Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler (February 7, 1870 – May 28, 1937) was an Austrian medical doctor,
psychologist and founder of the school of Individual Psychology. In collaboration with
Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's colleagues, Adler was among the co-founders
of the psychoanalytic movement. He was the first major figure to break away from
psychoanalysis to form an independent school of psychotherapy and personality theory. This
was after Freud decided Adler's ideas were too threatening to his own efforts to tolerate
coexistence and issued an ultimatum to all members of the psychoanalytic society (which he
shepherded) to drop Adler or be expelled (Makari, 2008). Following this split, Adler would
come to have an enormous, independent effect on the disciplines of counseling and
psychotherapy as they developed over the course of the 20th century (Ellenberger, 1970).
He influenced notable figures in subsequent schools of psychotherapy such as Rollo May,
Viktor Frankl, Abraham Maslow and Albert Ellis. His writings preceded, and were at times
surprisingly consistent with, later neo-Freudian insights such as those evidenced in the
works of Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm.
Adler emphasized the importance of social equality in preventing 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 life
Alfred Adler was the third child and second son of a Jewish grain merchant and his wife.
Early on, he developed rickets, which kept him from walking until he was four years old. He
almost died of pneumonia when he was five and it was at this age that he decided to be a
physician.
Alfred was an active, popular child and an average student who was also known for his
competitive attitude toward his older brother, Sigmund.
In 1895 he received a medical degree from the University of Vienna. During his college
years, he became attached to a group of socialist students, among which he found his wife-
to-be, Raissa Timofeyewna Epstein, an intellectual and social activist from Russia studying
in Vienna. They married in 1897 and had four children, two of whom became psychiatrists.
He began his medical career as an ophthalmologist, but he soon switched to general
practice, and established his office in a lower-class part of Vienna, across from the Prater, a
combination amusement park and circus. His clients included circus people, and it has been
suggested that the unusual strengths and weaknesses of the performers led to his insights
into "organ inferiorities" and "compensation".
Adler and Freud
In 1901 Adler received a letter from Sigmund Freud inviting him to join an informal
discussion group that included 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. In the 1930s, he established a
number of child guidance clinics. From 1921 onwards, he was a frequent lecturer in Europe
and the Unitebood 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 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
In 1932, after most of Adler's Austrian clinics were closed due to his Jewish heritage (he
had 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, Peru and Wales.
Basic principles
Adler was influenced by the mental construct ideas of the philosopher Hans Vaihinger (The
Philosophy of As If/Philosophie des Als Ob) and the literature of Dostoevsky. 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, Über den nervösen 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: from ὅλος holos, a Greek word meaning all,
entire, total) 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
(among these, Baha'i, Chrisitanity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism) 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 in the decades following Adler's death (King & Shelley, 2008).
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. 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. The Journal of Individual
Psychology, the English language flagship publication of Adlerian Psychology, released a
volume in the summer of 2008 that reviews and corrects Adler's previously held beliefs on
the GLBT community.

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 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 Gemeinschaftsgefühl, 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).