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Cooperation Between the Sexes: Writings on Women and Men, Love and Marriage and Sexuality
As presented here, Adler’s emphasis on the equality of the sexes and his innovative concept of the “masculine protest” provides the basis of present-day considerations of the dynamics of sexuality, love and marriage. Co-operation Between the Sexes remains in many ways a modern work by a writer whom Gordon Allport called “one of the wisest psychologists of this century.” In this volume, a major psychoanalytic thinker presents a theory of personality through his explorations of one of humankind’s most basic attributes: sexuality. In addition, these writings reflect Adler’s theoretical dissatisfaction with what he felt were the deterministic beliefs of Sigmund Freud. And having presented them, he precipitated one of the most dramatic schisms in psychoanalytic psychology.
- GenresPsychologyNonfiction
196 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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340 people want to read
About the author
Alfred Adler
395 books910 followersAustrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler rejected emphasis of Sigmund Freud on sexuality; his theories that personality arises in subconscious efforts and that from overcompensation for perceived inferiority results neurotic behavior and psychological illness base an Adlerian psychological school.
People recognize emphasis of this medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of individual on the importance of the complex as isolating an element, which plays a key role in development.
This Viennese of the best-known in the western world held a chair in the United States of America. His special merit made clear the interaction between external influences and internal dispositions. He therefore pioneered a holistic approach.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_...
People recognize emphasis of this medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of individual on the importance of the complex as isolating an element, which plays a key role in development.
This Viennese of the best-known in the western world held a chair in the United States of America. His special merit made clear the interaction between external influences and internal dispositions. He therefore pioneered a holistic approach.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_...
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 28, 2014
Tek bir konuda Adler'a katılmıyorum, "evlilikte çocuk yapmayı evliliği kurtarma yönünde bir adım olarak" ele aldığı ve önerdiği paragrafta. Acaba ben mi yanlış anlıyorum diye tekrar tekrar okudum ama... Sonuç değişmedi: Çocuk yapmak istemeyen kadın ve erkeği de fazla zorluyor bence; insan ÇOCUK SAHİBİ OLMAK ZORUNDA DEĞİLDİR.
Üremeyin, mesajını vermekten asla bıkmayacak bi insan olarak, yazara bu noktada katılmıyorum. Haricinde kesinlikle okunmalı.
Üremeyin, mesajını vermekten asla bıkmayacak bi insan olarak, yazara bu noktada katılmıyorum. Haricinde kesinlikle okunmalı.
May 23, 2016
Üst üste okuduğum kadın yazarların kadın-erkek üzerine değinileri olan kitaplardan sonra Alfred Adler'in de aynı bakış açısına sahip olması benim içime su serpti diyebilirim. Adler yetiştirildiğimiz koşulların, toplumsal güdülemenin cinsiyetlerimiz üzerindeki etkisi göz önüne alındığında aslında işbirliği yapılmaz ya da bu kurgunun farkında olunması için çaba harcanmazsa sağlıklı bir ilişkinin asla mümkün olmadığını anlatır. Bir işbirliğinin şart olduğunu söyler. Alfred Adler'in kitabın sonunda yer alan evlenecek kızına yazdığı mektup ise aslında tüm kitabı özetler öğütler içermektedir.
August 14, 2022
So continuing my Adler reading...after A Social Interest I was particularly interested in Adler's thoughts on sex and gender, expecting him to be very progressive.
And he was "for his time". And that got me thinking about that phrase "for his time"; we give him great credit for understanding that the capabilities of people are not dependant upon their sex at birth (genitalia) and yet forgive him for his thinking that homosexuality or any gender curiosity is an abomination simply because he was writing in the early 1900s. Certainly, it is hard to think outside of one's cultural viewpoint and yet when one does, shouldn't that make it easier to understand multiple differing viewpoints?
Anyway, I am feeling less enamored of Adler after reading this, but still impressed with and hoping to use some of his work in thinking about ways to expand our (read all human folks) concept of community.
