Adler’s individual psychology is one of the most famous psychological theories that have influenced modern concepts, and have also influenced the doctrine of modern social science and psychology in general.
Alfred Adler Biography
Alfred was born into a poor large family of Jewish descent. He stubbornly struggled with his physical weakness. Whenever possible, young Alfred talked and played with the neighboring children, who always willingly accepted him into their company. Thus, he found among his friends that feeling of recognition and his own worth, which he was deprived of at home. The influence of this experience can be seen in Adler's subsequent work, when he emphasizes the importance of empathy and shared values, calling it a social interest, due to which, in his opinion, a person is able to realize his potential and become a useful member of society.
Adler's Ideas
Adler wanted to create a psychology close to real life, which would allow other people to understand by their biographies, which are always different.
The works that he published since 1920, as well as his lectures, were supposed to make his psychology accessible to everyone and make it generally understood. In the 1920s, he gave a series of lectures in Vienna and published them in 1927 under the title “Knowledge of Human Nature”.
The period of the First World War was the era in which individual psychology developed. As part of the school reform in the Austrian capital, Adler and his staff opened about 30 educational and counseling institutions. In 1920, he was appointed director of the first Viennese clinic dedicated to child psychology, and taught teaching in the city. With the publication of the work “The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology” (1930), which contained lectures for introduction to psychotherapy for doctors, psychologists and teachers, Adler begins to reveal his theory in more detail.
The origin of individual psychology
Adler’s individual psychology replaces Freud’s explanatory principle that all human behavior is tied to sexual libido, to “compensate” for inferiority. “To be human is to feel inferior,” Adler writes. The main task for a person is to eliminate this feeling. In his early works, he used, for example, the Napoleon complex to illustrate his theory in practice.
Sociologists finalized the theory of the inferiority complex at a wider level, given the cultural, economic and political understanding of the term. Adler soon became interested in the psychology of physical disorders and met Sigmund Freud in 1899, with whom he formed the Psychoanalytic Society in Vienna, of which he became president.
Adler was influenced by the ideas of Hans Weichinger (German pessimist philosopher) about the influence of certain factors on the behavior. The theory of individual psychology consisted of many doctrines, a variety of philosophical and psychoanalytic trends. Adler deduced the concepts of organic inferiority and overcompensation, which psychologists still use.
The collision of the theory of Freud and Adler
The discrepancy with Freud on the influence of libido and suppression of displacement of feelings occurred in 1911 at the Congress of Psychoanalysis in Weimar, and the Society of Individual Psychology was formed in 1912. Adler believes that the theory of suppression (repression) should be replaced by the concept of “protective tendencies of the ego” as a neurotic state resulting from feelings of inferiority and overcompensation.
Individual psychology was born out of this fault in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and the emergence of the Society of Individual Psychology. Since then, along with Freudian psychoanalysis, the individual psychology of Alfred Adler coexists, which its creator will widely disseminate until his death in 1937, finding time between consultations, courses and conferences.
While Freud initially attributed the enormous role and importance of sexuality to the appearance of neurosis (libido) in his discovery, Adler insisted on imperious instincts, “compensation of inferiority feelings” and on the constant rivalry that arises from all these neurotic feelings and the emotional component. Freud’s influence on Adler, of course, cannot be underestimated.
However, in scientific circles there is an opinion that Adler had his own concepts before meeting with Freud. Interacting with Sigmund Freud, he retained his understanding of the human psyche, and after leaving it, he created theories that were different from Freud's psychoanalysis. Adler entered the group (later transformed into a Vienna psychoanalytic society) by a young specialist who had already developed his own concept of individual psychology.
Adler Theory
Unlike Freud, Adler was convinced that the human person implies a certain completeness, that his behavior, in the broadest sense of the word, is always a function of a goal oriented from childhood. He called the "scenario of life" this fundamental orientation, long before the famous "fundamental plan" of Jean-Paul Sartre.
For Adler, all “values” are born from the needs of social life. In a broader sense, in his opinion, the basis of everything is the developed sense of community, capable of harmonizing individual needs and the needs of society.
Adler admits that life is a struggle. A person must somehow fight, trying to dominate in one way or another. Failure in this inherent tendency towards power and dominance gives rise to what seems to be the leitmotif of individual psychology - the "sense of inferiority." In short, individual psychology sets as its task the study of the complexes of personality and psychological compensations that were laid down in childhood.
