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Alfred Adler

Austrian psychologist (1870–1937)

Adler was born in Penzing, Austria, the son of a corn merchant, and was educated at the University of Vienna, where he obtained his MD in 1895. After two years at the Vienna General Hospital he set up in private practice in 1898.

In about 1900 Adler began investigating psychopathology and in 1902 he became an original member of Sigmund Freud's circle, which met to discuss psychoanalytical matters. His disagreements with Freud began as early as 1907 – he dismissed Freud's view that sexual conflicts in early childhood cause mental illness – and he finally broke away from the psychoanalytic movement in 1911 to form his own school of individual psychology. Adler tended to minimize the role of the unconscious and sexual repression and instead to see the neurotic as overcompensating for his or her ‘inferiority complex’, a term he himself introduced. His system was fully expounded in his Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology (1927). In 1921 Adler founded his first child-guidance clinic in Vienna, which was to be followed by over 30 more before the Nazi regime in Vienna forced their closure in 1932. From 1926 onward he began to spend more and more time in America, finally settling there permanently in 1932 and taking a professorship of psychiatry at the Long Island College of Medicine, New York, a post he retained until his death from a heart attack while lecturing in Aberdeen in Scotland.

 
 
Biography: Alfred Adler

The Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler (1870-1937) founded the school of individual psychology, a comprehensive "science of living." His system emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual and his relationships with society.

Although the psychiatrists Alfred Adler and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) lived at the same time and in the same place, their views could hardly have been more opposite. Freud's theory of psychoanalysis was rapidly accepted and overshadowed Adler's individual psychology during their lifetimes. However, Freud's position has since been modified, largely by his own followers, and numerous new schools of psychology have emerged whose tenets are increasingly compatible with Adler's original position.

Alfred Adler was born in a suburb of Vienna, the second of seven children of a Hungarian-born grain merchant. In his childhood he suffered some illnesses and the death of a younger brother; these experiences contributed to his early decision to become a physician.

He attended classical secondary school and received a degree from the University of Vienna Medical School in 1895. He married Raissa Epstein, a Russian student.

Adler's early career was marked by a zeal for social reform, often expressed in articles in socialist newspapers. His first professional publication was a social-medicine monograph on the health of tailors.

In 1902 Freud invited Adler to join a small discussion group, which became the illustrious Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Adler was an active member but did not consider himself a pupil or disciple of Freud. He could not agree with Freud's basic assumption that sex was the main determinant of personality, and all that this implied: the dominance of biological factors over the psychological; the push of drives, making for identical, predictable patterns; the part commanding the whole; pleasure-seeking as man's prime motivation. Whereas Freud tried to explain man in terms of his similarity to machines and animals, Adler sought to understand and influence man precisely in terms of what makes him different from machines and animals (concepts and values). This humanistic view characterized all the principles of his theory. Adler's views diverged ever more from those of Freud, and in 1911 he resigned from Freud's circle to formulate and found his own school.

Adler spent 3 years of World War I in military-hospital service. In 1919 he organized a child-guidance clinic in Vienna and also became a lecturer at the Pedagogical Institute. He was perhaps the first psychiatrist to apply mental hygiene in the schools. Working with teachers in child-guidance clinics, he carried out his innovative counseling before a restricted audience and dealt with the family and teacher as well as the child. This was probably the first "family therapy" and "community psychiatry" on record.

Beginning in 1926, Adler spent much time in the United States lecturing and teaching. When he saw the Nazi threat to Austria in 1932, he emigrated with his wife to New York. On May 28, 1937, he died suddenly while on a lecture tour in Aberdeen, Scotland. Two of his four children, Alexandra and Kurt, took up the practice of psychiatry in their father's tradition in New York City.

Adler had piercing eyes, a soft voice, and a friendly manner. He spoke slowly, with occasional silences, in a conciliatory, persuading tone. He was unusually open to people and was very sociable and hospitable. He loved the arts, especially music, and had a fine voice and enjoyed singing. He was a tireless worker, leaving little time for sleep. In therapeutic relationships he had a gift for disarming gentleness, acceptance, and encouragement.

Adler's Theory

Individual psychology, though not easy to master, has the kind of simplicity which comes with concreteness, dealing as much as possible with what can be observed and as little as possible with what must be taken on faith. Thus it can be explained in everyday language and can readily be demonstrated on actual cases. It probably covers more aspects of the personality than any other theory in that it deals with the healthy as well as the abnormal, individual and group relations, and the physical and the psychological. Yet it hangs together with a marked self consistency because all the principles are interrelated. This cohesiveness reflects Adler's view of the person as an organism: a unit in which all the parts function cooperatively, even when differently, in subordination to an overall plan for the whole.

Goal-striving

Adler saw man imbued with a unitary dynamic force, a striving from below to above. Since this striving is an "intrinsic necessity of life itself, like physical growth," there is no need to infer a further source of energy for it. Adler described it as directed toward superiority, overcoming, perfection, success, significance - always as these are variously envisioned by each individual. In the goal is "the root of the personality." To understand the personality or any behavior, one must seek its purpose.

