The Psychology of Character

Striving for Personal Perfection: Rudolf Allers’s Psycho-Ethic-Metaphysical Approach to Character and Self-Improvement

“…Likewise, Allers was Adler’s disciple, and, although he dropped out of his school (Cfr. Echavarría, 2013 ), he remained close to many Adlerian ideas about character, neurosis, will of power, and will of community—to the extent that Strauss ( 1943 ) claimed that Allers was a Catholic Adlerian psychologist.…”

“…Allers’s project, so to speak, was to anthropologically ground psychological science and the pedagogy of character, from a Catholic point of view (Echavarría, 2013 ; Olaechea, 2016 ; Seligmann, 2011 ; Titone, 1957 ). His psychological observations were based on his own clinical experience, Adler’s individual psychology (Adler, 1912 ; Allers, 1931 ), phenomenological and existential philosophies (Allers, 1961 ) 1 , and, above all, the doctrine of the Fathers of the Catholic Church and medieval Scholastics, particularly Thomas Aquinas (Allers, 1952 , 2009a )—whose De ente et essentia Allers ( 1936 ) translated into German.…”

“…According to Allers, character, as “the principle of action” (Allers, 1943 , p. 47), is revealed through personal actions related to values, the “general rule of principle of behavior (…) based on the idea one has of the order of values [is] the common principle underlying a man’s actions, which principle refers to values” (Allers, 1939 , p. 54).…”

“…Egocentricity, pride, and untidy love for oneself are core, one might say pathognomomic, features of neurosis and, therefore, the greatest obstacles to self-improvement, insofar as they imply a “way of escaping from reality and its laws” (Allers, 1939 , p. 117). Ultimately, egocentricity, pride, and untidy love for oneself are expressions of mankind’s rebellion against God and the objective order of reality pride (Allers, 1931 , 1939 , 1943 ; Cfr. García-Alandete, 2020 ; Jugnet, 1950 ).…”

“…In fact, Allers refers frequently to Sacred Scriptures and to the magisterium of the Catholic Church in his writings, not as an intellectual resource, but as a source of truth about the human being and the meaning of his/her existence. Because we all share the same nature, every single one of us is neurotic to some degree, except the saint, who knows himself as a creature and respects the objective order of reality (Allers, 1943 ): From the fact that artificiality is an essential component of neurotic behavior, it follows that the only person who can be entirely free from neurosis is the man whose life is spent in genuine devotion to the natural and supernatural obligations of life , and who has steadfastly accepted and affirmed his position as a creature and his place in the order of creation; in other words, beyond the neurotic there stands only the saint . (p. 346) …”