Ch. I in Volume 5 of the CCWAA
Where the Struggle Against Delinquency Should Begin (1921) is a discussion of the delinquency-problem. Adler’s answer is: everywhere. The social situation in Vienna was evidently very bad, because Adler mentions all possible actors: parents, teachers, caregivers, and government. Adler thinks that the depressed standard of life is one of the reasons for the low moral standards. Adler is very critical toward the results achieved so far with the help of punishment and the threat of punishment--strategies. Adler writes that most institutions, including family and the legal system, are hardly able correct the situation. What is left are the schools, even if Adler perceives a number of problems even there. However, “the school is the only institution qualified to check delinquency.” However, Adler wants to see a number of changes in the school-system. Adler advocates a new techer-training and says that the delinquency really starts with the failure at school.
Ch. II,
Educational Guidance Center (1922), continues the argument where the previous chapter left it. Adler argues that classroom assistants are needed with training in Individual Psychology. Adler refers with approval to the school-reforms started by Otto Glöckel (b.1873), minister of education. On Otto Glöckel’s background, see Hoffman (pp. 126-128). Adler tells that Individual psychology is practiced only in connection of the Vienna “Volksheim” (this was in 1921) where an Educational Counseling Center was established. In the end of his paper, Adler presents seven theses for the work of the Guidance centers. You find them here in a shortened form: 1) Do not involve any authorities, 2) Identify the origin of the problem, 3) Pay attention to the rights of the delinquent, 4) Uncover vanity, 5) Develop social feeling, 6) Reject the myth of talent, 7) Each of these points must be worked with empathy.
Ch. III,
Introductions to “Heilen und Bilden”, Both Editions, & Postscript (1922). Introduction to the first edition was written by Carl Furtmüller. He says that the physician’s advice and teachings are indispensable for the educator. The tasks of the psychotherapist are, according to Furtmüller: to study what in the life-plan of the client has gone wrong and become untenable, what has forced the client into an insolvable disparity wih reality. Then the therapist should help the client to shed his unrealistic life-plan and replace it with another that will enable him to adjust to the reality.
Introduction to the second edition was written by by Erwin Wexberg in 1922. Wexberg comments on the war that crippled international scientific relationships in Europe. Wexberg says that Individual Psychology has emerged as an independent discipline that is different from psychoanalysis. W. speaks of a “clean separation” between the schools that would be a mutual interest, according to Wexberg.
A postscript was added by Alfred Adler in 1922. There Adler says that “For us, Individual psychology is that artistic striving which allows us to view all expressions in the context of a unified development. … by illuminating the unrecognized lifeplan and by revising it, by sharpening the sense of reality, the sick and asocial manifestations of the self-created system can be eliminated, and the road toward reconciliation can be taken.”
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