阿爾弗雷德·阿德勒/Alfred Adler
If we see an expression or symptom and fail to recognize the meaning behind it, the best way to understand it is, first of all, to reduce it in outline to a bare movement. Let us take, for example, the expression of stealing. To steal is to remove property from another person to oneself. Let us now examine the goal of the movement: the goal is to enrich oneself, and to feel more secure by possessing more. The point at which the movement sets out is therefore a feeling of being poor and deprived. The next step is to find out in what circumstances the individual is placed and in what conditions he feels deprived. Finally we can see whether he is taking the right way to change these circumstances and overcome his feeling of being deprived; whether the movement is in the right direction, or whether he has mistaken the method of securing what he desires. We need not criticize his final goal; but we may be able to point out that he has chosen a mistaken way in making it concrete.
The changes which the human race has made in its environment we call our culture; and our culture is the result of all the movements which the minds of men have initiated for their bodies. Our work is inspired by our minds. The development of our bodies is directed and aided by our minds. In the end we shall not be able to find a single human expression which is not filled with the purposive of the mind. It is by no means desirable, however, that the mind should overstress its own part. If we are to overcome difficulties, bodily fitness is necessary. The mind is engaged, therefore, in governing the environment in such a way that the body can be defended—so that it can be protected from sickness, disease and death, from damage, accidents and failures of function. This is the purpose served by our ability to feel pleasure and pain, to create phantasies and to identify ourselves with good and bad situations. The feelings put the body in shape to meet a situation with a definite type of response. Phantasies and identifications are methods of foreseeing; but they are also more：they stir up the feelings in accordance with which the body will act. In this way the feelings of an individual bear the impress of the meaning he gives to life and of the goal he has set for his strivings. To a great extent, though the feelings rule his body, they do not depend on his body: they will always depend primarily on his goal and his consequent style of life.