ABSTRACT
In 1911, Freud set up a meeting of his Psychoanalytical Society to debate the views of Alfred Adler, which resulted in Adler (president of the society, at the time) and six others leaving the group. The contrasting childhoods of Freud and Adler had put them on a collision course before they even met. Jung once commented that psychological theories were autobiographies, confessions, and Adler and Freud, simply, had different biographies. Freud thought the conflict between civilisation and instinct was inevitable, and he reacted to that with humorous resignation. Adler, by contrast, talked as though he believed that the id wants the brotherhood of man, not just sex and murder. All three of the fathers of dynamic psychotherapy became prophets: Freud for his views of sex and naturalness against convention and religion, Adler for social humanity, while Jung spoke of something so appalling that no one takes any notice of it.
