Born in Vienna to merchant parents, suffering an early childhood filled with illness (rickets, near-fatal pneumonia). At this time, he decided to become a physician.

After a college career where he became a socialist, an activist, and married a Russian intellectual, he completed medical school. He started out as an ophthalmologist, switched to general practice, then finally found his niche in psychiatry. Two of his four children became psychiatrists and carry on his work through the Adlerian Institute.

Philosophical Viewpoint

Initially a member of Freud’s inner circle, Adler rebelled and moved forward with his own theories of compensation, social interest, striving for superiority, teleology and acting “as if”, toward a fictionalized finality. This last was the result of his interest in the work of Hans Vaihinger, who wrote the book, The Philosophy of “As If”.

Whereas Freud tended to carve people up into parts (id, ego, superego), Adler viewed people as whole beings and called his work “individual psychology”, from the Latin word individuum, or “undivided”. Adler’s holistic approach was influenced by Jan Smuts, a South African philosopher and statesman.

Rather than assigning a person a personality, Adler believed we acted from a style of life, or lifestyle. This referred to the manner in which one handled problems, relationships, and life in general. One molded oneself in an environment through self-expression, rather than through a mechanical reaction to the environment.

The non-mechanical reaction to the environment is what Adler sees as motivation, a teleological approach with a future focus. This differs from Freud’s assertion that we act because we are driven by our past. Teleology, the view of things in terms of the purpose they serve, implies facing toward the future, relies on a fictionalized end result, acknowledging the uncertainty of what is to come, and thus requiring flexibility and choice in action. To move forward, into the unknown, we create partial truths or assumptions, and we act as if they are true. For example, we plan our activities each day as if the sun will rise tomorrow, as if the semester will end, as if we will graduate with a master’s degree that will allow us to either go into practice or apply for a PhD program. Adler calls this fictional finalism.

Fundamental to Adler’s philosophy is the biological phenomenon of compensation, where an organ or an organism overcomes a weakness through some activity or strategy that allows it to prevail or succeed. He takes that biological metaphor into his psychology, using it as the source of the cognitive dissonance that propels us to either move forward (if we believe that we can bridge the gap between where we are and where we want to be), or to withdraw and regress if we do not feel adequate to bridge that gap. Through compensation, we strive for superiority and to do so, we must act in a social context, with social consciousness.

This drive for compensation can be negative or positive, and can be used for control over situations in an neurotic sense. Too much of a drive for superiority leads to striving for power, dominance. Assumed superiority creates excessive expectations for perfection and fear of failure. Too little, and the person lacks courage and withdraws from life. Assumed weakness creates an excessive need for help, and leads to controlling others from a position of factitious frailty.

Therapeutic Direction

Adler’s real thrust, then is motivation: a feeling of inferiority will cause conflict that results in the drive for compensation. If the individual feels he can bridge the inferiority gap, he will move forward, rising to meet the challenge through actions guided by a social awareness and fictionalized finality. If the individual feels he cannot bridge the inferiority gap, he will develop a neurosis, an inferiority complex, and compensate for his inadequacy by constructing symptoms, accusations against others or against circumstances, or even fate. He may presume weakness to gain the services of others, controlling his environment in a negative way, avoiding the risk of admitting to himself that he is unable to compensate positively. The symptomatology, is, however, a form of compensation, but an unhealthy one.

Classic Adlerian theory has the potential to dissolve a style of life with it the compensatory bridge between the feeling of inferiority and the fictionalized final goal. A new level of motivation emerges, transitioning from deficiency motivation to growth motivation. Rather than struggle amid compensation, overcompensation or undercompensation, the individual pursues a new direction pulled by higher values.

Adlerian belief is that everyone is responsible for his own happiness, and that one controls his own destiny as a creative being. He has the choice of meeting the needs of his community or not. He can assume responsibility, or make excuses. Adler sees crime and neurosis as little more than a system of excuses for not taking responsibility for meeting the needs of one’s community.

In the end, it is all about the teleological result: phenomena judged by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes.