Whilst Freud’s psychology has for its predominant note the centrifugal tendency, which demands its happiness and satisfaction in the objective world, in that of Adler the chief rôle belongs to the centripetal movement, which tends to the supremacy of the subject, to his triumph and his liberty, as opposed to the overwhelming forces of existence. The expedient to which the type described by Freud has recourse is “infantile transference,” by means of which he projects phantasy into the object and finds a compensation for the difficulties of life in this transfiguration. In the type described by Adler what is characteristic is, on the contrary, the “virile protest,” personal resistance, the efficacious safeguard which the individual provides for himself, in affirming and stubbornly enclosing himself in his dominating ideas.
The difficult task of elaborating a psychology which should pay equal attention to the two types of mentality belongs to the future.
