Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler was an Austrian psychiatrist and founder of individual psychology. He emphasized the importance of social and familial influences on an individual's development and behavior, and he believed that feelings of inferiority and the pursuit of superiority were key motivators in human behavior. Adler also introduced the concept of the "inferiority complex" and the importance of striving for social connectedness and community feeling.
7 Key excerpts on "Alfred Adler"
eBook - ePubPsychology for Actors
Theories and Practices for the Acting Process
- Kevin Page(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...CHAPTER 4 Alfred Adler Inferiority and the Individual Alfred Adler (1870–1937) was another early associate of Freud’s who eventually broke away to pursue his own vision of the human psyche (Adler, 1956). Although they had never met, Freud invited Adler to join an elite group of physicians and psychiatrists (later known as the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society) in 1902 after Adler had publicly defended Freud’s recently published The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud & Brill, 1913; first published in 1900) from attacks in a local newspaper. While Adler attended this group for more than eight years, and was its president in 1910, he was never personally close to Freud, and left the group in 1911, in protest, with nine other members, and would shortly form his own organization, the Association for Individual Psychology, under which title he would continue to formulate and disseminate his own ideas (Bottome, 1957). While it is oft-misstated that Adler was a student or pupil of Freud’s in the beginning, this is not true, and was an idea that Adler himself vehemently denied for the rest of his life (Hoffman, 1988, p. 105). Adler’s individual psychology was based on a much different set of views than Freud’s darkly sexual and deterministic vision. Adler felt that childhood sexuality, while certainly important, took a backseat to the individual’s drives for power and superiority, as well as the relationship of the individual to society (Adler, 1924). Individual psychology was the first version of an “ego psychology.” Adler’s focus on conscious, rational processes, outward behavior, goal-seeking, and values separates his work from “depth psychology,” which is much more interested with the dynamics of the unconscious mind and its causal relationship to neuroticism. Adler’s individual psychology was to have a major impact on family therapy, child guidance, education, and psychotherapy (Frick, 1991, p. 21)...
- (Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
...This assertion, along with many others (e.g. people are motivated by social forces and often have feelings of inferiority) have become so mainstream that Adler’s origination of those ideas has often been forgotten (Mosak & Maniacci, 1999). Adler was sometimes criticized for the simplicity and commonsense nature of his insights. Yet, close consideration of Adler’s ideas reveal the depth of his observations. Indeed, as noted by Mosak and Maniacci (1999), the simplicity of Adler’s ideas belie their actual complexity. Tenets of Individual Psychology Adler’s approach is alternately called “Adlerian Psychology” or “Individual Psychology.” The word “individual” in Adler’s theory is sometimes erroneously understood as deriving from a focus on individuals (Watts, 2015). In fact, the term is derived from the Latin, “individuum,” meaning indivisible. Adler stressed the unity of the person. In contrast to Freud’s reductionist idea that humans are comprised of different conflicting impulses, Adler maintained that humans should be perceived in a holistic manner, emphasizing the interrelatedness of persons’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions. Life Style/Style of Life Adler’s view of personality was centered on what he called style of life. This consists of a personally constructed metanarrative that a person develops throughout life from their unique experiences, motivations, personal beliefs, and goals (Watts, 2015). This metanarrative helps an individual face life’s challenges and tasks. It is refined throughout life and is influenced by one’s socio‐cultural context, including both the larger culture and the culture of one’s family. For example, within the family culture, one’s position in the family, i.e. one’s “psychological birth order,” influences one’s construction of their life style. Just as Freud had stressed the importance of early family relationships in the development of personality, Adler maintained that early family experiences help shape our life style...