Self-determination

Adler found that an individual might respond to a perceived inferiority with greater or lesser inferiority feelings and with discouragement, compensation, or over-compensation. Thus the individual is not completely determined by objective factors. Within certain limitations, such subjective factors as interpretation and opinion are always decisive. Adler called this degree of self-determination man's creative power. It includes not only the ability to choose between several ways of regarding or reacting but also, more importantly, man's potential for spontaneity. Through it the individual arrives at his style of life.

Life Style

In spite of a certain unpredictability thus lent to all humans, there is a self-consistency in a person's actions which characterizes him uniquely. This "coherence and unity of the individual in all his expressions," as Adler expressed it, is his life style. From the beginning, the young child checks his impressions, successes, and failures against one another. Soon practical requirements of the environment are learned, perceptions become selective, practiced responses become habitual, value guidelines are set up, and "the child arrives at a style of life, in accordance with which we see him thinking, feeling, and acting throughout his whole life."

Social Ties

Adler's psychology has been judged the first in a social-science direction. "In addition to regarding an individual's life as a unity, we must also take it together with its context of social relations … [it] is not capable of doing just as it likes but is constantly confronted with tasks … inseparably tied up with the logic of man's communal life." Adler specified three main tasks of life: occupation, association with others, and love and marriage. He also referred to them as social ties, for they all require cooperation for their solution. Man's very uniqueness is influenced by his relations to others: "The style of the child's life cannot be understood without reference to the persons who look after him."

Social Interest

Adler also assumed an innate potentiality for coping with society, termed social interest. Unlike an instinct, it must be evoked and developed. Its subjective development is based in man's native empathy; the objective "development of the innate potentiality for cooperation occurs first in the relationship of the child and the mother." Social interest represents a transcendence of the self, an absence of self-centeredness. It is a trait, like intelligence, and as such influences the direction of the striving, but it is the most important trait in the life style.

Adler stated unequivocally that social interest is the criterion of mental health. He based this finding solely on his observations as a psychiatrist that mentally healthy persons "feel at home on this earth with all its advantages and disadvantages, and act as true fellowmen"; that is, they demonstrate a developed social interest.

The "failures in life" - the neurotics, psychotics, and offenders - on the other hand, are characterized by intense inferiority feelings that keep them continuously concerned with themselves, or self-bound. They may become convinced of their inability to cope with life (the much-cited inferiority complex) or may strive for a personal goal of superiority, useful or meaningful to themselves only, in accordance with their private sense rather than common sense. They have most often developed a pampered life style in that they expect to receive without giving. Normality in these terms is tantamount to maturity, which involves growing away from helplessness toward taking responsibility for others, becoming an asset rather than a burden.

Therapist and Patient

The therapist's function, according to Adler, is not to treat "mental disease" but to divine the error in the patient's way of life and lead him to greater maturity. To this end Adler introduced a number of diagnostic approaches. Among these, his theory of dreams, the meaning of early childhood recollections, and the role of birth order in the family have become widely known and adopted. The understanding of the patient achieved in this way is not one of depth but of context in the larger whole of his total transactions. This is the basis for changing the patient's picture of himself and the world. In addition to this reorganization, Adler wished the patient to appreciate his own power of self-determination and have the courage to exercise it. To encourage the patient, the therapist must express a disinterested concern that evokes and fosters feelings of trust and fellowship - fulfilling a function at which the mother had failed.

Further Reading

The comprehensive source book for Adler is The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler, edited by H.L. and Rowena R. Ansbacher (1956), which is a selection of Adler's own writings and is intended as a textbook on individual psychology. Alfred Adler: Superiority and Social Interest: A Collection of Later Writings, also edited by the Ansbachers (1964), includes a paper on religion and several case studies. Two standard biographies of Adler are Phyllis Bottome, Alfred Adler: Apostleof Freedom (1939; rev. ed. 1957), and Hertha Orgler, Alfred Adler, the Man and His Work: Triumph over the Inferiority Complex (1939; 3d ed. 1963). Ruth L. Munroe, Schools of Psychoanalytic Thought: An Exposition, Critique and Attempt at Integration (1955), is a general consideration of psychoanalytic theory.

Additional Sources

Alfred Adler, as we remember him, Chicago: North American Society of Adlerian Psychology, 1977.

Hoffman, Edward, The drive for self: Alfred Adler and the founding of individual psychology, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1994.

We knew Alfred Adler, London: Adlerian Society of Great Britain, 1977.

 

(born Feb. 7, 1870, Penzing, Austria — died May 28, 1937, Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scot.) Austrian psychiatrist. He earned his medical degree in Vienna, and from his earliest years as a physician he stressed consideration of the individual in relation to his total environment. A student and associate of Sigmund Freud (1902 – 11), he eventually broke with Freud over the importance of early-childhood sexual conflicts in the development of psychopathology. With his followers he developed the school of individual psychology — the humanistic study of drives, feelings, emotions, and memory in the context of the individual's overall life plan. Adler advanced the theory of the inferiority complex to explain cases of psychopathology; Adlerian psychotherapy sought to direct patients emotionally disabled by inferiority feelings toward maturity, common sense, and social usefulness. He established the first child guidance clinic in 1921 in Vienna. He taught in the U.S. (at Columbia University and the Long Island College of Medicine) from 1927 until his death. His works include Understanding Human Nature (1927) and What Life Should Mean to You (1931).

For more information on Alfred Adler, visit Britannica.com.

