MANES SPERBER
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Freudians, did not immediately grasp what was new and original in
his thought. Expressions like "inferiority feelings," "sense of insuffi–
ciency," "striving for dominance," "search for mastery," "compensa–
tion," "sense of community"- "well, we know all that," people
thought. Anyone might use such expressions, while Freud used
terms which often enough were not his own but which impressed
themselves on people as original terminology for original doctrines.
Only months later did I discover Adler's genius. This happened
in his apartment on the Dominikanerbastei where he presented to
his closest followers the case of a manic depressive, along with reflec–
tions on the nature of such cases and the possibility of their cure. In
the course of this evening I learned a great deal more about mental
derangement than I had known before or was later to learn from
books or discussions. From that time on I knew that the criticism of
Adler's sometimes overly flat language was perhaps not groundless
but was without importance.
It
was a question of how one listened to
him, to what extent one took part in his thinking aloud.
That evening Adler had several pages of notes before him, the
case history of the illness, which he used as the starting point for his
presentation . He spoke as though to himself, audibly enough, think–
ing aloud in a way typical of his applied method of contextual
analysis, that process of dissection and recombination that made a
whole out of the parts. It was during that evening that I first became
an Adlerian and resolved to read everything he had ever published.
And soon afterwards we began having those conversations in which,
when we were alone, he told me details of his life .
What most encouraged me was that he took all my objections
seriously and even accepted some of them as valid. He was an ex–
emplary teacher for me, and I vowed that I would be thankful to him
all my life . But I perceived early that that would not always be easy,
since he sometimes in my presence would speak unfairly, with
downright cruel sharpness, against friends and followers towards
whom he had suddenly conceived mistrust. In such cases he was in–
capable of even listening calmly to the mildest intervention on behalf
of the person he had unjustly maligned .
I sensed that someday he would pass the same devastating
judgment on me, and I would have no recourse. And I imagined,
when he shot me one of his fierce looks, that he was probably think–
ing: "He, too, will eventually betray me ." But at once he would seem
to put this thought from him . I, too, quickly suppressed my qualms.
