450 



The Journal of Heredity 



its relation to health and education (38) : 

 "What is often called heredity is merely 

 the expression of the subconscious ego, 

 whose origin can often be traced back 

 to early childhood, to the time when the 

 acts of the parents and their example 

 left their impress in the miconscious" 

 (]). 8, 9) . Idiosyncracics of action, pecu- 

 liarities, symi)athics, antipathies, hkes 

 and dislikes, prejudices, preformed judg- 

 ments, aggressiveness, passivity, marked 

 artistic ability and tendencies, tempera- 

 ment, these and many more traits of 

 character have been explained on the 

 basis of acquired complexes. And as 

 far as the evidence and explanations are 

 concerned, they both seem quite valid. 

 The significance of the powerful mass 

 of "Triebe" and impulses in the un- 

 conscious must not be neglected by the 

 careful student of heredity. 



THE WORK OF ADLER 



Disagreeing with Freud in certain 

 essential details, Adler broke away 

 entirely and, aided by his followers, 

 continued his studies on normal and 

 neurotic children. In its essentials his 

 "minderwertigkeit" theory, to explain 

 certain motives of conduct, is as fol- 

 lows : None of us is born with a system 

 all of whose organs are perfect in 

 structure or function. There is a weak 

 spot somewhere. This will be mani- 

 fested very early in life in defective 

 reactions to the environment. An at- 

 tempt, conscious or unconscious, will 

 then be made to compensate for that 

 defect, either by a symmetrical organ 

 undertaking the extra labor; or by an 

 entirely different organ adapting itself 

 to care for the extra burden, the 

 defective organ in both eases becoming 

 hyi)ertroi)hied: or, finally, by a hy])er- 

 functioning of the inferior organ. This 

 compensation activity may also be 

 manifest in cases where organ-defect is 

 not necessarily the basis. For example, 

 a child lies afxjut the occupation of its 

 father, saying that he drives the king's 

 carriage, when in reality he is a coal 

 dispenser in very poor circumstances. 

 The defect here is, of course, one of 

 social jjosition, and the extra activity of 

 the imagination is induced to c()mi)en- 

 sate for this defect. There is hardl\' 

 time to go into his exi)lanation of ihc 



"manly protest" and the " Aggrcssions- 

 triebe," but on the basis of these com- 

 pensating factors, Adler explains musi- 

 cal and artistic ability, the development 

 of great orators and singers, miserliness, 

 humility, the tendency to enter some 

 particular profession, etc. 



I regret being unable to make more 

 than mere mention of the work of 

 Swoboda and Fliess on the effect of 

 periodicity in himian behavior, and of 

 the research of such men as B. Berliner, 

 W. Schmidt, Lehmann and Pedersen, on 

 the effect of weather conditions : changes 

 in barometric pressures, winds, tem- 

 peratures, atmospheric ionizations, solar 

 radiations, etc., on the actions of man- 

 kind. Climatopsychology has already 

 developed a fair-sized literature. 



RESEARCH CAUSES OPTIMISM 



Of course, all these fields are virgin. 

 A great deal of further research is 

 necessary. But as far as they have 

 already developed, one gains much 

 optimism from the growing belief that 

 after all, those people who possess a 

 peculiar trait which tends to make 

 them more or less unsocial, e.g., bad- 

 temper, or the tendency to lie, are not 

 necessarily doomed to suffer this defect 

 all through their lives, to be avoided in 

 marriage b>' those who make eugenics 

 their religion, but that rather b}' means of 

 a proper therapeusis, by a proper hand- 

 ling of the environmental, unconscious, 

 as well as hereditary factors, these 

 harmful expressions can be harnessed, 

 "sublimated," and the energy driven 

 into a different, more socially-advan- 

 tageous channel. 



In closing this ]japer I wish to bring to 

 your attention, in view of the above-men- 

 tioned facts, a typical stud\' of a so-called 

 mental trait, namely musical al)ility. 

 To begin with, no psychological anal>'sis 

 was made to determine what constituted 

 musical ability. The conclusions as to 

 its heritability were based uj^on the 

 returns of questionnaires filled out by 

 Ijrofessional men, farmers and business 

 men, — ])eo])le hardl\- ciualified to make 

 an accurate judgment of the matter. 

 Personalis, I wonder what standard 

 was used. Was a i)ers(M'i considered 

 possessed of musical ability if he were 

 able to sit through a musical corned \- or 



