Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

THE ADLER SOCIETY 93

This level of activity was sustained by the Society up until 1932. Amongst the leading members were Alan Porter who, according to Mairet, “was a marvel . . . by the time he had done, there was probably as much ‘headknowledge’ of Individual Psychology about the quarter of Bloomsbury as in half Vienna”!’; Philip Mairet himself; and medical practitioners such as Cuthbert Dukes, O. H. Woodcock and Dr. Crookshank, who was described by Adler’s biographer as “the most intellectually convinced of all Adler’s English adherents.”!® Much of the day to day administrative work fell on the shoulders of the Honorary Secretary Rose Graham, the wife of Stephen Graham, Lilian Slade, and the treasurer W. T. Symons. Whilst they provided their services voluntarily, the expenses of maintaining the premises amounted to something like £250 per annum. To meet such necessary costs a minimum subscription of 1 guinea was required of members, but larger contributions were expected from those who could afford it. Subscriptions and donations for the period April to November 1927, for example, amounted to £220.6s., of which £100 was donated by Valerie Cooper.

The central figure and driving force behind all the activities was Mitrinovic.

It was the eloquence, personal magnetism and tremendous intellectual brilliance of Mitrinovic that turned Alfred Adler into a sort of ‘movement’ in London.!?

In the summer of 1927 he attended the fourth International Congress for Individual Psychology held in Vienna. In the years 1927 through to 1932 he delivered over fifty lectures at Gower Street, in addition to speaking engagements elsewhere, as well as chairing the general meetings for newcomers that were a regular Tuesday evening event. He was, moreover, a regular attender of other people’s presentations, occupying an armchair by one of the fireplaces. Watson Thomson, who was to become a close associate of Mitrinovié, vividly recalled their first encounter at one of the Gower Street lectures.

The lecture room was a transformed drawing room and still contained the original fireplace and other such fixtures. It also had one or two armchairs in addition to the straight rows of hard chairs. In one of these, between the fireplace and the lecturer's table, sat this remarkable figure: a large man dressed in frockcoat, pearl-grey vest—far from immaculate—and an old-fashioned stock tie. His most striking feature was the shape of his head, enormously high-domed yet flat at the back, all clean shaven like a billiard ball. The eyebrows were jetblack and full, the eyes dark and magnetically compelling.2°

Following the lectures on the ground floor of the Gower Street premises Mitrinovié would retreat to his basement study to talk with friends and