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

88 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

their ability to work with others towards genuine community. The emphasis upon ancient religions and ‘wisdom’ did not stem from a desire to enable a few individuals obtain a pleasant sense of their own spiritual superiority. He believed that in their depiction of the world as a single whole and the related notion of the divine thread that linked all things together, ancient belief systems and their western variants such as Theosophy and Anthroposophy enabled people to grasp the image of the world as a single, developing organism made up of a variety of different yet inter-related parts.

If a major emphasis in the groups and classes was on obtaining an understanding of the world as a whole and examining different cultures and belief systems, there was an equal emphasis laid upon the development of the individual. If one looked towards a new age when humanity as a whole would become aware of shared interests, if one anticipated a period of history when humanity would take conscious control of the world’s development, then it was essential that those who sought to play a part in creating such an age should themselves develop their self-knowledge, and thereby their self-control and their capacity for self-direction. In pursuing this goal Mitrinovi¢ drew increasingly upon the work of Alfred Adler. Of all the new schools of psychology and psychoanalysis that came out of Europe during the post-war period, he considered Adler’s Individual Psychology to be “the one most humanly creative and least destructive.”

Alfred Adler was born near Vienna in 1870. After studying medicine he was invited to join Freud’s circle in Vienna. In 1907 he published his “Study of Organ Inferiority and its Psychological Compensation.” After breaking with Freud in 1910 he worked as a doctor during the first world war. The horror of war and the social unrest that followed made a deep impression on him. He began to lecture on Individual Psychology, not only to doctors but also to teachers and lay people. He was instrumental in establishing a number of child-guidance centres in Vienna and whilst continuing with his clinical practice he became increasingly committed to communicating his social vision to as wide a public as possible.

Like Mitrinovi¢, Adler adopted an holistic approach to the understanding of phenomena. Just as Mitrinovic attempted to locate groups, nations and other collectivities in the context of the world as a whole, so Adler emphasised the ‘wholeness’ of the individual and the personality. For Adler the individual was an indivisible unity and could only be understood as such: one of his basic axioms was “You must never divide the individual.” Moreover, just as the individual’s neuroses could not be understood except in the context of the whole individual, so the individual could only be understood in the context of his or her environment and social relationships. He called his