The rest of the this review is mostly his quotes along with some commentary under topical headings below.
Discrimination:
"Continuous violent intervention has rendered work a kind of privilege for some, and a kind of oppression for others."
"The low esteem of women is also expressed in far lower pay for women than for men, even when their work is equal in value to men's work."
Specifically Adler is talking about workplace discrimination against women here, but I think it would apply for race and class based issues as well.
"In a human community, one must respect the freedom of the personal individuality to the extent of leaving the other person free choices."
Systems of domination:
"Through the development of culture in the direction of striving for power, especially through the efforts of certain individuals or classes who wanted to secure privilege for themselves, the division of labor has been steered in the favor of the men."
"To justify his dominance, man generally aruges that, in addition to his position being due him by nature, woman is an inferior being."
"must occur when the little girl has interiorized a masculine superstition of the hoplessness of her intellectual stivings and now continuously attempts to talk with a masculine voice"
"If boys were not taught to think tghat they are the superior sex, they woudl not look upon girls as mere objects of desire."
"Prostitution is possible only in a society whose goal is the need satisfaction of the male."
Again, he is talking about gender/sex here with these quotes, but I think the thinking applies to the development of white supremacy in America as well.
Socialization as a way to limit individual (and thereby group) achievement:
"We do not wish to claim that we could make of every child a person who in the usual sense can be considerd 'gifted' or very able. But we are confident that we could make of every child a person who would be considered untalented....We know that others have succeeded in doing so. And it is very plausible that this is today more often the fate of girls than of boys."
"When we face someone and impress him with the consensus, and in its name dny him all hope that he could amount to anything--when we undermine his courage in this manner, and find that he does not perform, then we are not justified in saying we were right, but we must admint that we have caused the whole misfortune."
Both of these quotes made me think about the public school system and low expectations for different groups (gender, race, etc) that self perpetuate.
"For us, the constant factor is the culture, the society, and its institutions. The drives, whose satisfaction is actually consdidered as a purpose, must be relegated to the funtion of direction-giving means to initiate satifactions usually in the distant future."
"The adaptations of the child directs and modifies his drives until he has adapted himself in some way to the environment."
"All so called 'feminine' traits are extremely subject to the social balance of forces between men and women, owe their origin to it, and may be shaped and destroyed by it."
"all human qualities, all achievements of the human mind, are conceivable only int he coherence of ment among each other."
Negative impact on all of the hierarchies:
"the general effect of this myth is that both sexes are in the end drawn into the whirlpool ofprestice politiczs and are playing va role with when neither part can cope. It complicates the harmlessness of their lives, robs their relationships of spontaneity and satiates them with prejudices in the face of which any prospect of happiness disappears."
"This overvaluation of feminine beauty, a thoroughly masculine device that leads to a damaging, permanent dependency of women on the judgemetn of men, is a quite common foolishness that rules men as well as women and limits a woman's possibilities in life enormously."
Abortion:
"Alone in the interest of these children--and it is primarily with regard to the children that we are judging this question--I am in favor of telling every woman plainly: 'You need not have children if you don't want to.'"
"The compulsion of a law created by men though which women are robbed of the free deciion regarding their fate must be felt by every woman as a humiliation."
Development of an "incorrect" lifestyle:
"differentiates in a general way the thinking of the normal individual (fiction as an expedient), of the neurotic (attempt to realize the fiction), and of the psychotic (incomplete but safeguarding anthropomorphisism and reification of the fiction: dogmaticazation)."
"All thinking and acting can be traced back to the childhood experiences....the psychologically ill person does not differ from one how is well. The difference is only that the psychologically ill person builds upon errors that go too far, and that he take a poor attitude towards life."
"The situation of a girl in childhood is of the greatest importance. A bad marriage of the parent, rudeness, drunkenness and recklessness of the father, or open unfaithfulness cause daughters to fear for the rest of their lives that they may meet the fate of their miserable and deeply humiliated mother."