 

Adler, Alfred (Vienna, 1870-1937, Aberdeen), was a pupil of S. Freud from 1902. In 1907 he began to develop his own system of Tiefenpsychologie (i.e. psychology of the subconscious) under the name Individual psychologie, and his divergent views led in 1911 to a permanent breach with Freud. Adler discards Freud's views on the all-important central position of sex and sees the urge for power, prestige, and domination as the principal factor in human behaviour; this urge is the subject's attempt at compensation for a sense of inferiority towards his environment. The term inferiority complex (Minderwertigkeitskomplex) was originated by Adler. After 1933 he lived in exile.

Adler's works include Über den nervösen Charakter (1912) and Menschenkenntnis (1927). An edition of his works by O. Brachfeld appeared 1966-83.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Adler, Alfred
(äd'lər) , 1870–1937, Austrian psychologist, founder of the school of individual psychology. Although one of Sigmund Freud's earlier associates, he rejected the Freudian emphasis upon sex as the root of neurosis. Adler broke with Freud in 1911, maintaining that feelings of helplessness during childhood can lead to an inferiority complex. Adler's theory focused on social forces, and his therapy, while still concerned with the analysis of early childhood, was also interested in overcoming the inferiority complex through positive social interaction. After 1932, he lectured and practiced in the United States. His books include The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology (1927, repr. 1973) and Understanding Human Nature (1927, repr. 1978).

Bibliography

See studies by J. Rattner (tr. 1983) and P. Stephansky (1983).

 
Psychoanalysis: Alfred Adler

1870-1937

An Austrian physician, psychologist, and psychotherapist, Alfred Adler was born February 7, 1870, in Vienna and died May 28, 1937, in Aberdeen, Scotland. The son of a grain merchant, he was raised in Vienna and received his medical degree in 1895. After opening his medical practice, he took an interest in social issues and, in 1902, became part of Sigmund Freud's circle of friends. He was one of the most active members of the group and one of the most original. After creating the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) in 1910, he became the head of the Vienna group and, with Stekel, became co-editor of the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, founded the same year.

In 1911 he left the IPA with nine other members because of irreconcilable theoretical differences and founded the Verein für Freie Psychoanalytische Forschung (Society for Free Analytic Research), which he transformed in 1913 into the Verein für Individual psychologie (Society for Individual Psychology). After 1914 he was editor (with Carl Furtmüller) of his own publication, Zeitschrift für Individual psychologie (Journal of Individual Psychology), the publication of which was interrupted in 1916, becoming, in 1923, the Internationale Zeitschrift für Individual psychologie (International Journal of Individual Psychology). In 1912 he tried to obtain a research position at the University of Vienna, but was refused.

Interested in practice and educational issues in particular, after 1919 he established a number educational clinics (for teachers, parents, and students), which served as models for practitioners abroad. In 1929 he created the first dispensary of individual psychology (for adults and children). He was also involved in the training of teachers, for he had worked at the Vienna teacher's college since 1924, which brought him closer to the city's educators, on whom he exercised considerable influence.

After 1926 he gave lectures throughout Europe and the United States, initially at Columbia University, then, after 1933, as professor of medical psychology at the Long Island College of Medicine in New York, as well as a consultant at the hospital. To honor him for his scientific achievements, he was named an honorary citizen of the city of Vienna in 1930 and was made a doctor honoris causa in the United States, to which he had emigrated in 1935, primarily for political reasons.

His two major works are A Study of Organ Inferiority and its Psychological Compensation: A Contribution to Clinical Medicine (1907) and The Neurotic Constitution (1912/1972), in which he makes a clear break with Freud. The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology (1927), Understanding Human Nature (1927), and Die Technik der Individual psychologie (1928-1930) were the result of his many talks, and were intended for a broader public.

Adler rejected Freud's theory of the libido and, with the creation of individual psychology, which was developed as a new direction in psychotherapy, he created the first significant schism in the psychoanalytic movement. He considered the individual as a complete being, including social and sociological aspects that began with the infant's feelings of inferiority, compensation, and the search for power and supremacy, as well as the sense of belonging to a collectivity. Adler considered psychic development to be the formation of an unconscious life plan, or even a lifestyle, starting with early childhood, and that later symptoms had to be taken into account from this point of view—in this sense Adler's approach was teleological. As an ego-centered psychology, Adler's individual psychology has had its greatest influence on other psychotherapeutic currents, such as humanist psychology and neoanalysis.

Bibliography

Adler, Alfred. (1927). The practice and theory of individual psychology. New York: Harcourt Brace.

——. (1927). Understanding human nature (Walter Béran Wolfe, Trans.). New York: Greenberg.

——. (1928-1930). Die Technik der Individual psychologie. München: Bergmann.

——. (1972). The neurotic constitution (Bernard Glueck and John E. Lind, Trans.). Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press (Original work published 1912).

Hoffman, Edward. (1994). The drive for self: Alfred Adler and the founding of individual psychology. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Schiferer, H. Rüdiger, Gröger, Helmut, and Skopec, Manfred. (1995). Alfred Adler: eine Bildbiographie. Mit bisher unbekannten Original-Dokumenten und zum grössten Teil unveröffentlichten Abbildungen. Munich-Basel: Ernst Reinhardt.

—HELMUT GRÖGER

 
Quotes By: Alfred Adler

Quotes:

"Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority."

