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This book is written by the first Kanzer Foundation Fellow for Psychoanalytic Studies in the Humanities. The first by-product of value in reading the book is the knowledge that this Foundation has been instituted, and if subsequent contributions provided under the tenure of the Fellowship live up to the quality of the first, we shall all be the better for it.
The title is not misleading; this is not a biographical study—Adler's personal life hardly finds mention—but it is an account of his professional career, which really did have Freud's shadow spread widely over it, and a searching endeavor to explain the interplay between the two one-time collaborators.
The two were vastly different personalities. Freud was apparently the better politician and fighter, and the history of their dialogue suggests that Adler knew this. Of relevance in this connection is the fact that one cannot imagine Freud renouncing his Jewishness, as did Adler.
For some years Freud welcomed Adler in his Wednesday night group and did his best to keep him there. He muffled his opposing theoretical views and even seemed to support Adler. Freud made clear to Jung that Adler would be a troublemaker, but he wanted to keep valuable people in his group as support for the psychoanalytic movement and he apparently considered Adler valuable. But once the International Psychoanalytic Association was begun at the Weimer convention in 1911, and the local psychoanalytic societies were designated as its constituent units, Freud clearly felt that he had the strength to bridle Adler and that Adler could no longer be a serious threat. Thereupon the full weight of Freud's long restrained animosity and disagreement descended on Adler, who understandably felt forced to resign from the Vienna group.
Freud's publicly given reasons for disagreeing with Adler do not seem as important as his inner feelings. He felt that Adler's emphasis on the masculine protest was simply a part of the libido theory and that his instinct of