For a child who must constantly exceed his abilities (at the request of his parents or those raising him), this imperious tendency is especially strong. However, since the restrictions that his environment places on him, mainly his parents, make him suppress desires. Thus, a clear conflict in the early years is inevitable. Adler believes that the feeling of inferiority is “natural” in a child whose weakness is real compared to adults, but later on, with the development of a person’s personality, it should disappear, and if the need for self-affirmation and development is satisfied in a positive way, then is in social or cultural reality.
Otherwise, the feeling of inferiority crystallizes and becomes "complex." According to this theory, inferiority gives rise as an automatic consequence to the search for compensation, already at the level of physiological life. Thus, “compensation” seems to him a key concept, as well as Freudian “crowding out”.
The subject of individual psychology
The name of Adler’s theory "Individual Psychology" comes from the Latin word individum (indivisible) and expresses the idea of the integrity of the people's mental life, in particular, the absence of boundaries and contradictions between consciousness and the subconscious. Through the behavior and lifestyle of any person, his life style aimed at the realization of life goals (in later works - the meaning of life) runs through the red thread.
The purpose, meaning and lifestyle of a person are formed in the first 3-5 years and are due to the characteristics of family education. Individual psychology sets as its subject of study the coverage of the problems of the soul and body.
Sense of inferiority
When a person is born with physical, constitutional, organic or social inferiority, a whole series of certain unconscious processes, both physiological and mental, arise to restore some balance in order to cause mechanisms that somehow compensate for this inferiority. From this point of view, the Freudian "libido" seems to be subordinate to the "instinct" of domination.
Manifestation of the complex
For example, the loving nature of Don Giovanni is better explained by vanity and a desire for power, rather than eroticism and a great passion for women. Adler also believes that there are women-donjuans whose behavior expresses the intention to dominate and humiliate a man. He considered masculine women to be owners of a specific inferiority complex, with a desire for total control over the opposite sex.
In his opinion, this can easily lead to frigidity or homosexuality. Adler believed that the need to dominate can also manifest itself under the guise of compassion and selflessness, forcing women to love a weak or crippled creature. He also believes that the inferiority manifested at this time in life can play a large role in the neuroses that are so frequent at a critical age.
Doctrine of neurosis
In addition to describing the normal psyche, the Austrian psychologist Adler Alfred was engaged in the description of phenomena that help to understand the human personality, acquire knowledge about a person - he considered deviant and pathological mental deviations as a doctor. According to the principle of unity of mental processes, he saw in these deviations erroneous answers to the demands of life.
The feeling of a strong sense of inferiority (the concept of an inferiority complex) can lead to excessive compensation in the form of an exaggerated desire for dominance, a huge will to power. Adler believed that the concept of neurosis is the link between normal and neurotic psychology. He read psychosis as a more acute form of neurosis, therefore, in his opinion, it can be treated with psychoanalysis.
Types of compensation for complexes
Each person, according to Adler, thinks and acts proceeding from the image of his own Self and his life goals, while the neurotic, in his opinion, is one who mobilizes his psychic powers excessively in order to react to a sense of inferiority. Such people are most often fully focused on the fictitious goal of power and superiority.
Thus, neuroticism makes him irrational complexes act and live, obeying the instincts of the dominance of his own ego. Adler stated that the need to compensate for a sense of inferiority in neurosis is the main and key problem of the neurotic.
Adler sees in extreme receptivity and sensitivity a beginning sign of a sense of inferiority. Such a neurotic is very easy to emotionally hurt. Pathological forms of jealousy, envy, resentment are inherent in people suffering from neurosis.
There is also a positive compensation, even a triumph: when a person who, faced with his sense of inferiority, resolutely overcame it to such an extent that the result was greater than he could have obtained if he had not suffered from either a complex or a desire for pathological authorities.
Publications by Alfred Adler
The founder of individual psychology in Europe and the USA publishes articles and important works: “Treatment and education”, “Guide to individual psychology”, “Knowledge of a person”, “Nervous temperament”. One of the fundamental works of Adler’s personality theory is “The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology”. Among his other significant works, one can mention the “Study of physical inferiority and its mental compensation”, “Neurotic Constitution”, “The Meaning of Life”, “Understanding Human Nature”, “Life Science”, “Social Interest: A Challenge to Humanity”, “Lifestyle” .
The influence of Adler and his concepts
Individual psychology has made a great contribution to the psychology of family relations, pedagogical and clinical psychology. Followers of individual psychology in Western Europe and the United States are united in associations of individualistic psychologists. There are also institutes of individual psychology and magazines that develop this concept in German and English.