"The feeling of inferiority rules the mental life and can be clearly recognized in the sense of incompleteness and unfulfillment, and in the uninterrupted struggle both of individuals and humanity."

"The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge to conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation."

"To be human means to feel inferior."

"We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority."

"Man knows more than he understands."

See more famous quotes by Alfred Adler

 
Wikipedia: Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler
Alfred_Adler.png
Alfred Adler
Born Alfred Adler
February 07 1870(1870--)
Rudolfsheim, Austria
Died May 28 1937 (aged 67)
Aberdeen, Scotland
Heart attack
Nationality Austrian Flag of Austria
Known for Individual Psychology, Psychoanalysis
Occupation Psychologist
Spouse Raissa Epstein

Alfred Adler (February 7 1870May 28 1937) was an Austrian medical doctor and psychologist, founder of the school of individual psychology. Adler co-founded psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's colleagues. He was the first major figure to break away from psychoanalysis to form an independent school of psychotherapy and personality theory. Adler had an enormous impact on the disciplines of counseling and psychotherapy as they would develop over the course of the 20th century (Ellenberger, 1970). He influenced notable figures in other schools of psychotherapy such as Rollo May, Viktor Frankl, Abraham Maslow and Albert Ellis. His writings preceded and at times were surprisingly consistent with later neo-Freudian insights such as evidenced in the works of Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm.

Adler emphasized the importance of social equality in order to prevent various forms of psychopathology and espoused the development of social interest and democratic family structures as the ideal ethos for raising children. His most famous concept is the inferiority complex which speaks to the problem of self-esteem and its negative compensations (e.g. sometimes producing a paradoxical superiority striving). His emphasis on power dynamics is rooted in the philosophy of Nietzsche. Adler argued for holism, viewing the individual holistically rather than reductively, the latter being the dominant lens for viewing human psychology. Adler was also among the first in psychology to argue in favor of feminism making the case that power dynamics between men and women (and associations with masculinity and femininity) are crucial to understanding human psychology (Connell, 1995). Adler is considered, along with Freud and Jung, to be one of the three founding figures of depth psychology, which emphasizes the unconscious and psychodynamics (Ellenberger, 1970; Ehrenwald, 1991).

Early career: Adler and Freud


Part of a series of articles on
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis

Constructs
Psychosexual development
Psychosocial development
ConsciousPreconsciousUnconscious
Id, ego, and super-ego
LibidoDrive
TransferenceSublimationResistance

Important Figures
Sigmund FreudCarl Jung
Alfred AdlerOtto Rank
Anna FreudMargaret Mahler
Karen HorneyJacques Lacan
Ronald FairbairnMelanie Klein
Harry Stack Sullivan
Erik EriksonNancy Chodorow
Susan Sutherland Isaacs
Ernest JonesHeinz Kohut

Important works
The Interpretation of Dreams
Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
"Beyond the Pleasure Principle"
Civilization and Its Discontents

Schools of Thought
Self psychologyLacanian
Analytical psychologyObject relations
InterpersonalRelational
AttachmentEgo psychology

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In 1901 Adler received a letter from Sigmund Freud inviting him to join an informal discussion group that included Max Kahane, Rudolf Reitler, and Wilhelm Stekel. They met regularly on Wednesday evenings at Freud's home with membership expanding over time. This group was the beginning of the psychoanalytic movement (Mittwochsgesellschaft or the "Wednesday Society"). A long serving member of the group, Adler became President of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society eight years later (1910). He remained a member of the Society until 1911 when he and a group of supporters formally disengaged, the first of the great dissenters from Freudian psychoanalysis (preceding Carl Jung's notorious split in 1914). This departure suited both Freud and Adler since they had grown to dislike each other. During his association with Freud, Adler frequently maintained his own ideas which often diverged from Freud's. It is commonly suggested that Adler was once "a pupil of Freud's", however this suggestion is a myth; they were colleagues. In 1929 Adler showed a reporter with the New York Herald a copy of the faded postcard that Freud had sent him in 1902. He wanted to prove that he had never been a disciple of Freud's but rather that Freud had sought him out to share his ideas.

Adler founded the Society of Individual Psychology in 1912 after his break from the psychoanalytic movement. Adler's group initially included some orthodox Nietzschean adherents (who believed that Adler's ideas on power and inferiority were closer to Nietzsche than were Freud's). Their enmity aside, Adler retained a lifelong admiration of Freud's ideas on dreams and credited him for creating a scientific approach to their clinical utilization (Fiebert, 1997). Nevertheless, even with dream interpretation, Adler had his own theoretical and clinical approach. The primary differences between Adler and Freud centered on Adler's contention that the social realm (exteriority) is as important to psychology as is the internal realm (interiority). The dynamics of power and compensation extend beyond sexuality and the arena of gender and politics are important considerations that go beyond libido. Moreover, Freud did not share Adler's socialist beliefs. Trotsky's biography mentions his having discussions with Alfred Adler in Vienna.

