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Self Improvement
Personality flaws CAN be conquered Catholic University psychologist's celebrated guide has no equal in half a century First, said Dr. Rudolf Allers, face the unvarnished truth. Identify the flaws. Then, get to the root causes. Finally, take the action he prescribes for the particular flaw. Change will come in time. Allers was a past master not only at explaining personality traits, but also at dispensing simple advice. And it was all "based on Christian morals," noted the delighted Catholic Journal of Religious Instruction. His book caused a minor stir because it revealed, for the first time, that "many defects in behavior commonly excused as natural disposition or temperament have their source in willful attitudes" that are concealed even from ourselves, as Ave Maria magazine put it. More "Many of our faults and much of the difficulty that results in our lives because of them are of our own making."
- GenresPsychology
Hardcover
Published January 1, 2000
2 people are currently reading
35 people want to read
About the author
Rudolf Allers
30 books11 followersHe was a disciple of Sigmund Freud. He worked with Alfred Adler for 13 years until he decided to part away. Victor Frankl, the creator of the Logotherapy, was thrown out of Adler’s group because he was a disciple of Allers and shared his ideas.
He wrote and published around 600 books and papers, and had a great influence in his time. Why we know so little about him remains a mystery. Might this be a result of the so called Totschweigetaktik (the silent tactic)? This page tries to make up a little for that ungratefulness or silencing tactic.
Rudolf Allers was a physician, psychologist and philosopher. He was born in Vienna (Austria), in 1883. He received his MD in 1906, from the University of Vienna. After practicing medicine for two years, he studied to be a psychiatrist. He began to get interested in Sigmund Freud’s work, and belonged to his last class. Allers did not agree with what he describes as unscientific ideas of Freud (1). He worked in mental clinics in Munich (Germany). We find him in 1913 as instructor of psychiatry at the University of Munich. In World War I he worked as a surgeon in the Austrian Army. Afterwards he wrote a book about bullet wounds in the head. He also had worked in a biochemistry lab and wrote several papers on his experiments.
From 1918 to 1938 he specialized in psychiatry. He taught and did research in the Medical School in Vienna. He was also Director of the School of Medical Psychology. From 1920 he also worked in private psychotherapeutic consultation.
In between these occupations he went to the Sacro Cuore University in Milan (Italy), invited by the famous Father Agostino Gemelli, one of the founders of the great Catholic University in northern Italy, where he earned his doctoral degree in Philosophy (1934). Allers was fully convinced that one should understand very well the anthropological and philosophical issues at stake in the views or fundamentals of psychology and psychiatry.
In 1938 he foresaw the peril for him and his family by Hitler’s takeover of Austria, so he decided to accept an invitation to go to USA to teach psychology in The Catholic University of America.
Allers was and remained Catholic all his life. In 1948 he was appointed professor of philosophy in Georgetown University in Washington, DC. In 1960 he received a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. He was President of the Washington Philosophical Club and also of the Metaphysical Society of America. The Catholic Philosophical Association granted him the famous Thomas Aquinas Medal. He also was a Fullbright lecturer in France, Austria and Switzerland in 1955 and 1956.
Even though he became a professor Emeritus in 1957, he taught almost until his last days on earth. Georgetown University sent him students to the nursing home at Carroll Manor Archdiocesan House where the scholar of international reputation gave classes to them in the solarium of the house, specially conditioned for that purpose by the Carmelite sisters who took care of the house. Allers said of them: "These nuns are full of love for God and for the souls and bodies of those under their care. They must be very dear to God".
