Re:Alfred Adler Quote

The quote is in "Psychologies of 1930," chapter 21 "Individual Psychology," pages 395-405, published by Clark University Press, Worcester, Massachusetts (English Translation by Susanne Langer)

(paragraph in which the sentence appears)

"The staking of a goal compels the unity of the personality in that it draws the stream of all spiritual activity into its definition. Itself a product of the common, fundamental sense of inferiority - a sense derived from genuine weakness, not from any comparison with others - the goal of victory in turn forces the direction of all powers and possibilities toward itself. Thus every phase of psychical activity can be seen within one frame, as thought it were the end of some earlier phase and the beginning of a succeeding one. This was a further contribution of individual psychology to modern psychology in general - that it insisted absolutely on the indispensability of finalism for the understanding of all psychological phenomena. No longer could causes, powers, instincts, impulses, and the like serve as explanatory principles, but the final goal alone. Experiences, traumata, sexual-development mechanisms could not yield us an explanation, but the perspective in which these had been regarded, the individual way of seeing them, which subordinates all life to the ultimate goal."

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