Abstract
The goal of this chapter is to understand why Freud’s and Adler’s insights into the consequences of being a child singled-out for special attention by his parents were both accurate and, apparently, contradictory. The answer to this question should account for why certain people with overtly favorable—or even lofty—competence images often feel threatened by evaluative interactions and seek to protect their fragile sense of self-esteem by self-handicapping.
A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success. (Sigmund Freud—cited in Jones, 1953, Vol. 1, p. 5)
I treated a case of drunkenness in a man thirty-two years of age, very intelligent, well-educated and perfectly healthy, who had regular bouts of drinking.... He lived extravagantly at the expense of his parents, paying the highest prices for more or less useless things whenever he chose to do so.... Such a way of living usually originates in the prototypic attitude of a pampered child, who feels obliged to keep out of the firing-line of life because he is not prepared for it. This man made his escape, by being a drunkard.
The usual tensions of every day were not severe enough to drive him to drink, and he was able to use his sober intervals to display good intentions.... [His] drunkenness would begin... when he was expected to go into society [or]... when there was a demand of duty.... His evident aim was to be relieved of every duty and to be supported for his own sake alone. Self-centered and wholly lacking social adjustment, he had nevertheless attained a goal of superiority by the elimination of defeat. He had no defeat in society for he did not enter it; no defeat in work, for he had no occupation.... Subjectively, he triumphed over life, lived it upon his own terms entirely; but objectively, of course, the terms he obtained were almost the worst possible.... He proved to have been a spoiled child... (Alfred Adler, 1930, pp. 126–129)
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Berglas, S. (1990). Self-Handicapping. In: Self-Handicapping. The Springer Series in Social / Clinical Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0861-2_5
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