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Adler

Alfred Adler Biography: Career and Life

Founder of Individual Psychology

Alfred Adler was an Austrian physician and psychiatrist who is best-known for forming
the school of thought known as individual psychology. He is also remembered for his
concepts of the inferiority feeling and inferiority complex, which he believed played a
major part in the formation of personality.
Alder was initially a colleague of Sigmund Freud, helped establish psychoanalysis, and
was a founding member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Adler's theory focused
on looking at the individual as a whole, which is why he referred to his approach as
individual psychology.
Adler eventually split from Freud's psychoanalytic circle, but he went on to have a
tremendous impact on the development of psychotherapy. He also had an important
influence on many other great thinkers including Abraham Maslow and Albert Ellis.

Best Known For

Individual psychology
The concept of the inferiority complex
President of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, 1910

Birth and Death

Alfred Adler was born February 7, 1870. He died May 28, 1937.

Early Life

Alfred Adler was born in Vienna, Austria. He suffered rickets as a young child, which
prevented him from walking until after the age of 2, and he got pneumonia at the age of
four.

Due to his health problems as a child, Adler decided he would become a physician.
After graduating from the University of Vienna in 1895 with a medical degree, began his
career as an ophthalmologist and later switched to general practice.

Career and Later Life

Alder soon turned his interests toward the field of psychiatry. In 1902, Sigmund Freud
invited him to join a psychoanalytic discussion group. This group met each Wednesday
in Freud's home and would eventually grow to become the Vienna Psychoanalytic
Society.

After serving as President of the group for a time, Adler left in part because of his
disagreements with some of Freud's theories. While Adler had played a key role in the
development of psychoanalysis, he was also one of the first major figures to break away
to form his own school of thought.

He was quick to point out that while he had been a colleague of Freud's, he was in no
way a disciple of the famous Austrian psychoanalyst. 2 In 1912, Alfred Adler founded the
Society of Individual Psychology.

Adler's theory suggested that every person has a sense of inferiority. From childhood,
people work toward overcoming this inferiority by "striving for superiority."
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Adler believed that this drive was the motivating force behind human behaviors,
emotions, and thoughts. He explained that some individuals will focus on collaboration
and contributions to society while others will try to exert power over others.

While Adler had converted to Christianity, 3 his Jewish heritage led to the Nazis closing
down his clinics during the 1930s. As a result, Adler emigrated to the United States to
take a professor position at the Long Island College of Medicine. In 1937, Adler went on
a lecture tour and suffered a fatal heart attack in Aberdeen, Scotland.

His family lost track of his cremated remains shortly after his death and the ashes were
presumed lost before being discovered in 2007 at a crematorium in Edinburgh,
Scotland. In 2011, 74 years after his death, Adler's ashes were returned to Vienna,
Austria.

In an interview with The Guardian, his granddaughter explained, "Vienna was

essentially Adler's home, his birth home and there was the triangle, you know, Adler,
Jung and Freud, and all had that sense of coming out of that place, so there's
something rather fitting about him going back there." 4

Contributions to Psychology

Alfred Adler's theories have played an essential role in a number of areas including
therapy and child development. Alder's ideas also influenced other important
psychologists and psychoanalysts including:

Abraham Maslow
Carl Rogers
Karen Horney
Rollo May
Erich Fromm
Albert Ellis

Today, his ideas and concepts are often referred to as Adlerian psychology.

Alfred Adler's Theories of Individual Psychology and Adlerian Therapy

Take-home Messages

● Early interaction with family members, peers and adults help to determine the
role of inferiority and superiority in life.
● Adler believed that birth order had a significant and predictable impact on a
child’s personality, and their feeling of inferiority.
● All human behavior is goal orientated and motivated by striving for superiority.
Individuals differ in their goals and how they try to achieve them.
● A natural and healthy reaction to inferiority is compensation: efforts to overcome
real or imaged inferiority by developing one's own abilities.
● If a person is unable to compensate for normal feelings of inferiority, they
develop an inferiority complex.
● The overarching goal of Adlerian psychotherapy is to help the patient overcome
feelings of inferiority.
Alfred Adler’s school of individual school of psychology created a chasm in the field of
psychology, which had been dominated by Freud’s psychoanalysis.
While Freud focused on only the internal processes — mainly sexual conflicts — that
affect a person’s psychology, Adler was adamant that to fully understand a person, a
psychologist must also consider other internal factors as well as external factors.
This is why he named his school of psychology individual; the word is intended to evoke
a meaning of indivisibility, derived from the Latin individuum (Mosak et al., 1999, p. 6).
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Compensation, Overcompensation, and Complexes

Adler thought that the basic psychological element of neurosis was a sense of inferiority
and that individuals suffering with the symptoms of this phenomenon spent their lives
trying to overcome the feelings without ever being in touch with reality (White, 1917)

Compensation for Weaknesses

According to Adler (2013b), all infants have a feeling of inferiority and inadequacy
immediately as they begin to experience the world.

