- Person
- Alfred Adler
- Lived
- 1870–1937
- Field
- Individual psychology
- From
- Austrian
The story
Alfred Adler, born in 1870 near Vienna to a Jewish family of Hungarian origin, qualified as a physician at the University of Vienna in 1895. Early in his career he wrote an article defending Sigmund Freud's ideas after reading The Interpretation of Dreams. In the autumn of 1902 Freud sent him a postcard inviting him to join a small discussion group that met on Wednesday evenings at Freud's home. Adler was one of four physicians invited at the start, along with Max Kahane, Rudolf Reitler and Wilhelm Stekel.
The Wednesday Society grew into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, and by 1906 it had 17 members. Adler was a colleague rather than a pupil, and Freud referred to him in print in 1909 as "my colleague Dr Alfred Adler". In 1908 Adler presented a paper on the aggressive instinct, an idea Freud then rejected but later took up in his own form. In 1910 Adler became president of the society.
The two men increasingly disagreed. Freud held that early sexual development was the main determinant of character. Adler argued that the social world matters as much to psychology as inner drives, and that power, compensation, gender and politics can be as important as libido. In 1911 Adler and a group of supporters left Freud's circle, the first major break from psychoanalysis, three years before Carl Jung's split. They met at first as the Society for Free Psychoanalytic Research and then, from 1912, as the Society for Individual Psychology.
Adler chose the name because he saw each person as an indivisible whole, an individuum, guided by goals and connected to the world around them. In 1912 he also published The Neurotic Character, which set out his key ideas. By the winter of 1914 he had launched the International Journal for Individual Psychology and published a collection of his articles under the title To Heal and To Educate, work that attracted the attention of the American psychologist G. Stanley Hall.
Adler was the first major figure to build an independent school of psychotherapy and personality theory outside psychoanalysis. He is considered, with Freud and Jung, one of the three founding figures of depth psychology. Organisations such as the North American Society of Adlerian Psychology and the International Association for Individual Psychology carry on his work, and teaching institutes exist in more than a dozen countries.
Why it matters
Adler's individual psychology offered a more social, hopeful view of the mind that still guides counsellors, teachers and therapists around the world.
About Alfred Adler
Viennese physician who broke with Freud to found individual psychology, coined the “inferiority complex” and opened the world’s first child guidance clinics.
More about Alfred Adler
- Alfred Adler showed how birth order shapes personalityAlfred Adler argued that a child's place among siblings, first, middle or youngest, influences personality, extending psychology beyond the parent-child bond.
- Alfred Adler coined the term inferiority complexAlfred Adler introduced the idea of the inferiority complex, describing how feelings of inadequacy can shape personality and how people strive to compensate.
- Alfred Adler's first book linked health to social conditionsIn 1898 Alfred Adler published a health book for tailors arguing that their illnesses must be treated in light of their social and economic conditions.
- Alfred Adler influenced Maslow, Frankl and EllisAlfred Adler's ideas shaped later giants of psychotherapy, including Abraham Maslow, Viktor Frankl, Albert Ellis and Rollo May.
- Alfred Adler linked mental health to caring for othersAlfred Adler made social interest, or Gemeinschaftsgefühl, the core of mental health: a sense of belonging and a desire to contribute to the welfare of others.
- Alfred Adler replaced the analyst's couch with two chairsAlfred Adler was one of the first psychotherapists to discard the analytic couch in favour of two chairs, so therapist and patient could sit as equals.
- Alfred Adler studied war neurosis among WWI soldiersAs an army doctor in World War I, Alfred Adler treated traumatised soldiers and lectured on war neurosis, a forerunner of what is now called PTSD.
- Alfred Adler championed parent education and equalityAlfred Adler urged that children be raised as equal members of the family, opposed corporal punishment, and argued early for women's equality in psychology.
- Alfred Adler opened Vienna's first child guidance clinicIn 1919 Alfred Adler started the first child guidance clinic in Vienna; he and his associates went on to open 28, making Vienna the first city to give schoolchildren free therapy.
Sources
- Alfred Adler Wikipedia
- Alfred Adler: To Heal and to Educate Vision
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.