Individual Psychology

Alfred Adler

Prepared by:
Jomar V. Sayaman, RPm
Biography

February 7, 1870
Rudolfsheim

May 28, 1937

Aberdeen, Scotland
• His mother, Pauline, was a hard-working homemaker

• His father, Leopold, was a middle-class Jewish grain

merchant from Hungary

• Weak and sickly and at age 5

• “Give yourself no more trouble. The boy is lost”

• Adler’s poor health was in sharp contrast to the health

of his older brother Sigmund.
• “My eldest brother is a good industrious fellow  he
was always ahead of me … and he is still ahead of
me!”

• Niether Freud and Adler was devoutly religious

• On 1904, Adler was converted to Protestantism

• Like Freud, Adler had a younger brother who died in

infancy

• At age 5, he decided that his goal in life would be to

conquer death.
• Freud felt more emotionally attached to his parents,
especially his mother, than to the other family
members

• Adler was more interested in social relationships

• His siblings and peers played a pivotal role in his

childhood development

• Freud  one to one relationships

• Adler  group situations

• VPS & IPA  structured

• SIP  democratic
• As a medical student he once again completed work
with no special honors

• Had realized his childhood of becoming a physician

after receiving his medical degree on 1895

• He had served a tour of military duty in the

Hungarian army

• Eye specialist to psychiatry and general medicine.

• Published “Study of Organ Inferiority and Its

Psychical Compensation on 1907”
• In 1911, Adler presented his views on VPS  drive
for superiority was a more basic motive than
sexuality

• On October 1911, Adler resigned his presidency and

membership in the Psychoanalytic Society

• Society for Free Psychoanalytic Study

• Society for Individual Psychology

• Like Freud, Adler was affected by events surrounding

WWI
• Taught Individual Psychology at Columbia
University and the New School for Social Research

• By 1932, he was a permanent resident of US and held

the position of Visiting Professor for Medical
Psychology at Long Island College of Medicine 
Downstate Medical School, State University of New
York

• Married a fiercely independent Russian woman,

Raissa Epstein, in December 1897.
• Alexandra and Kurt, who became psychiatrists and
continued their father’s work

• Valentine (Vali), who died as a political prisoner of

the Soviet Union in about 1942.

• Cornelia (Nelly), aspired to be an actress

• Music, art and literature

• Bible, Shakespeare, Goethe and other literary works

• From middle childhood until after his 67th birthday,
Adler enjoyed robust health.

• In the early months of 1937, while concerned with the

fate of his daughter Vali, who had disappeared
somewhere in Moscow, Adler felt chest pains while
on tour in Netherlands

• Died of a heart attack in Scotland

• Freud: “For a Jew boy out of a Viennese suburb a
death in Aberdeen is an unheard-of career in itself
and a proof of how far he had got on. The world
really rewarded him richly for his service in having
contradicted psychoanalysis”
 Overview
• Presents an optimistic view of people while resting
heavily on the notion of social interest

ADLER FREUD

1. People are motivated 1. People are motivated by

mostly by social sex and aggression
influences and by their
striving for superiority or
success
 ADLER FREUD

2. People are largely 2. People have little or no

responsible for who they choice in shaping their
are personality

3. Present behavior is caused 3. Present behavior is shaped

by past experiences by people’s view of the
future

4. Put emphasis on 4. Psychologically healthy

unconscious people are usually
components of behavior aware of what and why
they are doing it.
 ADLER: Less known

1. Did not establish a tightly run organization to

perpetuate his theory

2. Not a particularly gifted writer and most of his books

were compiled by a series of editors using Adler’s
scattered lectures

3. Many of his views were incorporated into the works

of such later theorists
• People are born with weak, inferior bodies  a
condition that leads to feelings of inferiority.

• Social interest is inherent in people and the ultimate

standard for psychological health
MAIN TENETS
1. The one dynamic force behind people’s behavior is the
“Striving for Success or Superiority”

• Everyone begins life with physical deficiencies

• Believed that aggression was the dynamic power

behind all motivation.

• Masculine protest implied will to power or a

domination of others.
• Striving for superiority  personal gain

• Striving for success  people who are highly

developed social interest

• Regardless of the motivation for striving, each

individual is guided by a final goal.
 The Final Goal

• Fictional and has no objective existence.

• Product of the creative power ability to freely

shape behavior and create own personality  4 or 5
years of age

• Even infants have an innate drive toward growth,

completion, or success.
 Compensation

• People strive for superiority or success as a means of

compensation for feelings of inferiority or weakness.

Two general avenues of striving:

– The socially nonproductive attempt to gain
personal superiority
– Involves social interest and is aimed at success or
perfection for everyone.
 Striving for Personal Superiority

• Their goals are personal ones, and their strivings are

motivated largely by exaggerated feelings of personal
inferiority

• Inferiority complex
 Striving for Success
• These healthy individuals are concerned with goals
beyond themselves, are capable of helping others
without demanding or expecting a personal payoff,
and are able to see others not as opponents but as
people with whom they can cooperate for social
benefit.

• Social progress is more important to them than

personal credit
2. People’s “subjective perceptions” shape their behavior
and personality.