These early experiences, such as the need to gain the parents’ attention, shape the
child’s unconscious, fictive goals. They give the child a need to strive towards rectifying
that inferiority — a need to compensate for weakness by developing other strengths.

There are several outcomes that can occur on a child’s quest for compensation. First, if
the child receives adequate nurturing and care, the child can accept his challenges, and
learn that they can be overcome with hard work. Thus, the child develops “normally”
and develops the “courage to be imperfect” (Lazarsfeld, 1966, pp. 163-165).

Overcompensation

However, sometimes, the process of compensation goes awry. One way in which this
happens is that the feelings of inferiority become too intense, and the child begins to
feel as though he has no control over his surroundings. He will strive very strenuously
for compensation, to the point that compensation is no longer satisfactory.

This culminates in a state of overcompensation, where the child’s focus on meeting his
goal is exaggerated and becomes pathological. For example, Adler (1917) uses the
ancient Greek figure Demosthenes, who had a terrible stutter but ended up becoming
the “greatest orator in Greece” (p. 22).

Here, Demosthenes started off with an inferiority due to his stutter, and
overcompensated by not just overcoming his stutter, but taking up a profession that
would normally be impossible for a stutterer.

Inferiority Complex

Overcompensation can lead to the development of an inferiority complex. This is a lack

of self-esteem where the person is unable to rectify his feelings of inferiority.

According to Adler (2013a), the hallmark of an inferiority complex is that “persons are
always striving to find a situation in which they excel” (p. 74). This drive is due to their
overwhelming feelings of inferiority.

There are two components of these feelings of inferiority: primary and secondary.
Primary inferiority is the “original and normal feeling” of inferiority maintained by an
infant (Stein & Edwards, 2002, p. 23). This feeling is productive, as it provides
motivation for the child to develop.
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Secondary inferiority, on the other hand, is the inferiority feeling in the adult results
when the child develops an exaggerated feeling of inferiority (p. 23). These feelings in
the adult are what is harmful, and they comprise the inferiority complex.

Superiority Complex

The superiority complex occurs when a person has the need to prove that he is more
superior than he truly is. Adler (2013a) provides an example of a child with a superiority
complex, who is “impertinent, arrogant and pugnacious” (p. 82).

When this child is treated through psychotherapy, it is revealed that the child behaves in
this impatient manner because he feels inferior.

Adler (2013a) claims that superiority complexes are born out of inferiority complexes;
they are “one of the ways which a person with an inferiority complex may use a method
of escape from his difficulties” (p. 97).

Personality Typology, or Styles of Life

Adler did not approve of the concept of personality types; he believed that this practice
could lead to the neglect of each individual’s uniqueness.
However, he did recognize patterns that often formed in childhood and could be useful
in treating patients who fit into them. He called these patterns styles of life.
Adler (2013a) claimed that once a psychologist knows a person’s style of life, “it is
possible to predict his future sometimes just on the basis of talking to him and having
him answer questions” (p. 100) Adler and his followers analyze a person’s style of life
by comparing it to “the socially adjusted human being” (p. 101).

Birth Order

The term birth order refers to the order in which the children of a family were born. Adler
(2013b, pp. 150-155) believed that birth order had a significant and predictable impact
on a child’s personality:

First-born

First-born children have inherent advantages due to their parents recognizing them as
“the larger, the stronger, the older.”

This gives first-born children the traits of “a guardian of law and order.” These children
have a high amount of personal power, and they value the concept of power with
reverence.

Second-born

Second-born children are constantly in the shadow of their older siblings. They are
incessantly “striving for superiority under pressure,” driven by the existence of their
older, more powerful sibling.