The Adlerian School

Following Adler's break from Freud, he enjoyed considerable success and celebrity in building an independent school of psychotherapy and a unique personality theory. He traveled and lectured for a period of 25 years promoting his socially oriented approach. His intent was to build a movement that would rival, even supplant, others in psychology by arguing for the holistic integrity of psychological well-being with that of social equality. Adler's efforts were halted by World War I, during which he served as a doctor with the Austrian Army. Post-war his influence increased greatly into the 1930s, he established a number of child guidance clinics from 1921 and was a frequent lecturer in Europe and the United States, becoming a visiting professor at Columbia University in 1927. His clinical treatment methods for adults were aimed at uncovering the hidden purpose of symptoms using the therapeutic functions of insight and meaning.

Adler was concerned with the overcoming of the superiority/inferiority dynamic and was one of the first psychotherapists to discard the analytic couch in favor of two chairs. This allows the clinician and patient to sit together more or less as equals. Clinically, Adler's methods were not limited to treatment after-the-fact but extend to the realm of prevention by preempting future problems in the child. Prevention strategies include encouraging and promoting social interest, belonging, and a cultural shift within families and communities that leads to the eradication of pampering and neglect (especially corporal punishment). Adler's popularity was related to the comparative optimism and comprehensibility of his ideas. He often wrote for the lay public compared to Freud or Jung, whose writings tended to be exclusively academic. Adler always retained a pragmatic approach that was task oriented. These "Life tasks" are comprised of occupation/work, society/friendship, and love/sexuality. Their success depends on co-operation. The tasks of life are not to be considered in isolation since, as Adler (1956) famously commented, "they all throw cross-lights on one another" (pp. 132-133).

Emigration and death

Adler in New York
Enlarge
Adler in New York

In 1932, after most of Adler's Austrian clinics were closed due to his Jewish heritage (regardless of the fact that he had already converted to Christianity), Adler left Austria for a professorship at the Long Island College of Medicine in the USA. Adler died from a heart attack in Aberdeen, Scotland during a lecture tour in 1937. At the time it was a blow to the influence of his ideas although a number of them were taken up by neo-Freudians. Through the work of Dreikurs in the United States and many other adherents worldwide, Adlerian ideas and approaches remain strong and viable more than 70 years after Adler's death.

Around the world there are various organizations promoting Adler's orientation towards mental and social well-being. These include the International Committee of Adlerian Summer Schools and Institutes (ICASSI), the North American Society for Adlerian Psychology (NASAP) and the International Association for Individual Psychology. Teaching institutes and programs exist in Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Switzerland, the United States and Wales.

Basic principles

Adler was influenced by the mental construct ideas of the philosopher Hans Vaihinger ("The Philosophy of As If") and the literature of Dostoyevsky. While still a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society he developed a theory of organic inferiority and compensation that was the prototype for his later turn to phenomenology and the development of his famous concept, the inferiority complex.

Adler was also influenced by the philosophies of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rudolf Virchow and the statesman Jan Smuts (who coined the term "holism"). Adler's School, known as "Individual Psychology"—an arcane reference to the Latin individuus meaning indivisibility, a term intended to emphasize holism—is both a social and community psychology as well as a depth psychology. Adler was an early advocate in psychology for prevention and emphasized the training of parents, teachers, social workers and so on in democratic approaches that allow a child to exercise their power through reasoned decision making whilst co-operating with others. He was a social idealist, and was known as a socialist in his early years of association with psychoanalysis (1902–1911). His allegiance to Marxism dissipated over time (he retained Marx's social idealism yet distanced himself from Marx's economic theories).

Adler (1938) was a very pragmatic man and believed that lay people could make practical use of the insights of psychology. He sought to construct a social movement united under the principles of "Gemeinschaftsgefuehl" (community feeling) and social interest (the practical actions that are exercised for the social good). Adler was also an early supporter of feminism in psychology and the social world believing that feelings of superiority and inferiority were often gendered and expressed symptomatically in characteristic masculine and feminine styles. These styles could form the basis of psychic compensation and lead to mental health difficulties. Adler also spoke of "safeguarding tendencies" and neurotic behavior long before Anna Freud wrote about the same phenomena in her book The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense.

Adlerian-based scholarly, clinical and social practices focus on the following topics:

  • Mental Health Prevention
  • Social Interest and Community Feeling
  • Holism and the Creative Self
  • Fictional Finalism, Teleology, and Goal constructs
  • Psychological and Social Encouragement
  • Inferiority, Superiority and Compensation
  • Life Style / Style of Life
  • Early Recollections (a projective technique)
  • Family Constellation and Birth Order
  • Life Tasks & Social Embeddedness
  • The Conscious and Unconscious realms
  • Private Logic & Common Sense (based in part on Kant's "sensus communis")
  • Symptoms and Neurosis
  • Safeguarding Behaviour
  • Guilt and Guilt Feelings
  • Socratic Questioning
  • Dream Interpretation
  • Child and Adolescent Psychology
  • Democratic approaches to Parenting and Families
  • Adlerian Approaches to Classroom Management
  • Leadership and Organisational Psychology

From its inception, Adlerian psychology has always included both professional and lay adherents. Indeed, Adler felt that all people could make use of the scientific insights garnered by psychology and he welcomed everyone, from decorated academics to those with no formal education to participate in spreading the principles of Adlerian psychology.

