TABOO AND GENETICS 223 



natural selection, has permitted the survival 

 of many neurotic temperaments which find 

 marriage a precarious venture. The neurotic 

 constitution, as Adler (i, 2) has pointed out, is 

 an expression of underlying structural or func- 

 tional organic deficiency. It is a physiological 

 axiom that whenever one organ of the body, 

 because of injury, disease, etc., becomes incap- 

 able of properly discharging its functions, its 

 duties are taken over by some other organ or 

 group of organs. This process of organic com- 

 pensation, whereby deficiency in one part of the 

 body is atoned for by additional labours of 

 other parts, necessarily involves the nervous 

 mechanism in ways which need not be discussed 

 in detail here. 



In children the process of compensation, with 

 its formation of new nervous co-ordinations, is 

 manifest in the inability to cope with their 

 companions who have a better biological endow- 

 ment. This gives rise to a feeling of inferiority 

 from which the child tries to free itself by every 

 possible means, ordinarily by surpassing in 

 the classroom the playmates whom it cannot 

 defeat on the playground. The feehng of 

 inferiority continues throughout fife, however, 

 although the mechanism of physiological com- 

 pensation may have become so perfected that 

 the functioning of the organism is quite adequate 

 to the needs of the environment. As a result. 