If the second-born is encouraged and supported, he will be able to attain power as well,
and he and the first-born will work together.
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Youngest Child

Youngest children operate in a constant state of inferiority. They are constantly trying to
prove themselves, due to their perceptions of inferiority relative to the rest of their
family. According to Adler, there are two types of youngest children.

The more successful type “excels every other member of the family, and becomes the
family’s most capable member.”

Another, more unfortunate type of youngest child does not excel because he lacks the
necessary self-confidence. This child becomes evasive and avoidant towards the rest of
the family.

Only Child

Only children, according to Adler, are also an unfortunate case.

Due to their being the sole object of their parents’ attention, the only child becomes
“dependent to a high degree, waits constantly for someone to show him the way, and
searches for support at all times.”

They also come to see the world as a hostile place due to their parents’ constant
vigilance.

Adlerian Psychotherapy

The following section is a summary of the six stages of Adlerian psychotherapy, which
was developed by Stein and Edwards (2002). These stages serve as a guide, since
every individual’s journey will have a slightly different path.
As Adler (2013a) put it, “Just as one cannot find two leaves of a tree absolutely
identical, so one cannot find two human beings absolutely alike” (p. 102).

Since in Adlerian psychology, the goal is for the patient to feel competent and
connected, the overarching goal of Adlerian psychotherapy is to help the patient
overcome feelings of inferiority.
This process has three subgoals:

1. To reduce the inferiority complex of exaggerated feelings of inferiority to a normal

and helpful size, where the patient strives for significance but is not overridden;
2. To reduce and banish the superiority complex of constant striving for superiority
over others; and
3. To promote feelings of community and equality.
Phase 1: Establishing the Therapeutic Relationship

For the psychotherapy to be effective, it is essential that the therapist and the client
commence with a healthy working relationship. There must be a “warm, empathetic
bond” which opens the door for gradual progress.

This bond is created by genuine warmth and compassion expressed by the therapist, in
addition to the trust of the client in the relationship.
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Phase 2: Assessment

The therapist must conduct a thorough assessment of the client in order to develop an
effective therapeutic process. The analysis must identify at least the following elements:

● Feelings of inferiority
● Fictive goal, defined as “an imagined, compensatory, self-ideal created to inspire
permanent and total relief, in the future, from the primary inferiority feeling”
● Psychological movement, defined as “the thinking, feeling, and behavioral
motions a person makes in response to a situation or task”
● Feeling of community
● Level and radius of activity
● Scheme of apperception
● Attitude toward occupation; love and sex; and other people

These assessments are done through various methods, including the projective use of
early memories in addition to intelligence, career, and psychological testing.

Phase 3: Encouragement and Clarificationp

The process of encouraging the client helps them reduce feelings of inferiority. The
therapist can start by acknowledging courage that the client has already shown, and
continue by discussing small steps the client can take towards getting to a more
confident place.

For instance, if the client has a limited radius of activity, the client and the therapist
might discuss ways to broaden their activity.

The second crucial aspect of this phase is to clarify the client’s core feelings and beliefs
regarding the self, others, and life in general. This is done using Socratic questioning.

Through this method, the therapist challenges the clients’ private logic and focuses on
psychological movement around his fictive goal.

Phase 4: Interpretation

Once the therapy has reached the point where the client has made some progress, and
he and the therapist have examined the meaning of his movement in relation to his
goals, the therapy is ready to begin interpreting the client’s style of life.

This must only be done when the client is encouraged sufficiently, and this must be
done with significant care.

Discussing and recognizing topics such as the inferiority complex can be difficult for the
client, but new insight can be transformative.

Phase 5: Style of Life Redirection

Now that the client and the therapist have recognized the issues with the client’s style of
life, the task becomes to redirect the style of life towards life satisfaction.
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This involves reducing and productively utilizing feelings of inferiority, changing the
fictive final goal, and increasing feelings of community.

This is accomplished using different methods, depending on the specific needs of the
client.

Phase 6: Meta-therapy

Finally, some clients may wish to seek further personal development, towards higher
values such as truth, beauty, and justice.

Towards this end, the therapist can provide stimulation for the client to become the best
version of himself.

This process is certainly challenging and requires a deep understanding of the

individual client.

