea more credence if Alfred Adler had not himself been the second of six siblings. Had he been firstborn, or third, etc., I might have concluded that he came to his conclusion about sibling order based on some studies he was only neglecting to proffer at this time. As it is, the argument has an obvious bias towards self-interest.
In conclusion, I must affirm an abiding respect for the pioneers of psychology. Though Freud today gets quite a bad rap, his seminal insight into the interconnections between conscious and unconscious thought — and the frequent tension between the two — remains a breathtaking leap forward in theories of human behavior, perhaps the first quantum leap in this area since Aristotle and Plato duked it out in ancient Athens. That Psychology is a fraud with as little scientific basis as Economics or Astrology does not lessen its power or potential. To be sure, there was much to be said against these early theories from the cusp of the Twentieth Century — as is to be expected. I only wish that The Science of Life was a more impressive edifice against which to lean (showing my distrust of my own power, I suppose) and strike out for or against, rather than the muddied mess which I found it.