- Person
- Alfred Adler
- Lived
- 1870–1937
- Field
- Individual psychology
- From
- Austrian
The story
The First World War ended in 1918 with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the new Austrian Republic, the Social Democratic Party came to power and supported welfare programmes with a strong emphasis on reforming children's education. The postwar years were hard: Adler found his medical services in great demand but mostly unpaid, with country patients sometimes paying in eggs or milk. Yet the new climate also gave him an opportunity. He believed that psychological problems are best prevented in childhood, and Vienna was eager for new ideas.
In 1919 Adler started the first child guidance clinic in Vienna. From 1920 he also taught psychology courses at the city's People's Institute. As educational reform became Vienna's rallying cry, he and his associates went on to establish 28 child guidance clinics, applying individual psychology to children with behavioural problems. Vienna became the first city in the world to provide schoolchildren with free educational therapy.
The clinics were closely tied to everyday life. Viennese state schools were linked to them so that teachers could consult on how best to help children who were struggling. Parents were included in the consultations, and demand grew for Adler to give monthly lectures to newly formed parent associations. Rather than seeing a troubled child alone, the clinics looked at the child within the whole family and school.
That approach was remarkably innovative at a time when most psychology focused on individual adults and blamed their problems on unchangeable drives. By 1926, when Adler began lecture tours in America, he was widely regarded as one of Europe's leading experts in family relations and child psychology.
The clinics did not survive the political changes of the following decade. In the early 1930s most of Adler's Austrian clinics were closed because of his Jewish heritage, and he moved permanently to the United States.
Their influence outlived them. Adler's child guidance centres were influential in the later emergence of family therapy, and his followers, led by Rudolf Dreikurs, carried the model of working with children, parents and teachers together to the United States and beyond.
Why it matters
Adler's clinics brought free psychological help to ordinary children and pioneered the idea of working with families and schools together, an approach that later shaped family therapy.
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'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.
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.