• People strive for superiority or success to

compensate for feelings of inferiority, but the
manner in which they strive is not shaped by reality
but by their subjective perceptions of reality, that is,
by their fictions, or expectations of the future.
 Fictionalism

• fictions are ideas that have no real existence, yet they

influence people as if they really existed
 Physical Inferiorities

• Some people compensate for these feelings of

inferiority by moving toward psychological health
and a useful style of life, whereas others
overcompensate and are motivated to subdue or
retreat from other people.
3. Personality is “unified and self-consistent”

• Thoughts, feelings, and actions are all directed

toward a single goal and serve a single purpose.
 Organ Dialect/Jargon

• The deficient organ expresses the direction of the

individual’s goal
 Conscious and Unconscious

• Adler (1956) defined the unconscious as that part of

the goal that is neither clearly formulated nor
completely understood by the individual.

• Conscious thoughts are those that are understood and

regarded by the individual as helpful in striving for
success, whereas unconscious thoughts are those that
are not helpful.
4. The value of all human activity must be seen
from the viewpoint of “social interest”

• Gemeinschaftsgefühl

• “Social feeling” or “community feeling”

• an attitude of relatedness with humanity in general as

well as an empathy for each member of the human
community
 Origins of Social Interest

1. It originates from the mother-child relationship

during the early months of infancy.
2. The father is a second important person in a child’s
social environment.

Importance of Social Interest

• Social interest is the only gauge to be used in judging

the worth of a person.
5. The self-consistent personality structure develops
into a person’s “Style of Life”

• flavor of a person’s life

• It includes a person’s goal, self-concept, feelings for

others, and attitude toward the world.

• fairly well established by age 4 or 5

• major problems of life—neighborly love, sexual love,

and occupation
6. Style of life is molded by people’s “Creative
Power”

• Creative power places people in control of their own

lives, is responsible for their final goal, determines
their method of striving for that goal, and contributes
to the development of social interest

• Creative power makes each person a free individual

 ABNORMAL DEVELOPMENT

Characteristics of underdeveloped social interest:

– Set their goals too high

– Live in their own private world

– Have a rigid and dogmatic style of life.

 External Factors in Maladjustment

Exaggerated physical deficiencies

• People develop exaggerated feelings of inferiority
because they overcompensate for their inadequacy.

Pampered style of life

• Pampered people have weak social interest but a
strong desire to perpetuate the pampered, parasitic
relationship they originally had with one or both of
their parents.
 Neglected style of life
• They see society as enemy country, feel alienated
from all other people, and experience a strong sense
of envy toward the success of others.
SAFEGUARDING TENDENCIES
• people create patterns of behavior to protect their
exaggerated sense of self-esteem against public disgrace.

• enable people to hide their inflated self-image and to

maintain their current style of life.

Freud’s DM Adler’s ST

• operate unconsciously • largely conscious and shield

to protect the ego a person’s fragile self-
esteem from public disgrace
against anxiety

• common to everyone • reference to the construction

of neurotic symptoms
 1. Excuses

• Typically expressed in the “Yes, but” or “If only”

format.

• People first state what they claim they would like to

do then they follow with an excuse.

• Protect a weak sense of self-worth and deceive people

into believing that they are more superior than they
really are
 2. Aggression
• use aggression to safeguard their exaggerated superiority
complex, that is, to protect their fragile self-esteem

Depreciation - is the tendency to undervalue other

people’s achievements and to overvalue one’s own.

Accusation - is the tendency to blame others for one’s

failures and to seek revenge

Self-accusation - marked by self-torture and guilt

 3. Withdrawal
• safeguarding through distance

a. Moving backward - is the tendency to

safeguard one’s fictional goal of superiority
by psychologically reverting to a more secure
period of life.

b. Standing still - they avoid all responsibility

by ensuring themselves against any threat of
failure
c. Hesitating – vacillate when faced with
difficult problems

d. Constructing obstacles - Some people build

a straw house to show that they can knock it
down. By overcoming the obstacle, they
protect their self-esteem and their prestige. If
they fail to hurdle the barrier, they can always
resort to an excuse.
 Masculine Protest
• the belief that men are superior to women—is a
fiction that lies at the root of many neuroses, both for
men and for women.

• overemphasize the importance of being manly

• Girls often learn to be passive and to accept an

inferior position in society.
APPLICATION
 Family Constellation
POSITIVE NEGATIVE

OLDEST CHILD
• Nurturing and protective
of others
• Good organizer
• Highly anxious
• Exaggerated feelings of power
• Unconscious hostility
• Fights for acceptance
• Must always be “right,”
whereas
• others are always “wrong”
• Highly critical of others
• Uncooperative
 POSITIVE NEGATIVE

SECOND CHILD

• Highly motivated • Highly competitive

• Cooperative • Easily discouraged
• Moderately competitive

YOUNGEST CHILD
• Realistically ambitious • Pampered style of life
• Dependent on others
• Wants to excel in
everything
• Unrealistically ambitious
 POSITIVE NEGATIVE

ONLY CHILD

• Socially mature • Exaggerated feelings of

superiority
• Low feelings of
cooperation
• Inflated sense of self
• Pampered style of life
 Early Recollections

Dreams

Psychotherapy

• to enhance courage, lessen feelings of inferiority,

and encourage social interest.
Criteria for evaluating a theory

High on generating research

Low on falsification and verification

High on organizing known data

High on guiding action

Low on internal consistency

Moderate on parsimony
 Concept of Humanity

Very high on free choice

Very high on optimism

Very low on causality

Average on unconscious influences

High on social factors

High on uniqueness