Alfred Adler. The one who split the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society with his ideas. This Austrian scientist developed a new direction of psychoanalysis called Adlerian individual psychology. It is based on social factors influencing the psyche and behavior. As in the case of Freud, the cornerstone of Adler's research was the human personality and the mechanisms that cause it to develop. His views began to contradict the principles of psychoanalysis so much that it ended in a loud scandal with his teacher (Freud).
What was this fundamental difference? Freud believed that the basis of personality is the unconscious and sexuality, and this makes humans very similar to all other animals. Only the oppressive superego prevents one from descending to the animal level.
Adler considered the issue more humanely and became the founder of individual personality psychology. It is believed that the scientist learned such ideas from his own childhood: he was born in a large family, was often sick at a young age, and was physically weak. Taking part in street fights, little Alfred almost lost his life, and school science was very difficult for him at first. Over time, the boy was able to achieve recognition from his peers, caught up with his studies and even became one of the best students at the medical university.
The essence of personality theory
The new direction is based on four principles:
- a person is an integral personality, and not a rushing collection of contradictory formations, as followed from the theory of psychoanalysis;
- The main driving force of man is the desire for superiority.
- creativity lies at the core of every personality;
- One of the decisive roles in the development of personality is played by its social affiliation.
Alfred Adler believed that every child, next to omnipotent adults who completely control his life, experiences an acute sense of his own inferiority. His entire further existence becomes an attempt to overcome this feeling, and the ways of overcoming can be very different, depending on who has enough imagination. Someone will become a brilliant engineer, an excellent doctor or a talented politician, and someone will go to rob in the gateways. This moment, according to the scientist, largely determines social affiliation.
According to Adler’s theory of personality, under the influence of society, a person develops three main life tasks:
- friendship;
- Love;
- Job.
The list is small, but also suggests a lot of implementation options. There are seven main elements in Adler's theory of personality:
- a feeling of inferiority (although a more correct translation is incompleteness) and compensation - such a feeling arises in a child in childhood, becoming the cause of internal conflict and giving impetus to development;
- the desire for superiority - Adler’s concept calls it one of the main aspirations in human life;
- lifestyle is the habits and character traits that shape personality; they are formed in childhood and remain practically unchanged in adulthood;
- social interest - can be positive or negative; manifests itself as interest in others, the desire to take responsibility for others;
- creative self – Adler’s psychoanalytic concept states that personal development depends on a person’s creative abilities, the ability to demonstrate them when solving various issues;
- birth order - the scientist was sure that the character is influenced by the order in which the child was born;
- fictional finalism: life goals are fiction, the greatest of them is the desire for superiority.
Biography of the Austrian psychologist
Alfred Adler was born into a poor Jewish family. Besides him, his parents had five more children. The older brother, ironically, was named Sigmund. The older brother grew up physically healthy and successful; he became an entrepreneur and constantly helped the family. But Alfred was not at all different in physical health.
He suffered from rickets, which left him unable to walk for a long time. He also had severe pneumonia with many complications. Several times the seriously ill child almost died.
Despite his illnesses, Alfred tried to keep up with his peers and even went outside to play with them. Friends did not consider him somehow inferior, and with them he was even better than at home with his parents. At the same time, Alfred tried his best to overcome his shortcomings, which he succeeded in doing.
For example, the road to school passed by a fence behind which, as the children believed, there was a cemetery. Alfred was very afraid of cemeteries, and one day he decided to overcome his fear. He climbed over the fence and walked around the cemetery several times until he was sure that the fear had disappeared. A little later he found out that there was not a cemetery there, but just an abandoned yard.
Due to his illnesses, as well as his daydreaming, Alfred's performance at school was poor. So much so that the teacher advised him to quit school and go to study to become a shoemaker. This made the boy very angry. He gathered his will into a fist, began to study and soon became the best student in the class. After school, he even entered the University of Vienna and began to study medicine, after which he first worked as a general practitioner.
At the university, he also became interested in socialism and began to participate in student political meetings. At one of them, he met a student from Russia, Raisa Epstein, who soon became his wife. Subsequently, Raisa Epstein proved herself to be an active activist in feminism.
Alfred Adler initially became interested in the ideas of Sigmund Freud; in the press he actively defended Freud’s book “The Interpretation of Dreams,” which touched the author of the book himself.
However, Adler’s differences with the then “guru of psychoanalysis” began already at that time. Thus, he did not recognize the dominant role of childhood sexuality in the development of the human psyche.
Subsequently, the discrepancies between his views and Freud's theory became even greater. Freud was very offended if any of the psychologists, and even those who called themselves psychoanalysts, disagreed with him on something. Freud believed that there could only be one psychoanalysis, and it was the one that he himself developed. Freud often called his opponents paranoid and considered them closet homosexuals. Therefore, there could be no friendship or cooperation between him and Adler.
Subsequently, Adler, by special invitation, arrived in the United States, where he ultimately stayed forever. He became a professor at Columbia University and lectured at other scientific organizations. At first, he came to Vienna for the summer, but after the Nazis came to power in Germany and occupied Austria, he could no longer appear in his homeland. All his followers also had to urgently emigrate.
In 1937, having arrived in Aberdeen, Scotland to lecture, Adler suddenly died of a heart attack.
