Alfred Adler (Page 8)
Adler in the US

In America, a number of universities had invited Adler to speak, among them Harvard, Brown, and the University of Chicago. Despite some misgivings about sailing so far away, and leaving his wife and children behind, (and a bad dream the night before leaving), He left Southampton, England, on the luxury liner S.S. Majestic, in late November of 1926. While aboard, he spent time perfecting his English, since he was determined to address his audiences in English, unlike Freud, who spoke only German in his one US lecture at Clark University.

Adler spent his first few weeks in lectures at New York hospitals and churches, and in meeting new friends, among them Ira Ewile, MD, a pediatrician and educator who had established a child guidance clinic attached to Mt. Sinai hospital. As Adler’s presence became known (and because he had just come from Europe, in whose politics Americans were interested) he was increasingly the subject of newspaper interviews. Hoffman notes, "Published the day after Christmas, the World’s detailed article featured a prominent sketch of Adler absorbed in thought. The banner headline read Mussolini Spurred to his Fight for Power by Pique Over Inferiority as a Child, Says, Dr. Alfred Adler." (Hoffman, p. 175)

More important to the development of Individual Psychology, however, was his statement to one reporter that "the behavior patterns of persons can be studied from their relation to three things: to society, to work, to sex," which would become "the three tasks of life" in Adlerian thought, and which he expanded in his lecture on January 11, 1927, to the prestigious New York Academy of Medicine.

Adler spend the next weeks lecturing in Providence, RI, and Boston, at the same time meeting with admirers who would go on to become key leaders in education. Hoffman (p. 179) notes that, while in Boston, he addressed the DAR, where one member told him, "Our ancestors came over on the Mayflower." To which he responded, "Yes, yes, and I cam over on the Majestic!" Adler had not quite gotten the hang of English, but his slips were treated with humor and kindness by the press.

From February 13, Adler spent six weeks in the Midwest. He received an enthusiastic reception in Chicago, where he was invited by the board of education to deliver lectures for teachers and school administrators. Hoffman (p. 181) notes that more than 2500 applications for tickets had to be turned down due to lack of space in the Field Museum, which seated several thousand.

After additional Midwest lectures with similar receptions, he returned to New England for several more meetings, then to New York, and sailed for home on the S. S. Leviathan on April 11, a very satisfied man. Only one thing bothered him: despite his enthusiastic letters to Raissa, he had received none from her, and he was getting the impression that she did not share his feelings of success.

The next two years saw Adler working to increase the influence of IP throughout Europe and New Britain through lectures, consultation, and setting up educational and child guidance programs. His efforts were hampered on two sides.

On the professional side, there was the increasing pressure of Sperber’s group to convince Adler to side with Marxism. In addition was a recent book by Alice Gerstel, who had been drawn to Individual Psychology as a student in Munich. In 1924 she wrote Freud and Adler, comparing the two approaches. But in 1927 her The Road to We: An Attempt to Combine Marxism with Individual Psychology (and its enthusiastic acceptance by Sperber et al) confronted Adler with the Marxist/Leninist sub-group that was seeking to turn Individual Psychology to its own purposes.

On the personal side were his increasing marital difficulties. Despite his efforts to help Raissa set up their new country home about an hour from Vienna, these did not seem to offset a growing coolness on her part and the feeling that she resented her husband’s many new friends and new-found international success.

All of which was on Adler’s mind as he prepared for his second and even more extensive tour of the US. It appears that he believed it would be much like the first, and so was quite surprised to find such a large gathering awaiting him as he disembarked on February 11, 1928, and the major press conference held for him at his hotel.

His way had been paved for him by the November, 1927, publication of Understanding Human Nature. Already in its second printing when he arrived, it was a runaway best-seller. Indeed, Hoffman states, in a note beneath a reproduction of the book’s advertisement, "with astute marketing by Greenberg Publisher, Adler’s book’s gained great popularity in the United States and helped create the new genre of ‘self help.’" The book sold over 100,000 copies in three printings in the first six months.

The book was actually based on lectures Adler had given at the Vienna People’s Institute, from notes taken by Walter Wolfe. As Hoffman has noted,

As would become the pattern for Adler’s many popular books to follow, he had little to do with it’s actual writing. . . . Adler lacked any stylistic flair. Aside from dashing off chatty letters to far-flung family members, he derived no pleasure from writing. As a professional activity, Adler regarded writing as only a vehicle by which his ideas could reach an audience wider than the consulting room or lecture hall. (P. 197)

Adler spent his first month in the US lecturing at the New School for Social Research, founded just eight years earlier, in Manhattan. He also led classes at the Institute for Child Guidance in New York, among whose students was Carl Rogers, who recalled later in life how much Adler had influenced him.

Adler next went again to New England and the Midwest, this time in many more cities, receiving enthusiastic receptions by both professionals and the lay public, and positive articles and reviews in both local newspapers and national magazines.