Adler, Alfred (1870–1937)

Alfred Adler is known as the founder of a school of individual psychology. He was born into a Jewish family on February 7, 1870, in Penzing, a suburb of Vienna, and at an early age decided to become a physician. After graduating in medicine from the University of Vienna in 1895, he became an ophthalmologist, but soon switched to general practice, in which he began to study the linkage of illness and physical deformities to personality development. In 1902, he was invited to join a discussion group that had been initiated by the pioneering Viennese psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). Adler, Freud, and two other psychoanalysts met on Wednesday evenings initially, and the group came to be known Mittwochsgesellschaft (Wednesday Society). Adler's book, Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Physical Compensation, was published in 1907. He became the coeditor of the society's newsletter and, in 1910, Adler was named president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

Adler's perception of human behavior and personality differed from Freud's. Adler challenged Freud's concept of ego and id and Freud's belief that sexuality was the root cause of neurosis; Adler contended that the social realm, or exteriority, was as important to psychoanalysis as any internal realm, or interiority. Adler promoted the importance of perceiving an individual holistically, rather than reductively. In 1911, Adler parted company with Freud and his circle and, along with nine of his associates, established the Society for Free Psychoanalysis, shortly thereafter renamed as the Society for Individual Psychology. In 1912, Adler published his seminal treatise, The Neurotic Constitution, describing his main ideas. During World War I, Adler served as a doctor in the Austrian army on the Russian front. Later, Adler wrote numerous books on psychology and organized counseling centers in the Vienna schools.

As a theorist of human psychology, Adler dealt exhaustively in psychotherapy, personality theory, and social action. Between 1907 and 1937 he developed theories regarding the inferiority complex, superiority complex, and psychological compensation as well as the relationship between body, mind, and spirit. Adler believed inferiority and superiority complexes were two sides of the same coin. The feeling of superiority was the fruit of a striving whose roots lay in the inferiority complex. Moreover, each human emotion found expression in one's body language, a manifestation of the [Page 4]close connection between mind and body. Adler's social theory arose from his conviction, based on observation, that to be understood, an individual must be viewed within a social context. Adler's psychotherapy agenda included information about the lifestyle of patients, self-explanation of patients, and encouragement of the patient's social interests. Adler thought it important to avoid conveying an authoritarian attitude. His method was to speak face to face with the patient, unlike the Freudian method in which the patient lay on a couch and the analyst sat in a chair not directly facing the patient.

In 1934, Adler emigrated to the United States following the forced closure of his clinics under Nazi policies that targeted Jews and those of Jewish heritage for persecution. While on a European tour in 1937, he died of a heart attack én route to a lecture at Aberdeen University in Scotland. Among those on whom Adler's work has exerted an enormous influence are the American psychologists Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), Rollo May (1909–1994), and Albert Ellis (1913–2007).

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