PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY IN CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT An Abridged Version of the Author's Psychology of Character

by Rudolf Allers, Vera C. Barclay

How to recognize—and eliminate—common obstacles to your normal spiritual development. Your advisor? The pioneering Catholic psychologist who proved the importance of religion. And not just any religion. Dr. Rudolf Allers, a younger contemporary of Freud, argued that only the Catholic view of man could explain abnormalities and produce positive personality changes. He alone linked moral and spiritual growth to mental health. Of all Dr. Allers' works, this was both his most ambitious and his most an in-depth explanation of how character is shaped in childhood and afterward—and a helpful guide to rooting out character defects, curing (and preventing) developmental problems, strengthening virtues, and recognizing dormant potential, in both children and adults. Now it’s back in print for the first time in decades.

190 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1934

About the author

He 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

Reviews

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an interesting book, while I read it from front to back, I felt like as if one could open up to a particular topic in a given chapter and it would describe the situation from there without requiring anyone to read most of the prior parts.

I have to say though, I found the "Practical" aspect to be slightly deceiving, for before reading it I thought it would give me "instructions" to deal with a given issue, rather it seems after reading it that the author gives a talk about the topic/issue and lets you essentially come up with the general direction as to where to take it, which is fine, but I was of a different impression, it was still helpful.

The book seemed more so focused on Children and Adolescents, one could read this even as an adult, for there are topics on here that are present to all ages, but the book seems to emphasize character development within those whose characters are truly developing, especially in the first 3/4ths of the book. So while anyone could read this book, teachers and parents would benefit most from it.