Critical Evaluation

As with all psychodynamic approaches to human psychology, Adlerian individual

psychology receives criticism for being unscientific and difficult to empirically prove.
Specifically, its focus on the unconscious fictive goal makes it arguable that Adlerian
psychology is unfalsifiable.
Though Adler’s theories are difficult to definitively prove, recent neuroscience has
provided some support. A recent study summarizing modern neuroscientific evidence,
and how it relates to Adlerian psychology, agreed with a statement made by Maslow in
1970:
“Adler becomes more and more correct year by year. As the facts come in, they give
stronger and stronger support to his image of man” (Miller & Dillman Taylor, 2016, p.
125).

In regards to Adlerian psychotherapy, the modern-day attitude is that while the practice
is simple and easy for the layman to understand, it is flawed because it is not empirically
based.
Adler’s form of counseling is criticized for its lack of depth, notably, its lack of a
foundation that deals with issues not related to concepts such as birth order and early
recollections (Capuzzi & Stauffer, 2016, p. 142).
How did Adler Disagree with Freud?

Sigmund Freud Alfred Adler

Behavior is motivated by internal Behavior is motivated by social

biological drives (sex and influence and striving for superiority

aggression)

People have not choice in shaping People are responsible for who they

their personality are

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Present behavior is caused by the Present behavior is shaped by the

past (e.g. childhood) future (goals orientation)

Emphasis on unconscious process People are aware of what they are

doing and why

Freud split the personality into Adler thought the individual should

components (id, ego, superego) be studied as a whole (holism)

Relationship the same-sex parent is Wider family relationships including

of primary importance with siblings of primary importance

Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949)

Harry Stack Sullivan was a 20th century psychiatrist who stressed the importance of interpersonal

connections and developed interpersonal psychoanalysis.

PROFESSIONAL LIFE
Harry Stack Sullivan was born in Norwich, New York, on February 21, 1892. He was raised in

relative isolation on a rural farm near Smyrna, New York, with no siblings and few playmates.

Sullivan graduated from high school at age 16 and spent his first year of college at Cornell

University. In 1911, he transferred to the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery and earned his

MD in 1917.

Sullivan began practicing medicine after graduation, and in 1921, he worked under William Alanson

White as a neuropsychiatrist at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington DC. The following year, he

was employed at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Maryland, where he became director of clinical research

in 1925. There, he established a ward for young male schizophrenics. Sullivan’s treatments were

innovative and experimental and a great success.

Sullivan focused his attention on interpersonal relationships and in particular, the effect of loneliness

on mental health. Sullivan contributed much to the field of psychology through his teachings, his

writings, and his leadership. He was a co-founder of the William Alanson White Institute and also

was instrumental in launching the first edition of the journal Psychiatry.

CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
Much of Sullivan's work centered on understanding interpersonal relationships, and his research

became the basis for a field of psychology known as interpersonal psychoanalysis. Sullivan's

interpersonal psychoanalysis suggests that the way people interact with others could provide
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valuable clues into their mental health and that mental health disorders may stem from distressing

interpersonal interactions.

Sullivan steadfastly tried to avoid stigmatizing mental health patients, preferring to refer to mental

health disorders as “problems in living.” This catchphrase became the preferred method of referring

to mental health disorders among those involved in the anti-psychiatry movement.

Sullivan coined the term "self system" to describe the three components of a person, much like

Sigmund Freud’s conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. Sullivan identified the active self, or

the waking, conscious self; the eccentric self, which is the source of a person’s identity and

personality; and the state of sleep, or the dormant self.

Sullivan developed the concept of “developmental epochs” to help explain the development of

personality across the lifespan. Like many other theorists of his time, his theory is stage-based.

Sullivan often emphasized the pivotal importance of friendship and connectedness, and his stage-

based theory sees social skills as a bridge to greater development and enrichment:

● Infancy – Sullivan acknowledged that the developmental process begins early in life,

though he gave this phase less importance than Freud did.

● Childhood, ages 1-5 – During this stage of development, speech forms the

framework upon which subsequent learning is built.

● Juvenile, ages 6-8 – During this period, a wide variety of playmates and access to

healthy socialization and social skills become increasingly important.

● Preadolescence, ages 9-12 – In preadolescence, the ability to form close friendships

assists the child in developing self-esteem and serves as practice for later

relationships.

● Early adolescence, ages 13-17 – Friendship takes on a sexual dimension, and the

focus on relationship with peers shifts toward romantic interests. An adolescent's

sense of self-worth is based in large part upon his or her perceived sexual

attractiveness.

