The Psychology of Personal Growth and Better Relationships

Column 6Adler's Twilight Years and Passing

Adler became friends with American billionaire Charles Henry Davis. For treating his daughter's depression, Davis donated large sums to Columbia University, where Adler was lecturing, found him a job at Long Island College of Medicine, and worked as his academic and professional agent. Partly because of this, Adler became the best paid lecturer in the United States at that time and was able to visit the whole country with his personal driver.

Adler the workaholic, who had such a hectic lecture schedule that he couldn't find time to write his books, loved Hollywood movies. In Adler's Case Seminar, which I translated into Japanese, there are many stories of movies and actresses between the counseling and the case studies.

Even after reuniting with his family in 1935, Adler didn't change his pace and continued working, even planning a lecture and conference circuit in the spring of 1937. At the end of May, he made a side‐trip to Scotland. On May 28, while in Aberdeen for a morning lecture, he was taking a walk near his hotel when he had a heart attack and collapsed. While being taken to the hospital in an ambulance, he drew his last breath. He was 67 years old. He left this world without seeing the completion of his work.

Freud, being in exile in London, read of Adler's death in the newspaper and left this note addressed to his friend (you can feel Freud's jealousy toward Adler): “For a young Jewish boy born outside of Vienna, dying in ...