Father Brian A. McGrath wrote: To his students Professor Allers was a scholar and a gentleman. Quick, erudite, open, he valued the questioning mind, the new insights while he cherished the best of the ancient and medieval traditions; he was also patient but demanding, stirring and encouraging, attentive to both the novice and the candidate. With his colleagues he was generous and cooperative without cant or pretense. He could not be categorized because he was never bound in a narrow system. Plato and Aristotle, Thomas and Kant, Marx, Russell and Whitehead were respected for their contributions. He felt free to agree or disagree with their solutions as he explored the reality in his search for truth". One would have to add the names of Saint Augustine, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Scheler, Jame
He wrote and published around 600 books and papers, and had a great influence in his time. Why we know so little about him remains a mystery. Might this be a result of the so called Totschweigetaktik (the silent tactic)? This page tries to make up a little for that ungratefulness or silencing tactic.
Rudolf Allers was a physician, psychologist and philosopher. He was born in Vienna (Austria), in 1883. He received his MD in 1906, from the University of Vienna. After practicing medicine for two years, he studied to be a psychiatrist. He began to get interested in Sigmund Freud’s work, and belonged to his last class. Allers did not agree with what he describes as unscientific ideas of Freud (1). He worked in mental clinics in Munich (Germany). We find him in 1913 as instructor of psychiatry at the University of Munich. In World War I he worked as a surgeon in the Austrian Army. Afterwards he wrote a book about bullet wounds in the head. He also had worked in a biochemistry lab and wrote several papers on his experiments.
From 1918 to 1938 he specialized in psychiatry. He taught and did research in the Medical School in Vienna. He was also Director of the School of Medical Psychology. From 1920 he also worked in private psychotherapeutic consultation.
In between these occupations he went to the Sacro Cuore University in Milan (Italy), invited by the famous Father Agostino Gemelli, one of the founders of the great Catholic University in northern Italy, where he earned his doctoral degree in Philosophy (1934). Allers was fully convinced that one should understand very well the anthropological and philosophical issues at stake in the views or fundamentals of psychology and psychiatry.
In 1938 he foresaw the peril for him and his family by Hitler’s takeover of Austria, so he decided to accept an invitation to go to USA to teach psychology in The Catholic University of America.
Allers was and remained Catholic all his life. In 1948 he was appointed professor of philosophy in Georgetown University in Washington, DC. In 1960 he received a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. He was President of the Washington Philosophical Club and also of the Metaphysical Society of America. The Catholic Philosophical Association granted him the famous Thomas Aquinas Medal. He also was a Fullbright lecturer in France, Austria and Switzerland in 1955 and 1956.
Even though he became a professor Emeritus in 1957, he taught almost until his last days on earth. Georgetown University sent him students to the nursing home at Carroll Manor Archdiocesan House where the scholar of international reputation gave classes to them in the solarium of the house, specially conditioned for that purpose by the Carmelite sisters who took care of the house. Allers said of them: "These nuns are full of love for God and for the souls and bodies of those under their care. They must be very dear to God".
Father Brian A. McGrath wrote: To his students Professor Allers was a scholar and a gentleman. Quick, erudite, open, he valued the questioning mind, the new insights while he cherished the best of the ancient and medieval traditions; he was also patient but demanding, stirring and encouraging, attentive to both the novice and the candidate. With his colleagues he was generous and cooperative without cant or pretense. He could not be categorized because he was never bound in a narrow system. Plato and Aristotle, Thomas and Kant, Marx, Russell and Whitehead were respected for their contributions. He felt free to agree or disagree with their solutions as he explored the reality in his search for truth". One would have to add the names of Saint Augustine, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Scheler, Jame
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 6, 2026
A phenomenal book by a Catholic psychologist - dissecting real problems that people face and offering guidance and insight. His Catholicity permeates every bit of understanding that he reveals, evidenced by this quote.
“To man is given the task not of creating values or of attributing them to things originally indifferent as to value, but the task of discovering values existing in the world wherein he lives and of becoming aware of values as yet not real which he has to bring into existence.”
“To man is given the task not of creating values or of attributing them to things originally indifferent as to value, but the task of discovering values existing in the world wherein he lives and of becoming aware of values as yet not real which he has to bring into existence.”
January 3, 2015
Probably one of my favorite books. It really helped me understand a lot of my problems. Very insightful.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews