Key Takeaways
- Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology posits that humans are primarily motivated by social connectedness and a striving for superiority or success. He believed that feelings of inferiority drive individuals to achieve personal goals.
- Early interaction with family members, peers, and adults helps to determine the role of inferiority and superiority in life.
- Adler believed that birth order had a significant and predictable impact on a child’s personality, and their feeling of inferiority.
- All human behavior is goal-orientated and motivated by striving for superiority. Individuals differ in their goals and how they try to achieve them.
- A natural and healthy reaction to inferiority is compensation: efforts to overcome real or imagined inferiority by developing one’s own abilities.
- If people cannot compensate for normal feelings of inferiority, they develop an inferiority complex.
- The overarching goal of Adlerian psychotherapy is to help the patient overcome feelings of inferiority.
Individual Psychology
Alfred Adler’s school of individual school of psychology created a chasm in the field of psychology, which had been dominated by Freud’s psychoanalysis.
While Freud focused on only the internal processes — mainly sexual conflicts — that affect a person’s psychology, Adler was adamant that to fully understand a person, a psychologist must also consider other internal and external factors.
This is why he named his school of psychology individual; the word is intended to evoke a meaning of indivisibility, derived from the Latin individuum (Mosak et al., 1999, p. 6).
Alfred Adler’s Theory of Individual Psychology posits that individuals are motivated primarily by social interests and a striving for superiority or self-improvement.
Childhood experiences, especially feelings of inferiority, drive this striving, but in a healthy individual, it manifests as a desire to contribute to the welfare of others.
Maladaptive behaviors arise when this striving becomes self-centered or when inferiority feelings are overwhelming. Adler emphasized the uniqueness of the individual and the role of social connections in shaping behavior.
Compensation, Overcompensation, and Complexes
Adler thought that the basic psychological element of neurosis was a sense of inferiority and that individuals suffering with the symptoms of this phenomenon spent their lives trying to overcome the feelings without ever being in touch with reality (White, 1917)
Compensation for Weaknesses
According to Adler (2013b), all infants have a feeling of inferiority and inadequacy immediately as they begin to experience the world.
These early experiences, such as the need to gain the parents’ attention, shape the child’s unconscious, fictive goals. They give the child a need to strive towards rectifying that inferiority — a need to compensate for weakness by developing other strengths.
There are several outcomes that can occur in a child’s quest for compensation. First, if the child receives adequate nurturing and care, the child can accept his challenges, and learn that they can be overcome with hard work. Thus, the child develops “normally” and develops the “courage to be imperfect” (Lazarsfeld, 1966, pp. 163-165).
Overcompensation
However, sometimes, the process of compensation goes awry. One way in which this happens is that the feelings of inferiority become too intense, and the child begins to feel as though he has no control over his surroundings. He will strive very strenuously for compensation, to the point that compensation is no longer satisfactory.
This culminates in a state of overcompensation, where the child’s focus on meeting his goal is exaggerated and becomes pathological.
For example, Adler (1917) uses the ancient Greek figure Demosthenes, who had a terrible stutter but ended up becoming the “greatest orator in Greece” (p. 22).
Here, Demosthenes started off with inferiority due to his stutter, and overcompensated by not just overcoming his stutter, but taking up a profession that would normally be impossible for a stutterer.
Inferiority Complex
Overcompensation can lead to the development of an inferiority complex. This is a lack of self-esteem where the person cannot rectify his feelings of inferiority.
According to Adler (2013a), the hallmark of an inferiority complex is that “persons are always striving to find a situation in which they excel” (p. 74). This drive is due to their overwhelming feelings of inferiority.
There are two components of these feelings of inferiority: primary and secondary. Primary inferiority is the “original and normal feeling” of inferiority an infant maintains (Stein & Edwards, 2002, p. 23). This feeling is productive, as it motivates the child to develop.
Secondary inferiority, on the other hand, is the inferiority feeling in the adult results when the child develops an exaggerated feeling of inferiority (p. 23). These feelings in the adult are what is harmful, and they comprise the inferiority complex.
Superiority Complex
The superiority complex occurs when a person has the need to prove that he is more superior than he truly is. Adler (2013a) provides an example of a child with a superiority complex, who is “impertinent, arrogant and pugnacious” (p. 82).
When this child is treated through Adlerian therapy, it is revealed that the child behaves impatiently because he feels inferior.
Adler (2013a) claims that superiority complexes are born out of inferiority complexes; they are “one of the ways which a person with an inferiority complex may use a method of escape from his difficulties” (p. 97).
Personality Typology, or Styles of Life
Adler did not approve of the concept of personality types; he believed this practice could lead to neglecting each individual’s uniqueness.
However, he did recognize patterns that often formed in childhood and could be useful in treating patients who fit into them. He called these patterns styles of life.
