Alfred Adler

In 1895, Adler received his medical degree from University of Vienna. This is where he met his wife Raissa Timofeyewna Epstein. She was an intellectual and social activist from Russia. They married in 1897, had four children, and two would become psychiatrists.

He began his medical career as an opthamologists, later switching to general practice. He established his office across from an amusement park and circus in the lower class part of Vienna. Most his clients were circus performers. He studied their unusual strengths and weaknesses, and this gave him insights on his organ inferiority theory.

Later, Alfred turned to psychiatry and joined Freud's discussion groups in 1907. He wrote papers on organic inferiority. He also wrote a paper concerning aggression instinct and Freud did not approve. In addition, Alfred wrote a paper on children's feelings of inferiority. Which agreed with Freud's sexual notions. Freud named Adler president of Viennese Analytic Society co-editor of organization newsletter. In 1912, Adler and nine other members established The Society for Individual Psychology.

During WWI, Alfred was a physician for the Austrian Army at first he was on the Russian front and then moved to the children's hospital. He saw firsthand the damage war can do. After the war, he did various projects such as: clinics at a state school and training of teachers.

In 1926, Alfred came to the United States to lecture, he accepted a visiting position at Long Island College of medicine. He took his family and moved to the U.S. Austrian psychiatrist, Alfred Adler died of a heart attack while doing a series of lectures at Aberdeen University in Scotland.

Adler examined personality around the same time as Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. They worked on some theories together until Adler rejected Freud's emphasis on sex, and maintained that personality difficulties are rooted in a feeling of inferiority deriving from restrictions on the individual's need for self-assertion.

His best-known work is The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology (1923). Adler had a tendency to change his theory on personality throughout his life but he ultimately believed that people are focused on maintaining control over their lives. He believed in single "drive" or motivating force behind our behavior, claiming that the desire we have to fulfill our potentials becomes closer and closer to our ideals.

Alder calls this theory Individual Psychology because he felt each person was unique and no previous theory applied to all people. Adler's theory included these four aspects: the development of personality, striving towards superiority, psychological health, and the unity of personality. Many psychologists excepted Alfred's popular idea of self-actualization.

In studying personality, Alfred came up with the term inferiority complex. He described this as feelings of lack of worth. He wrote, "We all wish to overcome difficulties. We all strive to reach a goal by the attainment of which we shall feel strong, superior, and complete" (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956). Alder was known to use the word superiority complex. This complex developed when a person tried to conquer their inferiority complex by suppressing their existing feelings. He felt that people were constantly trying overcome their feelings of inferiority to reach superiority.

Along with the idea of trying to overcome inferiority, Adler claimed that every person had an idea about what their perfect self would be like (Cloninger, 1996). He named this image the fictional finalism. Fictional finalism applies clearer direction to decisions that are to be made concerning oneself. Although individuals may have an idea about their image, but they hardly ever understand it. Although the image may be altered, the common direction throughout one's life stays the same. Adler wrote, ". . .in every mental phenomenon we discover anew the characteristic of pursuit of a goal, and all our powers, faculties, experiences, wishes and fears, defects and capacities fall into line with this characteristic" (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956).

Unlike Freud, Adler believed the conscious and unconscious worked in union with one another towards the fictional finalism (Cloninger, 1996). Adler declared that each individual has a incomparable way of life, some are negative and some are positive. Adler did not like to take big groups of people an put them into general categories but when describing basic lifestyles it was simpler to do so. He studied various types of people and he came to this conclusion. There are the four main types of people, three out of four are negative. The ruling type tries to control others. The getting type tends to be very passive and goes along with others ideas, rarely inventive. The avoiding types try to isolate themselves to avoid defeat, they are usually very cold. The socially useful type, values having control over their lives and strive to do good things for the sake of society.

"It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them (Alfred Adler)." This statement sums up Alder's theory of personalty in a nutshell.