- Amy E. Wenzel(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...Jon Carlson Jon Carlson Carlson, Jon Sonya Lorelle Sonya Lorelle Lorelle, Sonya Adlerian Psychology Adlerian psychology 45 48 Adlerian Psychology Adlerian psychology, developed by Alfred Adler, is a holistic strength-based approach to understanding human development. Adler called his theory individual psychology to emphasize that people are indivisible and need to be understood as a whole person rather than as separate parts. This model is nonpathological in that people are understood as discouraged rather than having a disorder. It is also systemic in that it considers the social context to understand individuals and their symptoms. Adlerian psychology provides an in-depth explanation of how the personality develops as well as the guidelines and techniques for promoting change in therapy. History of Adler Alfred Adler was born in 1870, the second of six children, to a Jewish family outside Vienna. As a young child, he had many health problems. He suffered from rickets, which delayed his ability to walk until the age of 4 years. Later, he was diagnosed with pneumonia and was not expected to recover. During his secondary school years, he struggled to earn passing grades, and his teachers encouraged him to abandon academics in order to learn a trade. Despite his physical and academic challenges, his father encouraged him to pursue his ambitions in medicine. He was eventually successful and attended medical school at the University of Vienna. Although some sources note that Adler was a student of Sigmund Freud, that is a misconception, as Adler worked with Freud as a colleague in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. He became the first president of the organization in 1910 and resigned a year later. Adler realized that his fundamental beliefs about human development differed from Freud’s. Freud’s theory emphasized psychosexual development, whereas Adler conceptualized using a psychosocial perspective...
eBook - ePubPrimer of Adlerian Psychology
The Analytic - Behavioural - Cognitive Psychology of Alfred Adler
- Harold Mosak, Michael Maniacci(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...By learning the principles and applications of Adlerian psychology, it is easier to make the transition to contemporary clinical practice within other systems of thought. Summary This chapter commences by stating that all people desire to know, and that believing is what we humans do best. Our quest for understanding ourselves, our world, and our future may be the single most distinguishing feature of human nature. This book attempts to provide answers to some of these timeless questions, but from a perspective, for no one can see without seeing from somewhere. Adler (1937/1964b), in the last year of his life, wrote that Everyone subordinates all experiences and problems to his own conception. This conception is usually a tacit assumption and as such unknown to the person. Yet he lives and dies for the inferences he draws from such a conception. It is amusing, and sad at the same time, to see how even scientists—especially philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists—are caught in this net. In that it also has its assumptions, its conception of life, its style of life, Individual Psychology is no exception. But it differs in that it is well aware of this fact. (p. 24) It is against this “awareness,” this background of a man who was small, poor sighted, physically ill and near death on several occasions, and considered poor in school, that we present this text. Adler overcame his fear of death by becoming a physician; he studied hard to overcome his academic troubles; he became interested in social causes and the influence the environment had upon those less fortunate or privileged; and he was attracted to and married a strong, politically active woman. He stressed social and sexual equality, finding a place in life in useful, prosocial ways and coming to grips with the challenges life presents us in cooperative, egalitarian ways. That was the background of Alfred Adler, the man...
eBook - ePubPersonality Theories
Development, Growth, and Diversity
- Bem P. Allen(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...Here Adler became known as an “indefatigable lecturer” to parents and teachers, as well as a “constant advisor” to child-guidance clinics (Alexander & Selesnick, 1966). These characteristics clearly confirm his tendency to ex-traversion, especially relative to Freud and Jung (Dolliver, 1994). His devotion to parenting was reflected in the fact that two of his four children, Alexandra and Kurt, became psychiatrists in their father’s tradition. Later you will learn that he had significant influence on many other personologists. Adler’s View of the Person Basic Orientation Adler refused to think of humans as collections of ids, egos, and complexes. He saw each person as a whole individual with aspects that are too interconnected for meaningful examination apart from one another. The lives of people were seen as flowing from immaturity to maturity without the discrete breaks that characterized Freud’s psychosexual stages. From his perspective, people decide for themselves what direction their lives take, sometimes wisely, sometimes not. Whatever their direction, Adler saw them as striving for “perfection” as they conceived of it. At first Adler emphasized natural feelings of inferiority that appear very early in life and require compensation thereafter (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1964). However, Eva Dreidurs Ferguson (1989) argued that Adler evolved toward greater emphasis on striving for power and superiority. Near the end of his career, “Adler made it explicit that humans as a species strive to belong and that the goal … is to contribute to human welfare” (p. 354). Dinkmeyer and Sherman (1989) list five principles that might be regarded as basic Adlerian assumptions about people and their psychological functioning. 1. All behavior has social meaning. A group, such as a family, has its own social system, including methods of relating and ways to communicate power. “All behavior has meaning inside this social context …” (p. 148)...