Adler (2013a) claimed that once a psychologist knows a person’s style of life, “it is possible to predict his future sometimes just on the basis of talking to him and having him answer questions” (p. 100)
Adler and his followers analyze a person’s style of life by comparing it to “the socially adjusted human being” (p. 101).
Birth Order
The term birth order refers to the order in which the children of a family were born. Adler (2013b, pp. 150-155) believed that birth order had a significant and predictable impact on a child’s personality:
First-born
First-born children have inherent advantages due to their parents recognizing them as “the larger, the stronger, the older.”
This gives first-born children the traits of “a guardian of law and order.” These children have a high amount of personal power, and they value the concept of power with reverence.
Second-born
Second-born children are constantly in the shadow of their older siblings. They are incessantly “striving for superiority under pressure,” driven by the existence of their older, more powerful sibling.
If the second-born is encouraged and supported, he will be able to attain power as well, and he and the first-born will work together.
Youngest Child
Youngest children operate in a constant state of inferiority. They are constantly trying to prove themselves, due to their perceptions of inferiority relative to the rest of their family.
According to Adler, there are two types of youngest children.
The more successful type “excels every other member of the family, and becomes the family’s most capable member.”
Another, more unfortunate type of youngest child does not excel because he lacks the necessary self-confidence. This child becomes evasive and avoidant towards the rest of the family.
Only Child
Only children, according to Adler, are also an unfortunate case.
Due to their being the sole object of their parent’s attention, the only child becomes “dependent to a high degree, constantly waits for someone to show him the way, and searches for support at all times.”
They also come to see the world as a hostile place due to their parents’ constant vigilance.
Critical Evaluation
As with all psychodynamic approaches to human psychology, Adlerian individual psychology receives criticism for being unscientific and difficult to prove empirically. Specifically, its focus on the unconscious fictive goal makes it arguable that Adlerian psychology is unfalsifiable.
Though Adler’s theories are difficult to definitively prove, recent neuroscience has provided some support.
A recent study summarizing modern neuroscientific evidence, and how it relates to Adlerian psychology, agreed with a statement made by Maslow in 1970:
“Adler becomes more and more correct year by year. As the facts come in, they give stronger and stronger support to his image of man” (Miller & Dillman Taylor, 2016, p. 125).
In regards to Adlerian therapy, the modern-day attitude is that while the practice is simple and easy for the layman to understand, it is flawed because it is not empirically based.
Adler’s form of counseling is criticized for its lack of depth, notably, its lack of a foundation that deals with issues not related to concepts such as birth order and early recollections (Capuzzi & Stauffer, 2016, p. 142).
How did Adler Disagree with Freud?
| Aspect | Sigmund Freud | Alfred Adler |
|---|---|---|
| Motivation of Behavior | Internal biological drives (sex and aggression) | Social influence and striving for superiority |
| Choice in Personality Development | People have no choice | People are responsible for who they are |
| Behavior Influence | Present behavior is caused by the past (e.g. childhood) | Present behavior is shaped by the future (goals orientation) |
| Conscious Awareness | Emphasis on unconscious processes | People are aware of what they are doing and why |
| Personality Structure | Split into components (id, ego, superego) | Studied as a whole (holism) |
| Primary Relationships | Relationship with same-sex parent | Wider family relationships including with siblings |
References
Adler, A. (2013a). The Science of Living (Psychology Revivals). Routledge.
Adler, A. (2013b). Understanding Human Nature (Psychology Revivals). Routledge.
Adler, A., Jelliffe, S. Ely. (1917). Study of Organ Inferiority and its Psychical Compensation: A Contribution to Clinical Medicine. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company.
Capuzzi, D. & Stauffer, M. D. (2016). Counseling and Psychotherapy: Theories and Interventions. Germany: Wiley.
Lazarsfeld, S. (1966). The courage for imperfection. American Journal of Individual Psychology, 22 (2).
Miller, R. & Dillman Taylor, D. (2016). Does Adlerian theory stand the test of time?: Examining individual psychology from a neuroscience perspective. The Journal of Humanistic Counseling, 55 : 11-128. doi:10.1002/john.12028
Mosak, H. H., Maniacci, M., Maniacci, M. P. (1999). A Primer of Adlerian Psychology: The Analytic-Behavioral-Cognitive Psychology of Alfred Adler. United Kingdom: Brunner/Mazel.
Stein, H. T. & Edwards, M. E. (2002). Adlerian psychotherapy. In Herson, M. & Sledge, M. H. (1st Ed.), Encyclopedia of Psychotherapy (Vol. 1, pp. 23-31). Netherlands: Elsevier Science.
White, W. A. (1917). The theories of Freud, Jung and Adler: III. The Adlerian concept of the neuroses. The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 12 (3), 168.
