Problems of Neurosis: A Pagan Book of Psychology

Adler argues that neurosis is not a disease with a specific cause but a lifestyle choice — a 'neurotic attitude' adopted when a person lacks the courage to solve a communal task. What it rejects is Freudian drive theory: Adler denies that neurotic symptoms are eruptions of unconscious instinctual conflict. Instead, the neurotic creates symptoms as a protective excuse, a way of saying 'if I didn't have this, I could be superior.' The goal is not to uncover repressed memory but to expose the patient's hidden, future-oriented fiction of superiority. This is the mechanism of individual psychology applied to neurotic suffering.

Problems of Neurosis crystallizes Adler's concept of Gemeinschaftsgefühl — 'social interest' — as the measure of psychological health, and its absence as the root of neurotic withdrawal. It also elaborates the 'fictive goal' and the 'pampered style of life' as the two key precursors to neurosis. These concepts survive in modern Adlerian psychotherapy, in cognitive-behavioral approaches that target irrational beliefs, and in positive psychology's emphasis on social connectedness. The book's case vignettes also prefigure modern formulations of the 'secondary gain' of illness.

Freud located neurosis in repressed sexual drives and the Oedipal conflict; Adler located it in a discouraged striving for superiority that turns anti-social. Freud saw the unconscious as a cauldron of instincts; Adler saw it as a fictive goal the person themselves constructs. The dispute was not merely theoretical — Adler was expelled from Freud's Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1911 for these views. Problems of Neurosis, written near the end of Adler's life, is a mature restatement of that break, and it shows how far he had moved from psychoanalysis proper.

Adler's work was widely read in the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the United States, but his star faded as Freudian and then behavioral paradigms dominated. Critics from the psychoanalytic side, notably Freud himself in 'On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement,' dismissed Adler's system as superficial and moralistic. Later critics have noted that Adler's case studies lack the systematic evidence Freud compiled, and that 'social interest' is difficult to operationalize. Still, Adlerian ideas about inferiority complexes, birth order, and lifestyle entered popular psychology largely through this line of work.

Problems of Neurosis was written by Adler himself, not assembled posthumously, but its English edition was prepared by a translator and editor (the 1929 Cosmopolitan Book Corporation edition lists a translator) and Adler's German originals were reworked for English readers. Adler's writing is conversational and case-driven, which translates relatively smoothly, but some German terms — particularly Gemeinschaftsgefühl — lose nuance in English as 'social interest.' Readers should note that later reprints vary in quality and pagination, and no fully critical edition exists.

The most common misreading is that Adler reduces neurosis to a simple 'inferiority complex' — a popular phrase he coined but did not use to mean low self-esteem. In this book, inferiority feelings are universal and potentially productive; what makes them neurotic is when they are hidden behind a compensatory fiction of superiority and used as an excuse. Readers also mistakenly treat Adler's 'will to power' as a desire for domination, when he meant a striving for overcoming. The book is about courage and community, not about ego inflation.