"In our present-day civilization, people are not often well prepared for co-operation. Our training has been too much toward individual sucesss, towards considering what we can get out of life rather than what we can give to it."
"We know that man is not determined by his environments, but by the estimate he makes of his environment."
"Out social structure is s turly all-embracing; it is the basis for the inner conflicts, the contradictions, and the struggles of human society, and for its sexual activity."
"It is an irreparable mistake to tear syumptoms from their natural context and to consider them by themselves."
"in the end, the patient acquires that neurosis that he feels correszponds best to his fictional goal and corresponding life plan."
Importance of Attachment:
"the beginning of love impulses goes back to those distant childhood days when the ywere not yet erotic, not yet sexually tinged--the days when the broad stream of social feeling still took the form of attachment and affection."
Marriage:
"Love and marriage are a task of two equal human beings forming a unit, which can be rightly solved only if these persons are trained for sufficient social interest."
"Here we find the fundamental guarnatee of marriage, the fundamental meaning of happiness in this relation. It is the feeling that you are worthwhile, that you cannot be replaced, taht your partner needs you, that you are acting well, that you are a fellow man and a true friend."
And he was "for his time". And that got me thinking about that phrase "for his time"; we give him great credit for understanding that the capabilities of people are not dependant upon their sex at birth (genitalia) and yet forgive him for his thinking that homosexuality or any gender curiosity is an abomination simply because he was writing in the early 1900s. Certainly, it is hard to think outside of one's cultural viewpoint and yet when one does, shouldn't that make it easier to understand multiple differing viewpoints?
Anyway, I am feeling less enamored of Adler after reading this, but still impressed with and hoping to use some of his work in thinking about ways to expand our (read all human folks) concept of community.
The rest of the this review is mostly his quotes along with some commentary under topical headings below.
Discrimination:
"Continuous violent intervention has rendered work a kind of privilege for some, and a kind of oppression for others."
"The low esteem of women is also expressed in far lower pay for women than for men, even when their work is equal in value to men's work."
Specifically Adler is talking about workplace discrimination against women here, but I think it would apply for race and class based issues as well.
"In a human community, one must respect the freedom of the personal individuality to the extent of leaving the other person free choices."
Systems of domination:
"Through the development of culture in the direction of striving for power, especially through the efforts of certain individuals or classes who wanted to secure privilege for themselves, the division of labor has been steered in the favor of the men."
"To justify his dominance, man generally aruges that, in addition to his position being due him by nature, woman is an inferior being."
"must occur when the little girl has interiorized a masculine superstition of the hoplessness of her intellectual stivings and now continuously attempts to talk with a masculine voice"
"If boys were not taught to think tghat they are the superior sex, they woudl not look upon girls as mere objects of desire."
"Prostitution is possible only in a society whose goal is the need satisfaction of the male."
Again, he is talking about gender/sex here with these quotes, but I think the thinking applies to the development of white supremacy in America as well.
Socialization as a way to limit individual (and thereby group) achievement:
"We do not wish to claim that we could make of every child a person who in the usual sense can be considerd 'gifted' or very able. But we are confident that we could make of every child a person who would be considered untalented....We know that others have succeeded in doing so. And it is very plausible that this is today more often the fate of girls than of boys."
"When we face someone and impress him with the consensus, and in its name dny him all hope that he could amount to anything--when we undermine his courage in this manner, and find that he does not perform, then we are not justified in saying we were right, but we must admint that we have caused the whole misfortune."
Both of these quotes made me think about the public school system and low expectations for different groups (gender, race, etc) that self perpetuate.
"For us, the constant factor is the culture, the society, and its institutions. The drives, whose satisfaction is actually consdidered as a purpose, must be relegated to the funtion of direction-giving means to initiate satifactions usually in the distant future."
"The adaptations of the child directs and modifies his drives until he has adapted himself in some way to the environment."
