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If Sigmund Freud opposed his teaching to the rest of psychology, then his worthy student Alfred Adler was the first to oppose himself to Freud, creating his own teaching and becoming the first “heretic” of the psychoanalytic movement. Throughout the century, however, he remained in the shadow of his great teacher, and although Adler’s theory is included in all textbooks, by the end of the twentieth century, the school of his followers could not be called particularly influential.
But a surprising thing: the influence of Adler himself turned out to be much wider than the influence of his school. The greatest representatives of humanistic and existential psychology: Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Carl Rogers, not to mention even closer to him Karen Horney and Erich Fromme . Viktor Frankl went through Adler’s school, and although he did not like being called a student, it was he who compared Adler’s introduction of the idea of goal into psychology with the Copernican revolution.
Adler’s views have always been realistic and grounded. Unlike Freud, who worked primarily with the wealthy “idle class”, Adler’s clientele was from the lower strata: he founded the first system of medical and pedagogical consultations for the poor in Vienna. In the 1930s, trying to get away from academicism, he created a clear and optimistic work, The Science of Living, which combines the achievements of scientific psychology with worldly wisdom and common sense, and which is addressed to ordinary people much more than to fellow psychologists.
His dates
- February 7, 1870: born in the suburbs of Vienna (Austria-Hungary).
- 1895: Graduated from the University of Vienna with a medical degree.
- 1897: Marries Raisa Epshtein, an emigrant from Russia, who became the mother of their four children.
- 1907: publication of the first book, Studies in Organic Inferiority; invited by Freud to the psychoanalytic circle.
- 1910-1911: President of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
- 1911: breaks with Freud, founds his own school.
- 1926: Beginning of regular lecture tours in the US.
- 1934: Emigrates permanently to the USA.
- May 28, 1937: died in Aberdeen (Scotland) during a lecture tour.
Five keys to understanding:
Man is whole and indivisible
The name of the teachings of Alfred Adler “individual psychology” comes from the Latin word individuum – “indivisible”. Unlike Sigmund Freud, who represented a person split into several conflicting instances, Adler argued that there are differences between consciousness and the unconscious, but there is no rigid insurmountable boundary and, most importantly, there is no conflict. They work towards the same goals and help each other.
Striving for a goal
It is to Adler that we owe the introduction into human psychology of a new principle that explains our behavior – striving for a goal: “We should not ask “why?”, But “what for?”. Through the concept of purpose, Adler even describes dreams and pathological symptoms. The first reflects the actual tasks of a person. The latter are able to bring not always immediately noticeable benefits (in terms of goals that do not lie on the surface). Developing these ideas, Adler built the first developed theory of the meaning of life in psychology, which he understood as its objective (though not always conscious) direction. And created an idea of life’s tasks.
Life is like overcoming
Adler discovered that people with bodily defects tend to compensate for them by increasing the development of other sides (physical and intellectual), due to which they often achieve outstanding success. In an early version of his theory, he suggested that inferiority is the main driving force of a person: “Each of us feels inferior, as each of us is in a situation that we would like to improve.” From this feeling is born the desire to overcome, superiority, success. However, later he reversed these two phenomena: the desire for success, he argued, is primary and universal, and only those who fail in it feel inferior. The chronic experience of this state can develop into an inferiority complex (the authorship of this popular concept also belongs to Adler).
Man to man
A person is driven by another motive – social interest, or a sense of community, understood as “the desire to cooperate with other people to achieve common goals.” The desire to overcome and success with an undeveloped sense of community leads to the development of neuroses, crime, alcoholism and drug addiction. Adler was the first to introduce an interpersonal dimension into psychoanalysis and depth psychology.
Family as a team
If Freud emphasized the role of relations with parents in the development of a child, then Adler was the first to draw attention to the fact that the family also implies relationships between children. It is these relationships that lead to the formation of certain psychological characteristics depending on the order of the birth of children: there is something in common for all first-borns, for second sons (who always see an example-challenge of their older brother in front of them), for only children, etc.
Books by Alfred Adler
- Science to live. Port-Royal, 1997.
- Essays on individual psychology. Cogito Center, 2002