Adler's approach to personality

Adler's 1912 book, Ueber den nervoesen Charakter (The Neurotic Character) defines his earlier key ideas. He argued that human personality could be explained teleologically, separate strands dominated by the guiding purpose of the individual's unconscious self ideal to convert feelings of inferiority to superiority (or rather completeness). The desires of the self ideal were countered by social and ethical demands. If the corrective factors were disregarded and the individual over-compensated, then an inferiority complex would occur, fostering the danger of the individual becoming egocentric, power-hungry and aggressive or worse. Common therapeutic tools include the use of humor, historical instances, and paradoxical injunctions.

Psychodynamics and teleology

Adler believed that human psychology is psychodynamic in nature yet unlike Freud's metapsychology, which emphasizes instinctual demands, human psychology is guided by goals and fuelled by a yet unknown creative force. Like Freud's instincts, Adler's fictive goals are largely unconscious. These goals have a 'teleological' function. Constructivist Adlerians, influenced by neo-Kantian and Nietzschean ideas, view these 'teleological' goals as "fictions" in the sense that Hans Vaihinger spoke of ("fictio"). Usually there is a fictional final goal which can be deciphered alongside of innumerable sub-goals. The inferiority / superiority dynamic is constantly at work through various forms of compensation and over-compensation. For example, in anorexia nervosa the fictive final goal is to "be perfectly thin" (overcompensation on the basis of a feeling of inferiority). Hence, the fictive final goal can serve a persecutory function that is ever-present in subjectivity (though its trace springs are usually unconscious). The end goal of being 'thin' is fictive however since it can never be subjectively achieved.

Teleology also serves another vital function for Adlerians. Chilon's "hora telos" ("see the end, consider the consequences") provides for both healthy and maladaptive psychodynamics. Here we also find Adler's emphasis on personal responsibility in mentally healthy subjects who seek their own and the social good (Slavik & King, 2007).

Constructivism and metaphysics

The metaphysical thread of Adlerian theory does not problematise the notion of teleology since concepts such as eternity (an ungraspable end where time ceases to exist) match the religious aspects that are held in tandem. In contrast, the constructivist Adlerian threads (either humanist/modernist or postmodern in variant) seek to raise insight of the force of unconscious fictions - which carry all of the inevitability of 'fate' - so long as one does not understand them. Here, 'teleology' itself is fictive yet experienced as quite real. This aspect of Adler's theory is somewhat analogous to the principles developed in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and Cognitive Therapy (CT). Both Albert Ellis and Aaron T. Beck credit Adler as a major precursor to REBT and CT. Ellis in particular was a member of the North American Society for Adlerian Psychology and served as an editorial board member for the Adlerian Journal Individual Psychology.

As a psychodynamic system, Adlerians excavate the past of a client/patient in order to alter their future and increase integration into community in the here-and-now. The here-and-now aspects are especially relevant to those Adlerians who emphasize humanism and/or existentialism in their approaches.

Holism

Metaphysical Adlerians emphasise a spiritual holism in keeping with what Jan Smuts articulated (Smuts coined the term holism), that is, the spiritual sense of one-ness that holism usually implies (etymology of holism - traced to Holy-ness). Smuts believed that evolution involves a progressive series of lesser wholes integrating into larger ones. Whilst Smuts' text "Holism and Evolution" is thought to be a work of science, it actually attempts to unify evolution with a higher metaphysical principle (holism). The sense of connection and one-ness revered in various religious traditions (e.g. Baha'i, Chrisitanity, Judaism, Islam, etc.) finds a strong complement in Adler's thought.

The pragmatic and materialist aspects to contextualizing members of communities, the construction of communities and the socio-historical-political forces that shape communities matter a great deal when it comes to understanding an individual's psychological make-up and functioning. This aspect of Adlerian psychology holds a high level of synergy with the field of community psychology. However, Adlerian psychology, unlike community psychology, is holistically concerned with both prevention and clinical treatment after-the-fact. Hence, Adler cannot be considered the "first community psychologist", a discourse that formalized decades following Adler's death (King & Shelley, 2007).

Adlerian psychology,Carl Jung's Analytical Psychology, Gestalt Therapy and Karen Horney's psychodynamic approach are holistic schools of psychology. These discourses eschew a reductive approach to understanding human psychology and psychopathology.

Typology

Adler (1956) developed a scheme of the so called personality types. These 'types' are to be taken as provisional or heuristic since he did not, in essence, believe in personality types. The danger with typology is to lose sight of the individual's uniqueness and to gaze reductively, acts that Adler opposed. Nevertheless, he intended to illustrate patterns that could denote a characteristic governed under the overall style of life. Hence American Adlerians such as Harold Mosak have made use of Adler's typology in this provisional sense:

  • The Getting or Leaning type are those who selfishly take without giving back. These people also tend to be anti-social and have low activity levels.
  • The Avoiding types are those that hate being defeated. They may be successful, but have not taken any risks getting there. They are likely to have low social contact in fear of rejection or defeat in any way.
  • The Ruling or Dominant type strive for power and are willing to manipulate situations and people, anything to get their way. People of this type are also prone to anti-social behavior.
  • The Socially Useful types are those who are very outgoing and very active. They have a lot of social contact and strive to make changes for the good.

These 'types' are typically formed in childhood and are expressions of the Style of Life.