"All so called 'feminine' traits are extremely subject to the social balance of forces between men and women, owe their origin to it, and may be shaped and destroyed by it."
"all human qualities, all achievements of the human mind, are conceivable only int he coherence of ment among each other."
Negative impact on all of the hierarchies:
"the general effect of this myth is that both sexes are in the end drawn into the whirlpool ofprestice politiczs and are playing va role with when neither part can cope. It complicates the harmlessness of their lives, robs their relationships of spontaneity and satiates them with prejudices in the face of which any prospect of happiness disappears."
"This overvaluation of feminine beauty, a thoroughly masculine device that leads to a damaging, permanent dependency of women on the judgemetn of men, is a quite common foolishness that rules men as well as women and limits a woman's possibilities in life enormously."
Abortion:
"Alone in the interest of these children--and it is primarily with regard to the children that we are judging this question--I am in favor of telling every woman plainly: 'You need not have children if you don't want to.'"
"The compulsion of a law created by men though which women are robbed of the free deciion regarding their fate must be felt by every woman as a humiliation."
Development of an "incorrect" lifestyle:
"differentiates in a general way the thinking of the normal individual (fiction as an expedient), of the neurotic (attempt to realize the fiction), and of the psychotic (incomplete but safeguarding anthropomorphisism and reification of the fiction: dogmaticazation)."
"All thinking and acting can be traced back to the childhood experiences....the psychologically ill person does not differ from one how is well. The difference is only that the psychologically ill person builds upon errors that go too far, and that he take a poor attitude towards life."
"The situation of a girl in childhood is of the greatest importance. A bad marriage of the parent, rudeness, drunkenness and recklessness of the father, or open unfaithfulness cause daughters to fear for the rest of their lives that they may meet the fate of their miserable and deeply humiliated mother."
"In our present-day civilization, people are not often well prepared for co-operation. Our training has been too much toward individual sucesss, towards considering what we can get out of life rather than what we can give to it."
"We know that man is not determined by his environments, but by the estimate he makes of his environment."
"Out social structure is s turly all-embracing; it is the basis for the inner conflicts, the contradictions, and the struggles of human society, and for its sexual activity."
"It is an irreparable mistake to tear syumptoms from their natural context and to consider them by themselves."
"in the end, the patient acquires that neurosis that he feels correszponds best to his fictional goal and corresponding life plan."
Importance of Attachment:
"the beginning of love impulses goes back to those distant childhood days when the ywere not yet erotic, not yet sexually tinged--the days when the broad stream of social feeling still took the form of attachment and affection."
Marriage:
"Love and marriage are a task of two equal human beings forming a unit, which can be rightly solved only if these persons are trained for sufficient social interest."
"Here we find the fundamental guarnatee of marriage, the fundamental meaning of happiness in this relation. It is the feeling that you are worthwhile, that you cannot be replaced, taht your partner needs you, that you are acting well, that you are a fellow man and a true friend."
November 23, 2021
Cei doi factori care domină toate procesele psihice sunt interesul social (Gemeinschaftsgefühl) și lupta pentru însemnătate (Geltungsstreben). În crearea și asigurarea condițiilor vieții sale, în îndeplinirea celor trei îndatoriri principale ale vieții — iubire, profesie, societate —, omul își activează întotdeauna interesul social și își urmează aspirația pentru însemnătate, pentru putere și pentru superioritate. Orice fenomen psihic trebuie evaluat prin intermediul relației cantitative și
calitative între acești doi factori pentru a obține o înțelegere psihologică. Relația dintre acești factori determină măsura în care o persoană este capabilă să cuprindă întreaga logică a coabitării umane și să se adapteze la diviziunea muncii pe care o impune această logică. Diviziunea muncii este o necesitate absolută pentru conservarea societății umane. În consecință, fiecare persoană trebuie să ocupe la un moment dat un anumit loc. Dacă o persoană nu participă la îndeplinirea acestei obligații, ea se va opune conservării vieții sociale, a întregii rase umane. Aceasta uită de rolul său de
confrate uman și ajunge să cauzeze probleme. În cazurile mai ușoare, vorbim de lipsă de maniere, de mici fraude și de apucături egoiste; în cazurile mai dificile, vorbim de excentricitate și delincvență; iar mai târziu în viață, de infracțiuni grave. Asemenea fenomene sunt condamnate ținând cont exclusiv de distanța lor față de cerințele vieții sociale și de incompatibilitatea lor cu acestea.
