SOURCE: "Alfred Adler and His Comparative Psychology of Individuals," in Inferiority Feelings in the Individual and the Group, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951, pp. 73-93.

In the following excerpt, which was originally published in Spanish in 1936, Brachfeld situates Adler's conception of human nature within the context of a social and philosophical debate over degeneracy.

In Levin D. Schucking's work The Sociology of Literary Taste we possess an able, if incomplete, study of the changes of fashion in the domain of literature. But no one so far has attempted to give an account of the formation and development of taste in psychological matters. And yet psychology is a popular science nowadays, especially in America, and, by ricochet, throughout the world. The cult has had its repercussion on literary fashion. Hence the vogue for Kafka and Proust in the United States, with the result that these authors' works, somewhat neglected during the...