On birth order

Adler often emphasized one's birth order as having an influence on the Style of Life and the strengths and weaknesses in one's psychological make up. Birth Order referred to the placement of siblings within the family. Adler believed that the firstborn child would be loved and nurtured by the family until the arrival of a second child. This second child would cause the first born to suffer feelings of dethronement, no longer being the center of attention. Adler (1956) believed that in a three-child family, the oldest child would be the most likely to suffer from neuroticism and substance addiction which he reasoned was a compensation for the feelings of excessive responsibility "the weight of the world on one's shoulders" (e.g. having to look after the younger ones) and the melancholic loss of that once supremely pampered position. As a result, he predicted that this child was the most likely to end up in jail or an asylum. Youngest children would tend to be overindulged, leading to poor social empathy. Consequently, the middle child, who would experience neither dethronement nor overindulgence, was most likely to develop into a successful individual yet also most likely to be a rebel and to feel squeezed-out. Adler himself was the second in a family of six children.

Adler never produced any scientific support for his interpretations on birth order roles. Yet the value of the hypothesis was to extend the importance of siblings in marking the psychology of the individual beyond Freud's more limited emphasis on the Mother and Father. Hence, Adlerians spend time therapeutically mapping the influence that siblings (or lack thereof) had on the psychology of their clients. The idiographic approach entails an excavation of the phenomenology of one's birth order position for likely influence on the subject's Style of Life. In sum, the subjective experiences of sibling positionality and inter-relations are psychodynamically important for Adlerian therapists and personality theorists, not the cookbook predictions that may or may not have been objectively true in Adler's time.

On homosexuality

Adler's ideas regarding non heteronormative sexuality and various social forms of deviance have long been controversial. Adler's theory of homosexuality was entrenched in the dominant culture of the time, which disapproved of same sex relationships. Along with prostitution and criminality, Adler had classified 'homosexuals' as falling among the "failures of life". In 1917, he began his writings on homosexuality with a 52 page brochure, and sporadically published more thoughts throughout the rest of his life.

The Dutch psychiatrist Gerard J. M. van den Aardweg underlines how Alfred Adler came to his conclusions for, in 1917, Adler believed that he had established a connection between homosexuality and an inferiority complex towards one's own gender. This point of view differed from Freud's equally problematic contention that homosexuality is rooted in narcissism or Jung's conservative views of inappropriate expressions of contrasexuality vis-a-vis the archetypes of the Anima and Animus.

In contemporary Adlerian thought gays, lesbians, and bisexuals are not considered within the problematic discourse of the "failures of life". There is evidence that Adler may have been moving towards abandoning the hypothesis. Towards the end of Adler's life, in the mid 1930s, his opinion towards homosexuality began to shift. Elizabeth H. McDowell, a New York state family social worker recalls undertaking supervision with Adler on a young man who was "living in sin" with an older man in New York city. Adler asked her, "is he happy, would you say"? "Oh yes", Elizabeth replied. Adler then stated, "Well, why don't we leave him alone" (Manaster, Painter, Deutsch, and Overholt, 1977, pp. 81-82). On reflection, Elizabeth found this comment to contain "profound wisdom". In the 1930s the common attitude and medical opinion was quite unanimous, homosexuality was considered a moral failing and a mental disease. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association de-listed homosexuality as a mental disorder in their diagnostic nomenclature (DSM). Christopher Shelley (1998), an Adlerian psychotherapist, published a volume of essays in the 1990s that feature Freudian, (post)Jungian and Adlerian contributions that demonstrate affirmative shifts in the depth psychologies. These shifts show how depth psychology can be utilized to support rather than pathologise gay and lesbian psychotherapy clients.

On Parent education and prevention

Adler emphasized both treatment and prevention. As a psychodynamic psychology, Adlerians emphasize the foundational importance of childhood in developing personality and any tendency towards various forms of psychopathology. The best way to inoculate against what are now termed "personality disorders" (what Adler had called the "neurotic character"), or a tendency to various neurotic conditions (depression, anxiety, etc.), is to train a child to be and feel an equal part of the family. This entails developing a democratic character and the ability to exercise power reasonably rather than through compensation. Hence Adler proselytized against corporal punishment and cautioned parents to refrain from the twin evils of pampering and neglect. The responsibility to the optimal development of the child is not limited to the Mother or Father but to teachers and society more broadly. Adler argued therefore that teachers, nurses, social workers, and so on require training in parent education in order to complement the work of the family in fostering a democratic character. When a child does not feel equal and is enacted upon (abused through pampering or neglect) they are likely to develop inferiority or superiority complexes and various accompanying compensation strategies. These strategies exact a social toll by seeding higher divorce rates, the breakdown of the family, criminal tendencies and subjective suffering in the various guises of psychopathology. Adlerians have long promoted parent education groups especially those influenced by the famous Austrian/American Adlerian Rudolf Dreikurs (Dreikurs & Soltz, 1964).

Spirituality, ecology and community

In a late work titled "Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind" Adler (1938) turns to the subject of metaphysics where he integrates Jan Smuts' evolutionary holism with the idea of teleology and community: "sub specie aeternitatus". Unabashedly, he argues his vision of society: "Social feeling means above all a struggle for a communal form that must be thought of as eternally applicable... when humanity has attained its goal of perfection... an ideal society amongst all mankind, the ultimate fulfillment of evolution." (p. 275). Adler follows this pronouncement with a defense of metaphysics:

"I see no reason to be afraid of metaphysics; it has had a great influence on human life and development. We are not blessed with the possession of absolute truth; on that account we are compelled to form theories for ourselves about our future, about the results of our actions, etc. Our idea of social feeling as the final form of humanity - of an imagined state in which all the problems of life are solved and all our relations to the external world rightly adjusted - is a regulative ideal, a goal that gives our direction. This goal of perfection must bear within it the goal of an ideal community, because all that we value in life, all that endures and continues to endure, is eternally the product of this social feeling." (Adler, 1938, pp. 275-276).