Personality types
The scientist named the main types of human behavior, classifying individuals according to this indicator:
- manager: based on superiority over others, such people have low social interest, they can be antisocial, hostile towards others;
- taker - such people are characterized by a complete or almost complete lack of social activity and interests, a tendency to parasitism; they tend to satisfy their needs at the expense of others, but rarely cause suffering;
- avoidant - such people are characterized by an inability to solve problems, low or completely absent social interest; they are afraid of failures and avoid solving life problems;
- Socially helpful is a personality type with a high level of social interest, the ability to cooperate and a desire to help others; such people are interested in communication and sincerely care about others; This is the most developed personality according to the scientist’s classification.
Personality structure according to Adler
The formation of character, worldview, and behavior is determined by a feeling of inferiority and, as a result, the desire for superiority. Thus, the basis of personality, according to Adler’s theory, is dual in nature. It is influenced by lifestyle and fictitious finalism.
Adler's individual psychology states that life style is formed on the basis of the relationship between the child and his parents. It depends on the suffering that the little person faces. The scientist divided them into three main categories: overprotection, lack of attention to the child, and physical defects.
Suffering gives rise to an inferiority complex in a person, and throughout the rest of his life the person strives to overcome it. As a person grows up, he is faced with the main tasks of life: work and career, building personal (love, romantic) relationships, forming friendships with others.
In addition, lifestyle is influenced by the creative center of the individual, the creative self. According to Adler, this is an important component that becomes an additional motivation for a person. A lot depends on it: the development of memory and imaginative thinking, perception of the surrounding world.
Finally, the birth order of a child plays a role in personality development. According to Adler, this is an important point that largely shapes the lifestyle.
- Older children, first-borns can be self-centered, they receive enough attention from their parents, so the appearance of the next child can become a drama for the first-born. He is forced to adapt to new circumstances, so he can become a leader, a loner. Often it is the first-born who become zealots of traditions, family values, and conservatives.
- Middle children are forced to constantly compete with older brothers or sisters, so their desire to set their own records is clearly evident. According to the scientist, it is middle children who are more predisposed than others to achieve noticeable results; they have good leadership abilities.
- If the child is the only one, he may be prone to egocentrism and dependence on the opinions of others. Having become accustomed from infancy to maximum attention from his parents, he demands the same attitude from those around him.
Subject of individual psychology
The name of Adler’s theory “Individual Psychology” comes from the Latin word individum (indivisible) and expresses the idea of the integrity of people’s mental life, in particular, the absence of boundaries and contradictions between consciousness and subconsciousness. A red thread running through the behavior and lifestyle of any person is his life style, aimed at realizing life goals (in later works - the meaning of life).
The purpose, meaning and style of a person’s life are formed in the first 3-5 years and are determined by the characteristics of family upbringing. The subject of study of individual psychology is the illumination of problems of the soul and body.
Adler's compensation theory
The scientist developed this concept by observing people with physical defects and poor health. He came to the conclusion: people suffering from an inferiority complex, having disabilities or disabilities, strive to compensate for their psychological problems through outstanding achievements in various areas of life. This could be a career or sports or creativity. Such individuals subconsciously choose the path of struggle; they are not ready to give up in the face of external circumstances.
This constant stimulation of one’s abilities can manifest itself in one of three forms:
- adequate compensation - occurs if the superiority and social interests of the individual coincide (for example, a person is involved in creativity or sports, writes books);
- overcompensation - a person pays maximum attention to the development of one of the abilities, while overdevelopment is aimed at the person himself (for example, the constant accumulation of material wealth);
- imaginary compensation - in this case, the personality does not engage in development, since the inferiority complex is compensated by objective factors (for example, illness).
Feelings of inferiority
When a person is born with a physical, constitutional, organic or social deficiency, a whole series of certain unconscious processes, both physiological and mental, arises to restore some balance, to bring about mechanisms that somehow compensate for this deficiency. From this point of view, the Freudian "libido" appears to be subordinated to the "instinct" of domination.
Striving for Excellence
The need to become better than others is innate, it is the foundation of personality and gives human life meaning. According to Adler, the desire for excellence is the basis of self-development. It is this need that helps to overcome difficulties; it forces a person to set goals and strive to achieve them. This is the basis of personal motivation, the main “engine”. Even if a person is in harmony with himself and the world around him, the desire for superiority forces him to move forward.
The doctrine of neuroses
In addition to describing the normal psyche, the Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler was engaged in describing phenomena that help to understand the human personality and acquire knowledge about a person - he considered deviant and pathological mental deviations as a doctor. According to the principle of the unity of mental processes, he saw in these deviations erroneous responses to the demands of life.
The feeling of a strong feeling of inferiority (the concept of an inferiority complex) can lead to excessive compensation in the form of an exaggerated desire for dominance, an enormous will to power. Adler believed that the concept of neurosis is the link between normal and neurotic psychology. He read psychosis as a more acute form of neurosis, therefore, in his opinion, it could be treated with the help of psychoanalysis.
Personality development according to Adler
As a person grows up, he or she faces various challenges that need to be solved comprehensively. A person understands this on a subconscious level, and therefore unconsciously strives to prove himself and take a significant place in society. To do this, he shows social interest. According to Adler, a psychologically mature, developed person has a positive attitude towards others, towards people in general, and is interested in them.
In addition, the scientist introduced the concept of the degree of activity - this is a way of solving life problems. It depends on the personality type. According to Adler, the highest degree of personality development is a socially useful type of character.
