Alfred Adler

"We are hardly in a position to completely illuminate the dark recesses of the problem of the psychic life, and understand it thoroughly, since we can not escape from the meshes of our own relationships."

"Imagine a man alone, and without an instrument of culture, in a primitive forest! He would be more inadequate than any other living organism. He has not the speed nor the power of other animals. He has not the teeth of the carnivore, nor the sense of hearing, nor the sharp eyes, which are necessary in the battle for existence. Man needs an extensive apparatus to guarantee his existence. His nutrition, his characteristics, and his style of life, demand an intensive program of protection."

"They conceive of the necessary obligations of life more as difficulties than as stimuli. Soon a gulf, which is continually widened because of their hostility to their fellows, builds itself between them and their environment. Now they approach every experience with an exaggerated cautiousness, removing themselves farther and farther from the truth and actuality with every contact, and succeed only in continually making fresh difficulties for themselves."

"The identical effect may be produced by unthinking parents, educators, or other adults, who teach children that love and tenderness are improper, ridiculous, or unmanly, by impressing some pernicious motto upon them. It is not so seldom that we find that a child is taught that tenderness is ridiculous. This is especially the case among those children who have often been ridiculed. Such children are veritably afraid of showing emotions or feelings because they feel their tendency to show love toward others is ridiculous and unmanly."

"One can often observe how one of several children seeks the limelight through particular unruliness, while another, being shrewder, attains the same goal through particular virtue."

"A real understanding of the behavior of any human being is impossible without a dear comprehension of the secret goal which he is pursuing; nor can we evaluate every aspect of his behavior until we know that his whole activity has been influenced by this goal."

"those who thirst for superiority and desire domination are very difficult to influence."

"This leads to an enormous amount of mischief, especially in the pernicious activities of the telepaths and hypnotizers. These gentlemen commit such arrant crimes against mankind that they are quite capable of utilizing any instrument appropriate to their nefarious purposes."

"The public wants to be fooled. It wants to swallow every bluff without subjecting it to rational examination. Such activity will never bring any order into the communal life of mankind but will lead only, again and again, to the revolt of those who have been imposed upon. No telepath nor hypnotizer has had luck with his experiments for any great length of time."

"Any man who is accustomed to living rationally, who makes his own decisions, who does not swallow anyone's word uncritically, is naturally not to be hypnotized, and will, therefore, never be able to show any telepathic powers."

"This is possible only because we do not test anything, but receive, transform, and assimilate all perceptions in the shadow of our own conscious, or the depths of our unconscious."

"Personal power or economic interest have influenced the division of the field of labor by reserving all the better positions for individuals of certain classes, that is, those affording the greater power, while other individuals, of other classes, have been excluded from them. The recognition of these numerous factors in the structure of society enables us to understand why the division of labor has never proceeded smoothly. Forces continually disturbing this division of labor have created privilege for one, and slavery for another."

"The universal result of this fallacy is that both sexes have finally fallen into the hasty pudding of prestige politics, and each tries to play a role for which he is not suited. What happens? Both their lives become complicated, their relationships are robbed of all candor, they become surfeited with fallacies and prejudices, in the face of which all hope of happiness vanishes."
"At the very least it determines the fact that we frequently must seek extenuating circumstances for our actions. Herein originates the special technique of life, of thinking and acting, which causes us to wish to remain constantly in rapport with the social feeling, or at the very least, to delude ourselves with the semblance of social connectedness. In short, these explanations show that there is something like a mirage of the social feeling, which acts as a veil cloaking certain tendencies."

"In the more difficult situations the optimists remain quiet in the conviction that mistakes can always be rectified....Quite a different type are the pessimists..... They are much more conscious of the difficulties of life than are the optimists, and it is easy for them to lose their courage."

"They exhibit their vanities as though they were actually conquerors, yet the obviousness with which they do all this, and the superfluity of their movements, not only causes a disharmony in their relation to the world, but also betrays their whole character, an artificial superstructure based upon an insecure shifting foundation....In their persistent efforts to win the upper hand, they soon find themselves in conflict, especially with others of their own type, whole competition they awaken."

"Translated into the language of Individual Psychology, the choleric individual is one whose striving for power is so tense that he makes more emphatic and violent movements, feeling that he is forced at all times to produce evidence of his power. He is interested only in overcoming all obstacles in a straightline aggressive approach. In reality, the more intense movements of these individuals begin early in their childhood, where they lack a feeling of their power, and must demonstrate it constantly to be convinced of its existence."

"At this point science enters the lists and declares: "Temperaments are dependent upon the glands of internal secretion....These glands have no ducts but pour their secretions directly into the blood. The general impression is that all organs and tissues are influenced in their growth and activity by these endocrine secretions which are carried by the blood to every single cell in the body."

"Quite beside the fact that vanity leads an individual to all kinds of useless work and effort which is more concerned with the semblance of things than with their essence, and beside the fact that it causes him to think constantly of himself, or at the most only of other people's opinion of him, its greatest danger is that it leads him sooner or later to lose contact with reality....No other vice is so well designed to stunt the free development of a human being as that personal vanity which forces an individual to approach every event and every fellow with the query: "What do I get out of this?""
"Vanity very soon prevents an individual from playing the game according to the rules. Much more frequently it causes him to be a disturber of others so that those individuals who are excluded from the satisfaction of their own vanity are often to be found striving to prevent others from the full expression of their lives."

"Children whose vanity is in process of growth exhibit their valor in dangerous situations and like to show weaker children how powerful they are."

"Since no one is entirely free of vanity, everyone has a certain amount of it."

"The development of vanity is constantly threatened by choice logical objections which develop out of the communal life."