Adler insisted that early recollections are always consistent with peoples present style of life.

Theories of Personality

Individual Psychology by Alfred Adler

Group 2 (Cetron, Gallego, Guevarra, Saño): BS PSY 2-2

Overview of Individual Psychology

Individual Psychology - presents an optimistic view of people

while resting heavily on the notion of social interest, that is, a

feeling of oneness with all humankind

Difference between the perspective of Freud and Adler

1. Freud reduced all motivation to sex and aggression,

whereas Adler saw people as being motivated mostly by

social influences and by their striving for superiority or

success.

2. Freud assumed that people have little or no choice in

shaping their personality, whereas Adler believed that

people are largely responsible for who they are.

3. Freud’s assumption that present behavior is caused by past

experiences was directly opposed to Adler’s notion that

present behavior is shaped by people’s view of the future

4. Freud, who placed very heavy emphasis on unconscious

components of behavior, Adler believed that psychologically

healthy people are usually aware of what they are doing and

why they are doing it.

Biography of Alfred Adler

• was born on February 7, 1870, in Rudolfsheim, a village

near Vienna

• mother, Pauline, was a hard-working homemaker who kept

busy with her seven children

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

from Hungary

• Adler was weak and sickly at the age of 5 and almost died

of pneumonia.

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

older brother Sigmund. He always sees his brother as a

rival.

• At age 4, Adler awoke one morning to find Rudolf dead in

the bed next to his. Adler saw this experience, along with

his own near death from pneumonia, as a challenge to

overcome death. At age 5, Adler decided at that early age

to become a physician.

Meeting of Adler and Freud

• Late fall of 1902, Freud invited Adler and three other

Viennese physicians to attend a meeting in Freud’s home

to discuss psychology and neuropathology. This group was

known as the Wednesday Psychological Society until

1908, when it became the Vienna Psychoanalytic

Society. Although Freud led these discussion groups, Adler

never considered Freud to be his mentor and believed

somewhat naively that he and others could make

contributions to psychoanalysis—contributions that would

be acceptable to Freud. Although Adler was one of the

original members of Freud’s inner circle, the two men never

shared a warm personal relationship. Neither man was

quick to recognize theoretical differences even after Adler’s

1907 publication of Study of Organ Inferiority and Its

Psychical Compensation (1907/1917), which assumed

that physical deficiencies—not sex— formed the foundation

for human motivation.

• During the next few years, Adler became even more

convinced that psychoanalysis should be much broader

than Freud’s view of infantile sexuality. In 1911, Adler, who

was then president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society,

presented his views before the group, expressing

opposition to the strong sexual proclivities of

psychoanalysis and insisting that the drive for superiority

was a more basic motive than sexuality. Both he and Freud

finally recognized that their differences were irreconcilable,

and in October of 1911 Adler resigned his presidency and

membership in the Psychoanalytic Society. Along with nine

other former members of the Freudian circle, he formed the

Society forFree Psychoanalytic Study, a name that

irritated Freud with its implication that Freudian

psychoanalysis was opposed to a free expression of ideas.

Adler, however, soon changed the name of his organization

to the Society for Individual Psychology—a name that

clearly indicated he had abandoned psychoanalysis.

Last Years of His Life in United States

• Adler married a fiercely independent Russian woman,

Raissa Epstein, in December of 1897. Raissa was an early

feminist and much more political than her husband.

• Raissa and Alfred had four children: 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; and Cornelia (Nelly), who

aspired to be an actress.

• He identified himself closely with the common person, and

his manner and appearance were consistent with that

identification. His patients included a high percentage of

people from the lower and middle classes, a rarity among

psychiatrists of his time. His personal qualities included an

optimistic attitude toward the human condition, an intense

competitiveness coupled with friendly congeniality, and a

strong belief in the basic gender equality, which combined

with a willingness to forcefully advocate women’s rights.

• On May 28, 1937, he died of a heart attack. Freud, who was

14 years older than Adler, had outlived his longtime

adversary. On hearing of Adler’s death, Freud (as quoted in

E. Jones, 1957) sarcastically remarked, “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”.

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