- Person
- Alfred Adler
- Lived
- 1870–1937
- Field
- Individual psychology
- From
- Austrian
The story
Alfred Adler grew up in and around Vienna in a family whose fortunes swung between relative wealth and near-poverty, and he played with children from all walks of life, including working-class Christian families at a playground near his home. He later said these early observations of social and economic difference shaped his thinking.
He earned his medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1895. During his student years he joined a circle of socialist students, where he met Raissa Epstein, a young activist from Russia studying in Vienna; they married in 1897. Like her, he hoped to contribute to change in the world, though through medicine rather than politics. He first practised as an eye doctor before turning to general practice in a less affluent part of the city.
In 1898, the year the first of the couple's four children was born, Adler published the Health Book for the Tailoring Trade. Going far beyond a narrow medical perspective, Adler argued that the diseases common to tailors had to be treated holistically, taking into account the social, economic and psychological factors that contributed to their physical symptoms. A few years later he developed the same holistic view in articles for the medical journal Ärztliche Standeszeitung.
The historian Paul Stepansky, who made one of the first balanced studies of Adler's life, called these early writings a remarkable preliminary statement of Adlerian psychology. They show that Adler's central ideas, about the whole person living in a social setting, were already forming before he ever met Sigmund Freud. In the autumn of 1902 Freud invited him to join his Wednesday evening discussion group.
The same outlook ran through Adler's later work: his insistence that the social realm matters to psychology as much as inner drives, his free child guidance clinics in Vienna after the First World War, and his argument that doctors, teachers and social workers share responsibility for preventing illness. He has been called the first to carry psychiatry into the community.
Adler's tailoring book anticipated the modern recognition that working and living conditions shape health as surely as biology does, an idea now central to occupational and public health.
Why it matters
Adler's early work anticipated the modern understanding that health depends on working and living conditions as well as biology, a principle at the heart of public health today.
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 founded the school of individual psychologyAfter leaving Freud's circle in 1911, Alfred Adler founded the Society for Individual Psychology in 1912, the first major independent school of psychotherapy.
- 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: To Heal and to Educate Vision
- Alfred Adler Wikipedia
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.