● Late adolescence, ages 18–early 20s – The young adult struggles with conflicts

between parental control and the desire to form an independent identity, while

beginning to focus on both romance and friendship.

● Adulthood – The primary struggles of adulthood include family, financial security, and

a rewarding career. Socialization continues to play a role in adult development.

BOOKS BY HARRY STACK SULLIVAN

● Personal Psychopathology (1933/1973)

● Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry (1947/1966)

● The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry (1953)

● The Psychiatric Interview (1954)

● Schizophrenia as a Human Process (1962)

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Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949)

(Engler, B. (2016). Theories of personality. Singapore: Cengage)

Basic Concepts
Sullivan defined personality as the characteristic ways in which an individual deals with
other people. Interpersonal relations constitute the basis of personality. Indeed, the very
term personality was only a hypothesis for Sullivan. It was merely an imaginary
construct that is used to explain and predict certain behaviors. Though Sullivan’s
definition of personality stresses the empirical components that we can directly observe
rather than intrapsychic structures.
Anxiety and Awareness
Anxiety is a central concept in Sullivan’s theory, as it was for Freud. Sullivan conceived
of anxiety as any painful feeling or emotion that may arise from organic needs or social
insecurity. However, he emphasized the anxiety that arises from social insecurity and
thought of anxiety as interpersonal in origin, beginning with the child’s empathetic
perception of the mother’s concerns.
Sullivan also emphasized the empirical character of anxiety, pointing out that it can be
described and observed through a subjective description of how one feels or an
objective notation of physical appearance and reactions and through physiological
changes that are indicative of anxiety.
Sullivan appreciated that an individual may be unconscious or unaware of some of his
or her motives and behaviors. The ease with which a person can become aware of his
or her interpersonal relationships varies from individual to individual and can be
objectively demonstrated by talking with someone and observing that person’s actions.

Security Operations
In order to reduce anxiety and enhance security, we employ security operations which
we are usually unaware. It is an interpersonal device that are healthy if they do not
jeopardize our competence in interpersonal relations. Sullivan’s notion of security
operations parallels Freud’s concept of defense mechanisms. The primary difference
lies on Sullivan’s stress on what is observable and interpersonal. Some of the security
operations that Sullivan described are sublimation, selective inattention, and “as if”
behavior.

Dynamisms
Sullivan maintained that we can observe certain processes in an individual’s
interpersonal relationships and that these processes can be used to describe the
development of the individual’s personality. One such process is dynamism, a pattern of
energy transformation that characterizes an individual’s interpersonal relations. The
mother nurses the child and her activities lead the infant to respond in certain ways,
such as feeling satisfied and behaving contentedly.
*dynamism of fear: child who is afraid of strangers
* dynamism of lust: young male who seeks sexual relations with young women
*dynamism of self or self-system : one of the most significant dynamisms; made up of
all of the security operations by which an individual defends the self against anxiety and
ensures self-esteem. The dynamism arises from the child’s recognition of potentially
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anxious situations- that is parental disapproval and rejection, and the child’s attempts to
avoid them.
Out of the child’s experiences with rewards and anxiety, three phases of what will
eventually be “me” emerge.
*The term “good-me self” refers to the content of awareness when one is thoroughly
satisfied with oneself.
*the “bad-me self” is the self-awareness that is organized around experiences to be
avoided because they are anxiety producing
* the “not-me self” entails aspects of the self that are regarded as dreadful and that
cannot be permitted conscious awareness and acknowledgment.
Personifications: group of feelings, attitudes, and thoughts that have arisen out of one’s
interpersonal experiences. Personifications of the good-mother and the bad-mother
develop out of satisfying our anxiety-producing experiences with the child’s mother. In
fairy tales, these personifications find expression as the good fairy and wicked
stepmother or witch.
Stages of Development
Infancy: interpersonal relationships that crystallize around the feeling situation
Childhood: development of healthy relationships with one’s parents
Juvenile era: need to relate to playmates and same-sex peers
Preadolescence: a chum relationship, the beginning of intimate reciprocal human
relationships. Could entail overt homosexual genital activity.
Early Adolescence: lust dynamism and a stable heterosexual pattern of sexual
satisfaction
Late adolescence: integration and stabilization of culturally appropriate adult social,
vocational, and economic behavior.