eBook - ePubThe Psychology Of Alfred Adler
and the Development of the Child
- Madelaine Ganz(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...CHAPTER ONE The Theory of Adlerian Psychology A. WHAT IS Alfred Adler’S PSYCHOLOGY? B EFORE attempting a theoretical exposition of Adlerian psychology, it is advisable to emphasize certain necessary distinctions. From th e formal point of view, then, we distinguish, on the one hand, the psychology of the whole from a symptomatology of its various parts considered separately; and on the other hand we distinguish between finalistic explanations and causal explanations. From the material point of view, namely from that of content, Adlerian psychology takes account of everything that concerns the individual, society and their mutual relations. Although all these factors obviously interpenetrate in actuality, their analysis is indispensable in theory if we are to acquire an adequate knowledge of any individual. 1. A psychology of totality The German word itself – ‘Individualpsychologie’ – easily gives rise to a misunderstanding, for one is tempted to think it means a psychology that applies to the individual exclusively. But if one refers to the etymological sense of the word (individere) its field of application is much more extensive. This is the psychology of ‘the whole that cannot be divided’ concerned at one and the same time with the individual as he is in himself and in his relation to the community. Just as medicine is no longer—as a general rule—satisfied with the separate treatment of morbid symptoms, but proceeds to take account of the condition of the entire organism, neither should psychology be limited to the study of certain phenomena in isolation from the psyche as a whole. In the totality of its organic and psychic functions the individual constitutes an original unity, which it expresses at every moment through all its movements internal and external. But this unity is in its turn but a part of the higher unity constituted by society...
eBook - ePubAlfred Adler and individual psychology in the new millennium
Strategies, principles and operational models underlying the thought of the founder of Individual Psychology
- Stefano Calicchio(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Stefano Calicchio(Publisher)
...In the meantime, he developed new insights, culminating in the publication entitled 'Study of Organ Inferiority' (1907), in which he postulated the principles of his own theory. This research work was initially welcomed even by Freud himself, who considered it an important addition to his own theoretical approach. In practice, Adler's work then began to question some of the assumptions of Freudian theory; prodromes of a progressive sense of separation that was initially managed by Freud himself with some attempts to integrate the different positions, but ultimately led to the actual detachment. In 1908, Alfred Adler again distanced himself from the issue, this time concerning the genesis of neurosis and the importance of sexuality in the development of the disorder according to the theory of the father of psychoanalysis. On the contrary, the founder of individual psychology looked at the question from a completely different angle, as would become clear in the years that followed. When the knot to be untied became explicit through a paper he wrote on the problems of psychoanalysis in early 2011, a heated discussion developed within the group. It was precisely at this juncture that the differences, which had initially appeared to be integrable, became completely irremediable. "Adler's and Freud's personalities were really too different to find a ground for negotiation that could somehow save the unity of the movement. A diversity to which the fourteen-year difference between the ages of the two must also have contributed, Freud having been born in 1856" (Varriale, p. 28). And here we see another aspect that at first glance might be underestimated. Despite the fact that Adler had shown since childhood an uncommon sense of responsibility for his age, Freud often behaved 'like an older brother' (p. 29) and probably this subtle element led to an increase in tension and eventually to outright aversion....
