Alfred Adler

Basic Human Motivation:

Drive for Superiority, the
desire for self-
improvement, an
“upward drive” for
perfection.
Basic Human Problem:
Inferiority Complex,
extreme feelings of
weakness or
inadequacy; involves An Inferiority Complex
an inability to accept occurs when the need for
natural limitations.
self-improvement is
blocked.
 Inferiority Feelings and
Personality
Feelings of inferiority are a natural part of
personality development. They start in
childhood when we compare ourselves to adults
and continue into adulthood when we discover
limitations to our abilities.

The natural and healthy reaction to inferiority

feelings is Compensation, efforts to
overcome real or imagined inferiority by
developing one’s abilities.
 Healthy Versus Unhealthy Processes
Healthy Process:

Compensation Self -Improvement

Unhealthy Process:

Compensation Inferiority Complex

Overcompensation Trying to appear

stronger by striving for power, putting other people down, or
showing off; hypersensitive about self-esteem.
 Adler Versus Freud

For Freud, a person’s primary motivation was sexual pleasure;

people were similar to animals and machines: driven by natural
forces with no say in what they did.
For Adler, the primary motivation was self-perfection and
equality with others; the emphasis was on what made people
different from animals and machines: goals, values, free will.
 "Heredity and
environment provide
the bricks; the final
form of the building
is up to us".
The building’s form is our Style of Life: the
goals we have chosen and the ways we
pursue them, our values and priorities, how
we see people and events, and our everyday
habits.