This social feeling for Adler is Gemeinschaftsgefuehl, a community feeling whereby one feels they belong with others and have also developed an ecological connection with nature (plants, animals, the crust of this earth) and the cosmos as a whole, sub specie aeternitatus. Clearly, Adler himself had little problem with adopting a metaphysical and spiritual point of view to support his theories. Yet his overall theoretical yield provides ample room for the dialectical humanist (modernist) and separately the postmodernist to explain the significance of community and ecology through differing lenses (even if Adlerians have not fully considered how deeply divisive and contradictory these three threads of metaphysics, modernism, and post modernism are).

Publications

Alfred Adler's key publications were The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology (1927), Understanding Human Nature (1927) and What Life Could Mean to You (1931). In his lifetime, Adler published more than 300 books and articles.

The Alfred Adler Institute of Northwestern Washington has recently published the first ten of the twelve-volume set of The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler, covering his writings from 1898-1937. An entirely new translation of Adler's magnum opus, The Neurotic Character, is featured in Volume 1.

  • Volume 1 : The Neurotic Character — 1907
  • Volume 2 : Journal Articles 1898-1909
  • Volume 3 : Journal Articles 1910-1913
  • Volume 4 : Journal Articles 1914-1920
  • Volume 5 : Journal Articles 1921-1926
  • Volume 6 : Journal Articles 1927-1931
  • Volume 7 : Journal Articles 1931-1937
  • Volume 8 : Lectures to Physicians & Medical Students
  • Volume 9 : Case Histories
  • Volume 10 : Case Readings & Demonstrations
  • Volume 11 : Education for Prevention
  • Volume 12 : The General System of Individual Psychology

Other key Adlerian texts

  • Adler, A. (1956). The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler. H. L. Ansbacher and R. R. Ansbacher (Eds.). New York: Harper Torchbooks.
  • Carlson, J., Watts, R. E., & Maniacci, M. (2005). Adlerian Therapy: Theory and Practice. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
  • Dinkmeyer, D., Jr., & Dreikurs, R. (2000). Encouraging Children to Learn. Philadelphia: Brunner-Routledge.
  • Handlbauer, B. (1998). The Freud - Adler controversy. Oxford, UK: Oneworld.
  • Hoffman, E. (1994). The Drive for Self: Alfred Adler and the Founding of Individual Psychology. New York: Addison-Wesley Co.
  • Lehrer, R. (1999). Adler and Nietzsche. In: J. Golomb, W. Santaniello, and R. Lehrer. (Eds.). Nietzsche and Depth Psychology. (pp. 229-246). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
  • Mosak, H. H. & Di Pietro, R. (2005). Early Recollections: Interpretive Method and Application. New York: Routledge.
  • Oberst, U. E. and Stewart, A. E. (2003). Adlerian Psychotherapy: An Advanced Approach to Individual Psychology. New York: Brunner-Routledge.
  • Slavik, S. & Carlson, J. (Eds.). (2005). Readings in the Theory of Individual Psychology. New York: Routledge.

References

Adler, A. (1938). Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind. J. Linton and R. Vaughan (Trans.). London: Faber and Faber Ltd.

Adler, A. (1956). The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler. H. L. Ansbacher and R. R. Ansbacher (Eds.). New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Dreikurs, R. & Soltz, V. (1964). Children the Challenge. New York: Hawthorn Books.

Ehrenwald, J. (1991). The History of Psychotherapy. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc.

Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York: Basic Books.

Fiebert, M. S. (1997). In and out of Freud's shadow: A chronology of Adler's relationship with Freud. Individual Psychology, 53(3), 241-269.

King, R. & Shelley, C. (2007). Community Feeling and Social Interest: Adlerian Parallels, Synergy, and Differences with the Field of Community Psychology. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology. (in-press).

Manaster, G. J., Painter, G., Deutsch, D., & Overholt, B. J. (Eds.). (1977). Alfred Adler: As We Remember Him. Chicago: North American Society of Adlerian Psychology.

Shelley, C. (Ed.). (1998). Contemporary Perspectives on Psychotherapy and Homosexualities. London: Free Association Books.

Slavik, S. & King, R. (2007). Adlerian therapeutic strategy. The Canadian Journal of Adlerian Psychology, 37(1), 3-16.

English language Adlerian journals

North America:

  • The Journal of Individual Psychology (University of Texas Press)
  • The Canadian Journal of Adlerian Psychology (Adlerian Psychology Association of British Columbia)

United Kingdom:

  • Adlerian Yearbook (Adlerian Society, UK)

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:


Persondata
NAME Alfred, Adler
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist
DATE OF BIRTH February 7 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Rudolfsheim, Austria
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 1937
PLACE OF DEATH Aberdeen, Scotland

 
 

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