Individual psychology and the child / Leonhard Seif [and others].

Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Individual psychology and the child / Leonhard Seif [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    delinquency. These are all individuals who have lost social interest for others, who did not learn it, who have only personal interest for themselves. Neurosis is a social disturbance: to attain irresponsi- bility and privileges by means of sickness. Nervous individuals know the communal feeling well, 1.e. i others for them, but ignore it for their part. They want to receive without giving. Neglected children who have never experienced love come consequently to hate their environment. They are not ready for co- operation; they seem to think they live in a hostile country. They are prompt to injure others. You know what things such children do at home and at school. They lie, steal, destroy, hate, injure their neighbours: they are lazy, dirty and disorderly, erratic and so on. They did not learn to co-operate in life, they are filled with a sense of insecurity about their position. And one can say that ifan individual is very much occupied about his position among other people, he will very soon be in opposition to them, become obstinate, pugnacious, destructive and so on. The psychotic has entirely given up social interest. The utmost lack of social interest is shewn by suicide. You will note that I have not attempted to give any definition of a normal individual. There is no abso- lutely normal individual. The most we can say is that there are approximations to the ideal of a normal individual; but we are not the ideal. The ideal is a yard-stick to measure what is right, what is wrong. The ‘“‘about normal’’ individual has learned from his early childhood on to act on the useful side of life, to train his co-operation and creative powers in the effort to overcome growing difficulties step by step in a spirit of community. That would be the best preparation for his future. The individual’s opinion about life is like having spectacles on the nose: the wearer has to see everything through the colour of the glasses: i.e. in the case of the normal, common-sense