Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology
This biography will provide interesting insights into the life and work of Alfred Adler and his lasting contributions to psychology, psychiatry and mental health.
Alfred Adler was born on February 7, 1870, in Penzing, Austria. He is widely known as a psychiatrist and psychologist who introduced the system of individual psychology and presented the notion of inferiority feeling. Adler created an adaptable, supportive approach to psychotherapy to direct people whose emotions are affected by inferiority feelings toward social effectiveness, maturity and common sense.
Adler’s biography shows that throughout his life, Alfred Adler preserved a deep understanding of social problems. This was the strongest motivation in his work. From his earliest years as a medical doctor, he emphasized consideration of the patient’s problem. He took a person’s full context into account. Consequently, he began devising a holistic, humanistic approach to human issues and mental health.
Striving for superiority
Adler started to study psychopathology within the context of medicine in close association with Sigmund Freud. However, contrasts between them became conflicting, particularly after the appearance of Adler’s Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensation. In the study, he asserted that people endeavour to compensate psychologically their physical deficiency and associated feelings of inferiority. Inadequate compensation causes neurosis, or in other words: mental health disorders. Adler downplayed the basic argument of Freud about a cause-and-effect relationship between childhood sexual conflicts and mental disorders. Furthermore, Adler has limited sexuality to a metaphoric role in people’s desire to cope with feelings of inadequacy. Frankly critical of Freud, Adler and his followers began devising individual psychology, first summarised in The Neurotic Constitution in 1912. The approach was elaborated in subsequent editions of this writing and other works, such as Understanding Human Nature.
Individual psychology claims that the overexpressed motivation in many people manifests as a striving for superiority, perfection or completeness. This desire for superiority may be hindered by feelings of incompleteness, inadequacy or inferiority, stemming from physical imperfections, neglect during childhood, low social class or other reasons. People can compensate for their sense of inferiority by moulding their abilities and skills. Less adaptively, people may develop an inferiority complex, which overwhelms their behaviour.
Inferiority complex
The inferiority complex is a feeling of inferiority that is partly or fully unconscious. The term has been employed by some psychologists and psychiatrists, especially the proponents of Adler, who maintained that overcompensation for this feeling could cause many neurotic symptoms.
Overcompensation for the sense of inferiority can manifest itself as egocentric striving for authority and self-glorifying conduct at others’ expense. To visualise how an inferiority complex can develop into overwhelming conduct, envision the way many children struggle
with math. At first, they are slightly behind and start to feel discouraged. Usually, they flounder onward, being confused through high school with hardly passing marks until they reach calculus, whereon differential equations and integrals overwhelm them, so they ultimately give up on math.
Now, let’s apply that procedure to an entire youngster’s life. The feeling of inferiority induces doubt which facilitates the development of neurosis (mental health problems), and the child becomes gutless, hesitant, unconfident, reserved and shy. Unable to meet their needs through being confident in initiating empowering action, the person often develops to be manipulative and passive-aggressive, depending excessively on the assurance of others. This, indeed, only gives away their strength and makes their self-confidence and self-worth easier to incapacitate.
Of course, not all children with a sense of inferiority evolve into reserved and shy. In a dramatic act of overcompensation, some develop a superiority complex. These youngsters often become the traditional image of the playground bully, running away from their own feeling of inferiority by making others feel vulnerable and powerless. Moreover, bullies may also become desirous for attention, tempted to the rush of criminal movement or substance misuse or heavily biased in their opinions.
Personality Development and Lifestyle
Each person strives for perfection and develops their personality in their own way, in what Adler called a lifestyle. Particular inferiority that affected an individual most deeply during their formative years partly determines their lifestyle, or the distinctive way in which one manages problems and interpersonal connections.
Here again, Adler conflicted with Freud, who had argued that events that occurred in the past (e.g. early traumatic experience) formed the core of people’s lives in the present. Adler was forward- rather than past-looking, seeing motivation as an essential power moving towards the future.
Types of Personalities
While Adler did not focus on neurosis in his mental health work, he specified some personality “types” that he differentiated based on the distinct energy levels of people. However, these types of personalities were by no means absolute to Adler. He, as the righteous individualist, saw them only as heuristic instruments.
The first personality type is the ruling type
These individuals are distinguished early on by an inclination towards being aggressive and dominant over others, containing intense energy that subjugates anything that gets in their way. These people are not necessarily sadists or bullies. Yet, some divert the energy inwards and sabotage themselves, such drug or alcohol addicts or those who commit suicide.
The leaning type is the second personality type
People of this type are sensitive, and while they do their best to protect themselves, they ultimately count on others to bring them through life’s challenges. In essence, they lack energy and rely on the energy of others. They are also predisposed to dissociations, general anxiety, obsessions and compulsions, anxieties, phobias, etc.
The third personality type is the avoiding type
Individuals of this type have enormously low energy they conserve within themselves, avoiding people and life. In severe cases, these people develop psychosis—the ultimate result of completely withdrawing into oneself.
Adler also acknowledged the fourth type of personality: the socially valuable type. Individuals of this type are healthy people, retaining adequate, but not domineering, energy and social interest. They can give to others effectively as they are not so preoccupied with a sense of inferiority.
Adlerian Psychotherapy
Mental health is defined by self-actualisation, social interest and reason. On the other hand, mental disorder is characterized by self-centred concern for one’s superiority or sense of inferiority. The Adlerian psychotherapist focuses the patient’s awareness on the unsuccessful, neurotic nature of his attempts to manage feelings of inferiority. Once the patient has become conscious of these, the psychotherapist builds up his self-esteem, aids him in adopting more practical goals and promotes more functional behaviour.
Conclusion
Alfred Adler’s biography shows Adler’s approach may lack the excitement of Jung’s and Freud’s theories by lacking mythology and sexuality, but it is nonetheless functional, compelling and highly relevant.