The Neurotic Constitution
After my attempt to investigate in the Studie uber Minderwertigkeit -von Organen (or Study of Organ Inferiority) the structure and tectonic of organs in association with their genetic basis, their functional capability and destiny, I proceeded, based on the data already available and my own experience, to use the same method in the study of psychopathology. In this book I have embraced the most important results of my comparative, individual-psychologic studies of the neuroses. I have used an empiric basis in comparative individual psychology -as I did in the theory of somatic inferiority--to establish a fictive standard of normality in order to enable one to measure and compare with it grades of deviation from it. In both of these scientific endeavors, the comparative method of study reckons with the origin of phenomena, dismisses from consideration the present and seeks to outline from them the future.This method leads us to view the compulsion of evolution and the pathological elaboration as the result of a conflict which breaks forth in the organic sphere for the purpose of attaining equipoise, functional capability and adaptation; the same struggle in the psychic sphere is under the command of a fictitious idea of personality whose influence dominates the development of the neurotic character and symptoms. If in the organic sphere, "the individual develops into a unit mass in which all of the individual parts co-operate toward a common goal" (Virchow), if the various abilities and tendencies of the individual tend toward a purposefully directed, unit-personality, then we may look upon every single manifestation of life as if in its past, present and future there are contained traces of a dominating, guiding idea. In this way it has appeared to the author of this book, that the most minute trait of psychic life is permeated by a purpose force., Comparative, individualistic psychology sees in every psychic event the impress, so to speak, or symbol of a uniformly directed plan of life which only comes more clearly to light in the neuroses and psychoses.