MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

If we talk about one of the most popular complexes of all time (the inferiority complex), we must refer to a paradigmatic case that was analyzed by the very discoverer of this complex, Alfred Adler. Its protagonist was a young pianist from Hungary who we will call Sandor. Sandor's talent at the piano had been extolled by the most famous composers of his time. For example, the prolific composer of Broadway musicals Karl Massin ("The world is a giant egg", "I have a damned headache from loving you so much", "I was rich until I stopped being", "The potty of a mother") said of him that "I do not know another pianist who knows how to play with the ten fingers at the same time." (This praise contained a veiled criticism of his last musical’s pianist who was the producer’s protegé and who played the piano using a single finger and it was a while before he found the corresponding key.) Well, this young man of such promising future suffered ...

Freud had a maternal relationship with his ideas. He made them little dresses with scraps and lulled them in his arms, just as a girl would do with her dolls. It was something moving to see. When they grew up, he used to take them out for a walk in the Prater Park every afternoon. The smallest one, the Libido, was carried in a stroller, but the others scampered around freely. However, he never let them get too far away. They were forbidden to play with other ideas, even if they were from the same neighborhood. Freud had towards his ideas an overprotective attitude that some would define rather as paranoid. Just as, in Nature, mothers defend their puppies tooth and nail of any real or imaginary danger that can threaten them, Freud, when some of his ideas was involved in a brawl with some other’s idea, not only rushed to separate them, but lunged at the other idea’s parent to pull his hair. Freud's ideas were not exactly choirboys. Especially the Id, the Ego and the Super-Ego, they w...