calitative între acești doi factori pentru a obține o înțelegere psihologică. Relația dintre acești factori determină măsura în care o persoană este capabilă să cuprindă întreaga logică a coabitării umane și să se adapteze la diviziunea muncii pe care o impune această logică. Diviziunea muncii este o necesitate absolută pentru conservarea societății umane. În consecință, fiecare persoană trebuie să ocupe la un moment dat un anumit loc. Dacă o persoană nu participă la îndeplinirea acestei obligații, ea se va opune conservării vieții sociale, a întregii rase umane. Aceasta uită de rolul său de
confrate uman și ajunge să cauzeze probleme. În cazurile mai ușoare, vorbim de lipsă de maniere, de mici fraude și de apucături egoiste; în cazurile mai dificile, vorbim de excentricitate și delincvență; iar mai târziu în viață, de infracțiuni grave. Asemenea fenomene sunt condamnate ținând cont exclusiv de distanța lor față de cerințele vieții sociale și de incompatibilitatea lor cu acestea.
July 19, 2017
Selectively curated, occasionally terse and stodgy, and best encountered in the context of the larger works from which these passages are excerpted; but even so it's an illuminating assemblage of Adler's insightful and mostly quite progressive (for his time) thoughts on gender relations. Coming to this with decidedly non-specialist motives and background, I nonetheless found it thoroughly worth my time. Even within a fundamentally conservative orientation, especially vis-a-vis marriage and procreation, Adler here reveals himself as an incisive proto-constructivist already poking around questions of male dominance and female subjugation in ways that were not yet mainstream. Students of later Theory will, I think, find this material (and it's original dates of publication) at the minimum intriguing.
(Of course, Adler's callow aside on "The Special Situation of the Artist," more or less the actual orientation of my research, was, just as I have come to expect in such circumstances, among the least edifying digressions taken here. Ain't it always so? But my recommendation stands nonetheless.)
(Of course, Adler's callow aside on "The Special Situation of the Artist," more or less the actual orientation of my research, was, just as I have come to expect in such circumstances, among the least edifying digressions taken here. Ain't it always so? But my recommendation stands nonetheless.)
December 17, 2024
Adler, în "Cooperarea între sexe", explorează dinamica relației dintre bărbați și femei prin lentila psihologiei individuale; cu un puternic accent pe nevroză, această culegere pare mai degrabă un tratat despre patologie. Analiza este interesantă, însă oferă prea puține exemple concrete, ceea ce îngreunează lectura. Fiind o antologie, Adler include idei și pasaje dezvoltate anterior în "Cunoașterea omului". Ori, cel puțin pe anumite porțiuni, am simțit că am revenit pe cartea amintită anterior, fără să simt vreo extensie semnificativă a conceptelor sale.
În fond, este o lectură valoroasă, oferă idei progresiste pentru perioada în care a fost scrisă.
În fond, este o lectură valoroasă, oferă idei progresiste pentru perioada în care a fost scrisă.
November 28, 2025
Worth reading!
Although the subject is complex - >individual psychology<-
The accessible language and logical structure of the book make it an approachable read that is easy to follow.
Happy Readings!
xoxo
Although the subject is complex - >individual psychology<-
The accessible language and logical structure of the book make it an approachable read that is easy to follow.
Happy Readings!
xoxo
October 8, 2025
O carte foarte interesanta despre comportamente, perceptii si importanta educatiei sexuale.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews