What we see here, is really a kind of latter-day enlightment. The Viennese fin de siècle has been characterized in many different ways, but one method is to study it from the perspective of the Enlightenment. Adler's programmes - spreading psychological knowledge, establishing counseling centers, and training medical and and educational professionals - contain all the elements of the Enlightenment. Compare with Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Kant, and many others. Adler's ideas about freedom and democracy place him into the society of some of the best minds of previous centuries.