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

Abstract

The Viennese psychiatrist Rudolf Allers was one of the principal authors that studied character and contributed to understanding its development and education, including the neurotic character. His psychological observations were based on his own clinical experience, his individual psychology, phenomenological and existential philosophies, and, above all, the doctrine of the Fathers of the Catholic Church and Thomas Aquinas. This paper presents Allers’s main ideas about self-improvement as a process of personal changing toward self-perfection, that is, toward the best version of oneself. For Allers, self-perfection implies the modification of insane aspects of character such as egocentricity, pride, and untidy love for oneself, which are the most important impediments to self-improvement.