Alfred Adler, the Austrian psychoanalyst, died in Scotland (he’d been invited to lecture there) in 1937. His family traveled to Aberdeen for his funeral, but didn’t bring his ashes home.
The Honorary Consul of Austria for Scotland has, with great effort, tracked them down, and is having them brought back to Austria.
UD finds his explanation of Adler’s fate well worth pondering.
“In a sense he wasn’t lost because he was where he had always been, it’s just that no-one knew he was there.”
April 11th, 2011 at 2:21AM
Alfred Adler the analyst
Managed to be quite the catalyst.
He parted from Freud,
Dismissed Jung to the void,
Turned to Nietzsche and Kant
When he wanted to rant…
But when he died in Aberdeen,
His ashes went for years unseen.
Now found again, they’re being sent
To old Vienna where he spent
His early years until the SS
Made it clear he should confess.
Then he escaped to USA
Like many more who found their way
Here through luck and courage gritty,
Kissed the ground in New York City,
Took a job at LIU,
Anything to prove who’s who.
Now he’s going home again,
Will he know the place again?
Will they really welcome him?
Is this all just flam and flim?
Can his will to power live
Where memory is like a sieve?
April 11th, 2011 at 8:43PM
I thought this story was the stuff of poetry, adam; and you have proved it so. Thank you.